Formulas · Purge Downward 瀉下 · Dansim (丹心)

Ghost Wailing Elixir

Gwigok-dan

한글 귀곡단 · Pinyin Gui Ku Dan

鬼哭丹

The leaf reads 常山一斤 … 檳榔各四兩, which sets a geun of dichroa against a 各四兩 that must cover both drugs; the geun is best read as the bulk taken for the vinegar steeping, of which 4 nyang goes into the powder, and the weights here follow that reading. 晒 and 搗-type glyphs are printed as the transcription has them.

Composition 構成

Sangsan Chang Shan
常山 상산 · Dichroa Root (toxic)

160 g
Chief 君

剉, 醋浸 (five days in spring, three in summer, seven in autumn, ten in winter), 晒乾 — dichroa root, emetic and toxic
Billang Bing Lang
檳榔 빈랑 · Areca Seed

160 g
Deputy 臣
Banha Ban Xia
半夏 반하 · Pinellia

80 g
Deputy 臣

toxic raw — must be properly processed
Paemo Bei Mu
貝母 패모 · Fritillaria

80 g
Assistant 佐
Gyejacheong Ji Zi Qing
雞子淸 계자청 · Egg White

—
Envoy 使

雞子淸, egg white worked into the flour as the binder; no weight given
Baengmyeon Bai Mian
白麪 백면 · White Wheat Flour

—
Envoy 使

麪, wheat flour for the paste; no weight given

Total g per packet (첩) · representative dosage — verify against source texts. Excludes 2 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

Cuts off an intermittent malaria with vinegar-steeped dichroa
Breaks phlegm and drives the water down

Indications 主治

Pattern-based

Intermittent malaria (痎瘧)
Long malaria with phlegm
Malaria to be cut off on the night before the paroxysm

Biomedical correlates

Chronic relapsing malaria — historical therapy
Quartan or tertian fever

Source text 原文

Donguibogam 東醫寶鑑

治痎瘧. 常山一斤(剉, 醋浸, 春五ㆍ夏三ㆍ秋七ㆍ冬十日, 晒乾)ㆍ檳榔各四兩, 半夏ㆍ貝母各二兩. 右爲末, 雞子淸和麪, 入藥末拌勻, 作丸梧子大. 每三十丸, 隔夜臨睡, 冷酒呑下, 次日早再一服. 《丹心》

Translation

Treats intermittent malaria. Dichroa root, 1 geun, cut up and steeped in vinegar — five days in spring, three in summer, seven in autumn, ten in winter — then sun-dried; and areca seed, 4 nyang each; pinellia and fritillaria, 2 nyang each. Powder them; work egg white into wheat flour, mix the powder in evenly, and make pills the size of a firmiana seed. Thirty pills a dose, swallowed down with cold wine on going to bed the night before, and one dose again early the next morning. — Dansim 丹心 (Donguibogam · Haehak)

Clinical commentary 臨床

The name is the chapter's loudest. 鬼哭, the ghost wailing, belongs with 鬼瘧 and with the possession the era heard in a fever that returns on schedule, and the Dansim gives the elixir that makes the ghost cry out. What is actually in it is a dichroa preparation: a whole geun cut up and steeped in vinegar for a span counted by the season, sun-dried, then powdered with areca seed, pinellia and fritillaria and bound with egg white and flour. The dosing is the 截 method in pill form — thirty pills in cold wine at bedtime the night before, thirty again at dawn, so that the drug is in the patient when the paroxysm would have come. The seasonal steeping times are a 法製 rather than a pharmacology, but the vinegar does draw the alkaloids out of dichroa root, and the pills would have been strong. **Contains dichroa root, which is emetic and hepatotoxic, and pinellia, which is toxic raw. This must not be prepared. Malaria requires modern antimalarial treatment.** — Eui Young (Justin) Chung, L.Ac., Dipl. O.M.