Selfheal Powder for Scrofula

Two drugs and three ways of taking them. Six parts powdered selfheal to one of licorice, 2 don in clear tea; or a nyang of the selfheal by itself, decocted, and a depleted patient should take plenty; or the powder alongside Sipjeondaebo-tang with cyperus, polygala and fritillaria stirred into it. The chapter names it in three separate places, under 有寒熱, under 通治 and in the 丹心 passage about clearing Liver fire, which makes it one of the most heavily used formulas in the section. The claim 有補養厥陰血脉之功 — that selfheal nourishes the Blood vessels of the Jueyin — is carried over from the 本事方 leaf, where it is argued from the black of the eye being continuous with the eye's connecting vessel and belonging to the Jueyin channel. Here it is doing different work: it is the justification for giving a cooling, node-dispersing drug to a patient the chapter knows to be depleted. 瘰癧 is tuberculous lymphadenitis. Selfheal, Prunella vulgaris, is the single drug most associated with scrofula in East Asian practice, and it is a mild anti-inflammatory with no activity against Mycobacterium tuberculosis. The chills and fever the leaf claims to withdraw are the constitutional symptoms of tuberculous disease, and nothing here touches their cause. The formula itself is benign — selfheal and licorice — though licorice taken continuously at this dose raises blood pressure and drops potassium, and a tuberculous node needs antituberculous therapy and a tissue diagnosis. — Eui Young (Justin) Chung, L.Ac., Dipl. O.M.