Method for Splinting the Bone

Not a prescription but a dressing, and the name says what it is for: 夾骨, splinting the bone. Four or five small toads, crude mirabilite, an ounce of fresh ginger and a bowl of wine lees, all pounded together and spread over the break, with red 何首烏 added if the limb is swollen. The 骨折筋斷傷 prose above it lists 夾骨法 first among the external measures to use once a shattered bone has been glued and splinted, so this is what goes under the splint. Two of the four would do something to a swollen limb. Mirabilite is a salt, and a wet salt poultice draws fluid osmotically; wine lees and pounded ginger are a cool, acidic, moist mash. That is a cold compress with a rationale, and a cold compress is still the right first move for a closed fracture. The toads are the problem — they are not inert and they are not a poultice ingredient in any modern sense. **Toad skin and parotid secretions contain bufadienolides, which are cardiotoxic and absorbed across broken skin. This must not be prepared or applied.** **Raw animal material and fermented mash laid on an open fracture carry a serious infection risk, tetanus among them.** A fracture is held still by a cast or a splint and cooled through intact skin, never under a poultice of this kind. — Eui Young (Justin) Chung, L.Ac., Dipl. O.M.