Formulas · Purge Downward 瀉下 · Jikji (直指)

Avalokitesvara Pill

Gwaneum-won

한글 관음원 · Pinyin Guan Yin Yuan

觀音元

Composition 構成

Padu Ba Dou
巴豆 파두 · Croton Seed

—
Chief 君

10 kernels, husked · toxic
Banha Ban Xia
半夏 반하 · Pinellia

—
Deputy 臣

10 pieces, raw · toxic
Omae Wu Mei
烏梅 오매 · Mume Plum

—
Assistant 佐

10 fruits, flesh only
Jeonghyang Ding Xiang
丁香 정향 · Clove

—
Assistant 佐

10 mother cloves (母丁香)

Total g per packet (첩) · representative dosage — verify against source texts. Excludes 4 ingredients 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

Breaks the paroxysm by force
Drives out accumulated evil from the centre

Indications 主治

Pattern-based

Miasmic malaria (瘴瘧) contracted in southern mists
Malaria answering no ordinary medicine

Biomedical correlates

Malaria
Relapsing febrile illness with periodic chills and fever

Source text 原文

Donguibogam 東醫寶鑑

治瘴瘧. 半夏(生)ㆍ烏梅肉ㆍ母丁香ㆍ巴豆肉各十枚, 曬. 右爲末, 薑汁糊和丸麻子大, 每五丸, 臨臥冷水下. 有人於海角遇白衣人授之, 因名焉. 《直指》

Translation

Treats miasmic malaria. Raw pinellia, mume plum flesh, mother clove and croton kernel, 10 pieces each, sun-dried. Powder the above and bind with a ginger-juice paste into pills the size of hemp seeds; take 5 pills with cold water at bedtime. A man met a figure in white robes at a headland by the sea who gave him this, and the name comes from that. — Jikji 直指 (Donguibogam · Haehak)

Clinical commentary 臨床

Four drugs, ten pieces of each, and the croton is the whole of it. Croton kernel is one of the most violent purgatives in the materia medica, and five hemp-seed pills taken at bedtime with cold water is a dose calculated to empty the patient out overnight. The raw pinellia and the mother clove hold the stomach against it; the mume plum is the only thing in the formula that is not attacking something. The name is an etiology, not a pharmacology — a figure in white at a headland by the sea is Avalokitesvara, and the leaf keeps the story because the formula's claim rests on where it came from rather than on how it is built. The Bogam prints the story straight and leaves the reader to make of it what they will, which is its habit with received prescriptions it cannot account for. **Contains croton kernel and raw pinellia, both toxic; croton is a drastic purgative and a severe mucosal irritant. This must not be prepared or taken.** It is recorded for textual completeness only. Malaria requires modern antimalarial treatment. — Eui Young (Justin) Chung, L.Ac., Dipl. O.M.