Formulas · External Application 外用 · Boncho (本草)

Coriander Wine, Sprayed Over the Body

Hoyu-ju

한글 호유주 · Pinyin Hu Sui Jiu

胡荽酒

The transcription writes 須㬰; 須臾 is printed above, the corpus majority form. 盖 is left as the transcription prints it. The two seung of wine are a volume and carry no weight. The indication is 治同上 and refers to the preceding leaf, 樺皮飮子, whose indication is 治痘不快出.

Composition 構成

Hoyu Hu Sui
胡荽 호유 · Coriander

80 g
Chief 君

胡荽莖, the stems, sliced, 2 nyang; the seed used if there are no stems
Ju Jiu
酒 주 · Wine

—
Envoy 使

淸酒二升, two seung of clear wine, boiled with the stems and sprayed on the skin · ethanol, absorbed through an infant's skin

Total 80 g per packet (첩) · representative dosage — verify against source texts. Excludes 1 ingredient 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

Treats the same as the above — pox that does not come out freely
Coriander stems boiled in clear wine, the vessel covered so no steam escapes
Strained and, while warm, sprayed over the whole body but not on the head and face, the child then covered warm

Indications 主治

Pattern-based

痘不快出 — the eruption slow or incomplete

Biomedical correlates

Smallpox, eruptive stage

Source text 原文

Donguibogam 東醫寶鑑

治同上. 胡荽莖剉二兩, 以淸酒二升同煎令沸, 便以物盖定, 勿泄氣, 候溫去滓, 噴一身令遍, 勿噴頭面, 以衣溫覆, 須臾痘子快出神效. 無莖則用子. 《本草》

Translation

Treats the same as the above. Coriander stems, sliced, 2 nyang; boil them together with 2 seung of clear wine until it bubbles, then cover the vessel at once so that the steam cannot escape; when it has cooled to warm, strain off the dregs and spray it over the whole body so that it covers everywhere, but do not spray the head and face. Cover the child warm with clothing, and in a moment the pox come out freely; divine effect. If there are no stems, use the seed. — Boncho 本草 (Donguibogam · Soa)

Clinical commentary 臨床

Two nyang of coriander stems boiled in two seung of clear wine, the pot lidded so the vapour is kept in, then strained and sprayed warm over the whole of a child's body, the face excepted, and the child wrapped up. The reasoning is the section's reasoning: warmth and an aromatic spirit opening the skin so that the eruption can come through. 勿噴頭面 — do not spray the head and face — is the one protective instruction in it. **This is the most dangerous leaf in the section, and the danger is the wine. Ethanol is absorbed through the skin, and far more readily through the skin of an infant, which is thinner and has a much larger surface area in proportion to body mass; it is also inhaled from the vapour. Alcohol sponging of a febrile child is specifically contraindicated in modern paediatrics for exactly this reason: it has caused hypoglycaemia, coma, seizures and death in small children, and an infant has almost no capacity to maintain its own blood glucose once alcohol suppresses gluconeogenesis. This leaf applies two seung of wine — on the order of a litre — hot, to the entire skin of a child whose skin is already broken by an eruption, which removes the barrier that would otherwise limit absorption, and then wraps the child to keep it there. The text gives no dose at all, and no dose scaled to the child's age or weight. It must not be done.** The wrapping compounds it: covering a febrile child warm raises core temperature, and 1.69.1 is describing children who are already running high fevers. Coriander itself is a culinary herb and is not the problem. The claim 須臾痘子快出 — in a moment the pox come out freely — is the kind of report that follows from treating something at the moment it was about to happen anyway. The eruption of smallpox came out over one to two days on its own schedule, and any intervention applied during that window appeared to cause it. On smallpox having no treatment at all, see sodok-eum-soa. — Eui Young (Justin) Chung, L.Ac., Dipl. O.M.