Notopterygium and Chrysanthemum Powder

Twelve drugs in equal parts, and they divide cleanly into three groups: the wind drugs notopterygium and ledebouriella with cicada moulting and snake sloughing — two shed skins, chosen because a shed skin is what you want a cornea to do; the eye set of chrysanthemum, pipewort, horsetail and tribulus; and the heat drugs gardenia, coptis and rhubarb with licorice to close. It is Seonhwa-san of 眼門 rearranged, and the two share eight drugs. What this section is treating, and what could and could not be done about it, is set out under Milmonghwa-san. The indication is this leaf's contribution and it is a precise one: 疼痛羞明, pain and shrinking from the light. Photophobia with pain is not what an old corneal scar does — a scar is quiet. It is what an active corneal ulcer or keratitis does, through reflex spasm of the ciliary muscle, and it means the eye is still inflamed and still losing tissue. So the section was distinguishing the eye that still hurts from the eye that has merely gone cloudy, and reaching for its heaviest powder for the former. That distinction is the one a modern examination still makes first, and it is the difference between an eye that needs treating today and an eye that is already lost. **The patient is a child, and the leaf gives no dose scaled to age or weight — 1 don of powder, whatever the child's size.** Rhubarb and coptis in a twelfth share each are small, but rhubarb is a purgative given to a child who has lost fluid through the eruption, and loss of fluid was among the things that killed these children. Snake sloughing is a dried animal material taken by mouth and carries whatever grew on it. — Eui Young (Justin) Chung, L.Ac., Dipl. O.M.