Formulas · Warm the Interior 溫裏 · Gukbang (局方)

Golden Liquid Elixir

Geumaek-dan

한글 금액단 · Pinyin Jin Ye Dan

金液丹

The kaolin and salt clay are luting materials for the vessel and are not listed as ingredients. The water-filled jar beneath the box is a heat sink to hold the temperature down over the seven days.

Composition 構成

Yuhwang Liu Huang
硫黃 유황 · Sulphur

400 g
Chief 君

ground fine and water-levigated · toxic
Jeungbyeong Zheng Bing
蒸餠 증병 · Steamed Leavened Bread

40 g
Envoy 使

steeped in hot water and wrung out, as the binding agent

Total 440 g per packet (첩) · representative dosage — verify against source texts.

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

Warms long-standing cold
Stops protracted vomiting and diarrhoea

Indications 主治

Pattern-based

Long-standing cold and entrenched chill
Vomiting and diarrhoea continuing for days with the body cold and the pulse faint

Biomedical correlates

Protracted gastroenteritis with hypothermia and shock

Source text 原文

Donguibogam 東醫寶鑑

治久寒痼冷, 及吐利日久ㆍ身冷ㆍ脉微. 硫黃十兩, 硏細飛過, 盛磁盒內, 以赤石脂泯縫, 外以鹽泥固濟. 先掘地坑, 埋小罐子盛水令滿, 安盒子在上, 用泥固濟訖, 慢火養七日七夜, 候足, 加頂火一斤煆, 取出放冷, 硏爲細末. 右藥末一兩, 用蒸餠一兩, 湯浸去水脉, 和丸梧子大. 每三十丸, 多至百丸, 溫米飮下, 空心服. 《局方》

Translation

Treats long-standing cold and entrenched chill, and vomiting and diarrhoea continuing for days with the body cold and the pulse faint. Sulphur, 10 nyang, ground fine and water-levigated, packed into a porcelain box, the seam closed with kaolin and the whole luted on the outside with salt clay. First dig a pit in the ground and bury in it a small jar filled with water; set the box on top, lute it with clay, and nurse it over a slow fire for seven days and seven nights. When that is complete, add one geun of fire on top and calcine; take out, let cool and grind to a fine powder. To 1 nyang of this powder add 1 nyang of steamed cake, steeped in hot water and wrung out, and make pills the size of paulownia seeds. Take thirty pills per dose, up to a hundred, washed down with warm rice water, on an empty stomach. — Gukbang 局方 (Donguibogam · Han, lower)

Clinical commentary 臨床

**This must not be prepared.** Seven days and nights of slow fire over a buried jar of water is a water bath — the jar holds the temperature steady below the point at which sulphur would burn off — and the aim is to drive out sulphur's volatile and irritant fraction without losing the substance. That is a real purification, carried out with real understanding of what heat does. But the product is still elemental sulphur taken internally at up to a hundred pills, and sulphur causes hydrogen sulphide toxicity and severe gastrointestinal injury. The pattern — days of vomiting and diarrhoea with the body gone cold and the pulse faint — is a medical emergency, and the answer to it is fluid replacement. — Eui Young (Justin) Chung, L.Ac., Dipl. O.M.