Formulas · Clear Heat 淸熱 · Uihak Immun (醫學入門)

Chinese Chive Bulb Decoction for Dysentery after the Pox

Haebaek-tang

한글 해백탕 · Pinyin Xie Bai Tang

薤白湯

A formula of this name is already registered from the Cold Damage chapter, haebaek-tang, and the two are homonyms although they are plainly of one lineage. That one is from the 活人書 and reads 豆豉半合(綿裹), 薤白一握, 梔子七枚, boiled in 二升半 of water with the three drugs entered in turn at stated reductions — gardenia boiled ten times first, then the chive bulb, then the silk-wrapped soybean — for 傷寒下利如爛肉汁ㆍ赤帶下ㆍ伏氣腹痛. This leaf is from the 入門, gives 薤白半盞 against a handful, 豆豉一盞 against half a hop wrapped in silk, and 山梔子十枚去皮 against seven unhusked, states no water volume, and has a single undivided cooking — boil until the chive bulb is soft and strain. The drug triad is the same; every quantity, the measure units, the preparation and the source label differ, and the indication is dysentery after smallpox rather than cold damage. On the project's rule that a genuine difference in composition makes a homonym, this one takes the chapter tail; the kinship is recorded here rather than by merging the two. The 山 of 山梔子 is a part-name the herb table already carries for chija.

Composition 構成

Haebaek Xie Bai
薤白 해백 · Chinese Chive Bulb

—
Chief 君

切半盞 — half a jan, cut
Damdusi Dan Dou Chi
淡豆豉 담두시 · Prepared Soybean

—
Deputy 臣

一盞 — one jan
Chija Zhi Zi
梔子 치자 · Gardenia

—
Assistant 佐

山梔子十枚, 去皮 — ten fruits, husked

Total g per packet (첩) · representative dosage — verify against source texts. Excludes 3 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

Taken warm for the yellow, red and bloody purulent stool that follows the pox
The chive bulb boiled in water until soft, the dregs strained off

Indications 主治

Pattern-based

痘後下痢黃赤膿血 — yellow, red, purulent and bloody diarrhoea after the pox

Biomedical correlates

Bacillary dysentery or other invasive bacterial colitis in a child convalescing from smallpox

Source text 原文

Donguibogam 東醫寶鑑

薤白(切) 半盞, 豆豉一盞, 山梔子十枚(去皮). 右水煮薤白爛, 去滓溫服. 《入門》

Translation

Chinese chive bulb, cut, half a jan; fermented soybean, one jan; gardenia fruit, ten, husked. Boil the above in water until the chive bulb is soft, strain off the dregs and take it warm. — Immun 入門 (Donguibogam · Soa)

Clinical commentary 臨床

Three drugs — chive bulb, fermented soybean and gardenia — boiled together until the bulb is soft. It is the Cold Damage chapter's chive-bulb decoction brought over into paediatrics with the measures loosened and the staged cooking dropped. What it treats is real and was a common way for a child to die after smallpox. Yellow, red, purulent and bloody stool is invasive bacterial colitis, dysentery in the proper sense — Shigella above all, and in a child already wasted by two weeks of fever and skin loss. The section is right to make 痘後痢疾 a section of its own; convalescent diarrhoea killed children who had survived the pox itself. The drugs do not treat it. What treats it is oral rehydration, and that is the single intervention that would have saved most of these children — a salt and sugar solution by mouth, costing almost nothing, which did not exist as a formalized therapy until the 1960s and 1970s. Dysentery with blood also needs an antibiotic. A warm decoction of chive bulb and soybean does deliver fluid and a little salt, which is more than nothing, and that is the most that can be said for it. — Eui Young (Justin) Chung, L.Ac., Dipl. O.M.