Birthwort Pill

**This must not be prepared. It contains arsenic, and birthwort carries aristolochic acid, which destroys the kidneys and causes urothelial cancer; neither drug has any safe dose.** Arsenic pills for asthma were in use across East Asia and in Europe into the twentieth century, and they did suppress attacks; the price was arsenical neuropathy, skin disease and cancer. The design is the 哮證 section's standard one — a mineral poison given in a tiny evening dose to stop the night attack, with apricot kernel and cicada moulting to settle the wheeze. The section offers Jageum-dan and Talmyeong-dan on the same principle, and the chapter's own advice is that such 刧劑, snatching medicines, are to be followed by a supplementing formula once the attack is broken. — Eui Young (Justin) Chung, L.Ac., Dipl. O.M.