Formulas · Invigorate Blood 活血祛瘀 · Immun (入門)

Lone Sage Powder for Black Sinking

Dokseong-san

한글 독성산 · Pinyin Du Sheng San

獨聖散

A homonym, not the formula already registered as dokseong-san. That entry is the Uigam and Dansim emetic built on 瓜蒂, melon stalk, taken to make a patient vomit phlegm drool in wind patterns and epilepsy, with four sets of additions and a goose feather to probe the throat; this leaf is a single dose of stir-fried pangolin scale in a costus-root vehicle for a smallpox eruption that has sunk black. The two share nothing but the name, which both earn in the same way — 獨聖, the lone sage, is what this book calls a formula of one drug, so the name recurs wherever a single medicinal is given alone. The chapter tail -soa is taken, following the house rule. The transcription writes 黑鲩 and 為; 陷 and 爲 are printed above. 觜 is printed as the transcription gives it.

Composition 構成

Cheonsangap Chuan Shan Jia
穿山甲 천산갑 · Pangolin Scale (prohibited)

2 g
Chief 君

取前足及觜上者, the scales of the forefeet and over the snout only, stir-fried and ground to powder; 5 fun to a dose
Sahyang She Xiang
麝香 사향 · Musk (prohibited)

—
Assistant 佐

入麝香少許, a little added, optional — CITES Appendix I
Mokhyang Mu Xiang
木香 목향 · Costus Root

—
Envoy 使

木香煎湯, decocted as the vehicle the powder is stirred into
Ju Jiu
酒 주 · Wine

—
Envoy 使

入酒少許, a little wine added to the vehicle

Total 2 g per packet (첩) · representative dosage — verify against source texts. Excludes 3 ingredients measured by count or used as a vehicle, shown as —.

Received this formula from your practitioner? Amounts shown here are classical reference values — granule and prepared products differ. Always follow your prescribed dosage and directions.

Actions 效能

Claims to raise a pox that has sunk black in a child whose breath is about to fail
Given as a powder stirred into a costus-root decoction with a little wine, five fun to a dose
A little musk added is said to make it better still

Indications 主治

Pattern-based

Black sinking with the qi about to be cut off (黑陷氣欲絶)

Biomedical correlates

Haemorrhagic smallpox with circulatory collapse — historical

Source text 原文

Donguibogam 東醫寶鑑

治黑陷氣欲絶. 穿山甲(取前足及觜上者, 炒硏爲末), 木香煎湯, 入酒少許, 調五分服. 入麝香少許尤妙. 《入門》

Translation

Treats black sinking with the qi about to be cut off. Pangolin scales, taking those of the forefeet and over the snout, stir-fried and ground to a powder; decoct costus root, add a little wine, and give 5 fun of the powder stirred into it. A little musk added is better still. — Immun 入門 (Donguibogam · Soa)

Clinical commentary 臨床

One drug, five fun of it, for a child whose pox has gone black and whose breath is failing. The scales are to be taken from the forefeet and from over the snout — the digging parts, which is the logic of the thing: the scale that breaks earth is held to break through a blockage, and here the blockage is an eruption that will not come to the surface. The costus-root decoction and the drop of wine are to carry it and warm it; the optional musk is there to open. The eruption that has sunk black with the breath going is haemorrhagic smallpox at the end, and nothing in this leaf or in the fourteen others of this section could have altered that. It is worth being exact about why not. Pangolin scale is keratin — the same protein as hair, horn and fingernail — and keratin taken by mouth is digested as protein. There is no pharmacology here to discuss. **The chief drug is pangolin, and all eight pangolin species are on CITES Appendix I with commercial international trade banned since 2017. Pangolins are the most heavily trafficked wild mammals in the world and the scale trade is the reason. The scales are inert keratin, so the demand that is emptying the species buys nothing. Musk is CITES Appendix I for the same reason. This must not be prepared.** The wine is a further hazard in a small child: ethanol causes hypoglycaemia in children at quantities an adult would not notice, and a child this ill has no glycogen left to spare. — Eui Young (Justin) Chung, L.Ac., Dipl. O.M.