Honeysuckle Flower Powder

Geumeunhwa-san

한글 금은화산 · Pinyin Jin Yin Hua San

金銀花散

治同上 points back to the preceding leaf, Hwanggiyugil-tang, whose indication is 癰疽煩渴, an abscess with vexing thirst; that indication is carried into the patterns above. The leaf's source label is a bare 《衛生》, which is neither the 《寶鑑》 this corpus romanises Wigye Bogam (衛生寶鑑) nor the 《衛生篇》 it romanises Wisaengpyeon; the label is printed as it reads and romanised Wisaeng. 麄 is printed as the transcription has it.

Composition 構成

Geumeunhwa Jin Yin Hua
金銀花 금은화 · Honeysuckle

160 g
Chief 君

四兩
Gamcho Gan Cao
甘草 감초 · Licorice

40 g
Envoy 使

一兩, stir-fried (炒)

Total 200 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

Answers the vexing thirst of an abscess with honeysuckle flower alone, licorice to temper it
Decocted in half wine and half water so the whole reaches the surface

Indications 主治

Pattern-based

Abscess with vexing thirst (癰疽煩渴)
Heat toxin with a dry mouth in a suppurative sore
The thirst that goes before an abscess

Biomedical correlates

Skin and soft-tissue infection with fever and thirst — adjunctive only
Diabetes with suppurative infection — historical framing

Source text 原文

Donguibogam 東醫寶鑑

治同上. 金銀花四兩, 甘草(炒) 一兩. 右麄末, 分三貼, 水酒相半煎服. 《衛生》

Translation

Treats the same as the above. Honeysuckle flower, 4 nyang; licorice (stir-fried), 1 nyang. Grind them coarsely, divide into three packets, and decoct in half water and half wine, and take. — Wisaeng 衛生 (Donguibogam · Ongjeo)

Clinical commentary 臨床

Two medicinals against the same thirst that Hwanggiyugil-tang answers, and the two leaves make a pair the chapter sets up deliberately: one takes the qi side with six nyang of astragalus, this one takes the heat side with four nyang of honeysuckle flower. Licorice stir-fried is there to keep so much cold from the stomach, and the half-wine decoction drives the whole to the surface, which is the chapter's standing device for a sore. Honeysuckle is the drug this chapter trusts most, and it is the one that has held up. Lonicera japonica flower carries chlorogenic acid and luteolin and shows real antibacterial and anti-inflammatory activity in vitro, which is more than can be said for most of the section. It is still not a treatment for an abscess — that needs drainage, and in a diabetic foot it needs it urgently — but of the chapter's hundred-odd formulas this is among the few whose chief drug a modern pharmacologist would recognise as doing something. — Eui Young (Justin) Chung, L.Ac., Dipl. O.M.