Formulas · Clear Heat 淸熱 · Uihak Gangmok (醫學綱目)

State Elder Paste

Gungno-go

한글 국로고 · Pinyin Guo Lao Gao

國老膏

The transcription writes 癕 for 癰, 温 for 溫 and 踈 for 疏; the standard forms are printed. The 絹 silk strainer and the 銀石器, a silver or stoneware vessel, are apparatus and are named in the preparation rather than as ingredients.

Composition 構成

Gamcho Gan Cao
甘草 감초 · Licorice

1280 g
Chief 君

大甘草, the large grade, 2 geun, pounded broken, steeped a night in river water, wrung out for its juice and the fibres discarded; reduced to a paste and divided into six doses

Total 1280 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

Reduces the swelling and drives out the toxin of an abscess so that it does not strike inward
Leads malignant toxin out and away
Taken in six doses, stirred into warm wine or plain hot water

Indications 主治

Pattern-based

Abscess and deep-rooted abscess (癰疽) with the toxin liable to strike inward
Abscess from drug toxin or from taxation — neither internal nor external in cause

Biomedical correlates

Skin and soft-tissue abscess
Drug or heavy-metal eruption with suppuration — historical reading

Source text 原文

Donguibogam 東醫寶鑑

治癰疽, 能消腫逐毒, 使不內攻. 大甘草二斤, 槌碎, 河水浸一宿, 揉令漿汁濃盡, 去筋滓, 用絹濾過, 以銀石器慢火熬成膏. 分六次, 溫酒或白湯調下. 能疏導惡毒. 《綱目》

Translation

Treats abscess and deep-rooted abscess; it is able to reduce the swelling and drive out the toxin, so that the toxin does not strike inward. Large licorice 2 geun, pounded broken, steeped a night in river water, then kneaded and wrung until the thick juice is all out, the fibres and dregs discarded, strained through silk, and reduced to a paste over a slow fire in a silver or stoneware vessel. Divide into six doses, stirred into warm wine or plain hot water. It is able to lead malignant toxin out and away. — Gangmok 綱目 (Donguibogam · Ongjeo)

Clinical commentary 臨床

Licorice and nothing else, two geun of it, reduced over a slow fire into a paste that keeps. 國老, the state elder, is an old byname for licorice — the drug that reconciles all the others, as an elder statesman reconciles a court — and the name is history rather than a claim about what the paste does. Its place in the chapter is precise. The 五發證 passage sorts abscesses by cause, and for the causes it calls neither internal nor external — 藥毒 and 房勞, drug toxin and sexual taxation — it names this paste and 槐花酒. Licorice is the Donguibogam's standing antidote drug, the same reasoning that puts it in 甘豆湯 for mineral-drug poisoning, which the same passage prescribes a few lines later for an abscess hard as stone from 金石藥毒. So this is a sores formula built out of the antidote tradition rather than out of the heat-clearing one, and 使不內攻 — keeping the toxin from striking inward — is what it is for. Glycyrrhizin in this quantity is not harmless: sustained high-dose licorice causes potassium loss, sodium and water retention and hypertension, and it is a problem in anyone on diuretics or with heart or kidney disease. Two geun reduced to a paste and taken in six doses is a high-dose licorice course. — Eui Young (Justin) Chung, L.Ac., Dipl. O.M.