Formulas · Supplement 補益 · Seui Deukhyobang (世醫得效方)

Yin-Refined Autumn Mineral Elixir

Eumnyeonchuseok-dan

한글 음련추석단 · Pinyin Yin Lian Qiu Shi Dan

陰煉秋石丹

This is the method 虛勞門 points at. Its entry there gives the indications, the dosage of thirty pills in warm wine and the Deukhyo's long encomium, and refers the preparation away with the interlinear note 製法詳見雜方; the referent is a section of this chapter, 5.3.40 陰煉秋石法, not a formula leaf, and it is printed here as the source text, closing that composition-less cross-reference. The transcription reads 人屎, excreta; a collation note at the page boundary gives 屎 : 尿(First Edition), urine, and the First Edition's reading is the one the rest of the method describes — settling, pouring off and recrystallising a liquid. Both readings are recorded and the transcription's is printed, by this project's base-text rule. A second collation note, 紛 : 粉(First Edition), sits two lines into the following 陽煉秋石法 section but annotates 色如紛白 in this one; 紛 is not in that section at all. 隂 is printed 陰 and 清 as 淸 by the usual normalisations; 盖 keeps the transcription's form.

Composition 構成

Insi Ren Shi
人屎 인시 · Human Faeces

—
Chief 君

人屎 as the transcription reads — human excreta, gathered in quantity, settled and washed with fresh water a dozen times and more until there is no foul smell; the First Edition reads 人尿, urine, which is what the method describes · human-derived material
Inyu Ren Ru
人乳 인유 · Human Milk

—
Assistant 佐

初男乳汁, the breast milk of a woman whose firstborn was a son, worked into the dried salt to a paste before each of the nine sunnings · human-derived material

Total g per packet (첩) · representative dosage — verify against source texts. Excludes 2 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

Treats vacuity taxation and long-standing complaints of every kind
Enriches the yin and brings the fire down
Thirty pills at a time, on an empty stomach, swallowed down with warm wine

Indications 主治

Pattern-based

Vacuity taxation with emaciation that needling and moxa will not touch (虛勞羸弱鍼灸不效)
Dizziness, abdominal distension, phlegm panting and years of swelling
Sexual excess in the young, with dim eyes, aching knees, seminal loss, white turbidity and intermittent lumbar and back pain

Biomedical correlates

Chronic debility — historical treatment
Long-standing oedema in depletion states

Source text 原文

Donguibogam 東醫寶鑑

人屎多聚置大盆中, 以新水相和, 攪轉百匝, 放令澄淸, 辟去淸水, 只留濁脚. 又以新水用攪, 水多爲妙, 又傾去淸水, 如此十餘次, 直候無臭氣水香爲止. 鋪厚紙於篩內, 傾在紙上, 瀝去淸水, 晒乾爲末, 以初男乳汁和勻如膏, 烈日中暴乾, 如此九度, 色如紛白, 盖假太陽氣也. 謂之陰煉秋石, 能滋陰降火. 《入門》

Translation

Gather human waste in quantity and set it in a large basin; mix fresh water into it, stir it round a hundred turns, let it settle clear, pour the clear water off and keep only the turbid bottom. Stir fresh water into it again — the more water the better — and pour the clear water off again, and do this a dozen times and more, until there is no foul smell and the water is sweet. That is the stopping point. Lay thick paper in a sieve, pour the mass out onto the paper and let the clear water drip away; dry it in the sun and powder it, work it even with the breast milk of a woman whose firstborn was a son until it is like a paste, and dry it in the fierce sun. Do this nine times, until the colour is white as powder — this is borrowing the qi of the great sun. This is called yin-refined autumn mineral, and it is able to enrich the yin and bring the fire down. — Immun 入門 (Donguibogam · Japbang)

Clinical commentary 臨床

秋石, autumn mineral, is a salt crystallised from human urine, and the two refinings were held to yield two different medicines from one source — the yang refining by fire, this one by water. The division of labour follows: the yang-refined elixir fortifies the yang and raises what has wilted, and this one enriches the yin and brings the fire down. The chapter then provides a third entry for taking both together. 以人補人, supplementing a person with a person: the Deukhyo states the reasoning outright, with the bamboo and metal vessels as its analogy, and this is the clearest statement of like-treats-like anywhere in the chapter. The method, now recovered, is a water refining and nothing more occult than that. Urine is collected, diluted, stirred and allowed to settle; the clear supernatant is poured off and the turbid sediment kept, and that washing is repeated a dozen times or more until the smell is gone. The washed sediment is drained on paper, sun-dried, powdered, pasted with human breast milk and sun-dried again nine times over. What comes out is a white salt. The 陽 method reaches the same end by firing instead — calcining the concentrated residue in a luted crucible until it runs clear and sets glassy white. Both are evaporation and recrystallisation of the inorganic salts of urine; the product is largely sodium and potassium chlorides and phosphates with traces of steroid metabolites surviving the process, which makes the 以人補人 intuition less strange than it reads while leaving the claims — years of swelling resolved, a person brought back to life — entirely unsupported. The nine sunnings and the 太陽氣, the qi of the great sun, are alchemical bookkeeping, not chemistry. **The medicine is refined from human urine, and human breast milk is worked into it at every stage. Both are human-derived materials. It is not prepared or used in contemporary practice, and this entry is recorded for textual and historical completeness only.** — Eui Young (Justin) Chung, L.Ac., Dipl. O.M.