Make the Yang Firm Elixir

Goyang-dan

한글 고양단 · Pinyin Gu Yang Dan

固陽丹

The yam powder is the binder for the pills and is given no weight in the source; it is listed here because the pill mass is made of it.

Composition 構成

Tosaja Tu Si Zi
菟絲子 토사자 · Cuscuta

80 g
Chief 君
Duchung Du Zhong
杜仲 두충 · Eucommia Bark

40 g
Deputy 臣

蜜灸, honey-roasted and powdered
Sanyak Shan Yao
山藥 산약 · Chinese Yam

—
Envoy 使

山藥末, boiled in wine into a paste to bind the pills

Total 120 g per packet (첩) · representative dosage — verify against source texts. Excludes 1 ingredient 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 lumbar pain with cold knees by warming and firming the kidney yang
Builds the three kidney drugs into a pill

Indications 主治

Pattern-based

Lumbar pain with cold knees
Kidney yang vacuity with a cold lower back

Biomedical correlates

Chronic low back pain with cold intolerance
Degenerative low back pain

Source text 原文

Donguibogam 東醫寶鑑

菟絲子末二兩ㆍ杜沖(蜜灸, 末) 一兩, 山藥末酒煮爲糊作丸, 酒下五七十丸, 名固陽丹. 《本草》

Translation

Powdered cuscuta 2 nyang and eucommia, honey-roasted and powdered, 1 nyang, made into pills with a paste of yam powder boiled in wine; take 50 to 70 pills down with wine. It is called Goyang-dan. — Boncho 本草 (Donguibogam · Yo)

Clinical commentary 臨床

The Lumbus chapter's simples build to this in three steps — cuscuta alone, then cuscuta with achyranthes, then this — and the pill is the end of that line. All three drugs are kidney supplements, and the chapter's organizing claim is doing the prescribing: however the low back pain arrives, the kidney must first be vacuous before anything can settle there. 固陽, making the yang firm, is the name and the aim. — Eui Young (Justin) Chung, L.Ac., Dipl. O.M.