Sore-Turning Toad Venom Stick

The third of the four sticks, and the most heavily loaded. Where 回瘡錠子 is bound with flour paste and 碧霞錠子 with cooked rice, this one is worked up with fresh toad venom itself, so the binder is also one of the poisons. Arsenic, minium and croton kernel sit at a don each alongside raw arisaema, with seven cantharides and a little pubescent angelica root; coltsfoot flower is the only mild drug in it. The sticks are rolled to the size of a millet grain, small enough to go down a needle track. The procedure is the same as the others and the endpoint is stated plainly: 膿出自差, the pus comes out and the sore mends of itself. That is a fair description of what happens when a closed abscess is opened and drained, and the needling that precedes the stick is doing most of the useful work. **Contains arsenic, which is a carcinogen and a systemic poison absorbed through broken skin; minium, which is lead tetroxide; croton kernel, a violent vesicant; cantharides, a blistering agent and renal toxin; raw arisaema, which is toxic unless properly processed; and toad venom, which contains cardiac-glycoside bufadienolides. This must not be prepared.** This is an arsenical escharotic inserted into an open wound, and the modern form of the same idea — the black salves sold for skin lesions — has produced disfiguring burns, amputations and deaths wherever it has been revived. A furuncle or carbuncle is drained with a blade and covered; what needs removing is removed surgically. — Eui Young (Justin) Chung, L.Ac., Dipl. O.M.