Licorice and Black Bean Decoction

Two foods in equal weight, and the plainest formula in the book. The Resolving Toxins chapter makes it the first of all antidotes — 甘豆湯爲解毒第一 — and the 醫鑑's rule a few leaves earlier says the same thing in general terms: 大法甘草菉豆能解百毒, licorice and bean resolve the hundred toxins. 獨勝散 is the licorice half alone and 國老飮 pairs the root with alum, so this decoction is the centre of the chapter's whole pharmacology of antidotes. 溫冷任意服之 — warm or cool as the patient likes — is unusual and worth noticing, since the Bogam is normally strict about the temperature at which a decoction is taken. Here the point is to get fluid in, and the two optional additions are both cooling: 竹葉, bamboo leaf, for vexation and thirst, and 薺苨, adenophora, which the materia medica treats as an antidote drug in its own right. Neither licorice nor black soybean is an antidote. What the decoction is, honestly read, is warm sweet fluid for someone frightened, hot and thirsty, and that is harmless and probably of some comfort — but a poisoning is an emergency and this is not treatment for one. Taken in quantity over time licorice causes potassium loss and raised blood pressure. — Eui Young (Justin) Chung, L.Ac., Dipl. O.M.