Musk and Snail Paste

Live snail flesh pounded to a mash, with musk worked in, spread over a newborn's navel and changed when it dries. It is the last of the eleven leaves of this section, and the wettest: the whole preparation is water and raw animal tissue. The section above it describes 臍風, navel wind — neonatal tetanus entering through the cut umbilical stump — and the chapter's chain from the cord to the locked jaw is correct. Modern practice is dry cord care: nothing applied at all, with chlorhexidine only where the infection risk is high, and maternal tetanus toxoid in pregnancy as the real preventive. A wet paste of pounded snail on a cord stump raises exactly the risk the section is trying to treat. The fuller statement of this is on the first leaf of the section. **The snail is raw, unsterile animal tissue laid on an open umbilical wound, which is a route for tetanus and for bacterial sepsis in a newborn rather than a dressing. It also contains musk, taken from a CITES Appendix I deer; musk has no useful pharmacological action, and the demand this tradition created is why the musk deer are endangered. The patient is a newborn and the text gives no dose by weight anywhere. This must not be prepared.** — Eui Young (Justin) Chung, L.Ac., Dipl. O.M.