Boost the Yellow Powder (Dongwon's astragalus version)

Astragalus leading, with ginseng, tangerine peel, licorice both raw and mix-fried, a little poria, white peony and a token two fun of coptis. Dongwon's reasoning is set out at length in the leaf itself and it is the Five Phase argument in its clearest form: liver wood is overwhelming spleen earth, so do not attack the wood first — make the earth solid, then drain. The green stool is read as the colour of the liver showing through. This is a different prescription from the 益黃散 already registered under that name. That one — tangerine peel, green tangerine peel, chebula flesh, mix-fried licorice and clove — is Qian Yi's original, a warming aromatic for a cold spleen with abdominal pain and diarrhoea, and the chapter is careful to distinguish it: this leaf's alternative name is 黃芪益黃散, the astragalus version, and it is Dongwon's reworking. Read against the child in front of them, it is a qi-supplementing decoction given little and often to a depleted infant. Nothing in it is toxic, and that is worth noting in a section where most answers are not. Nothing in it stops a convulsion either, and the real problem is the fluid and electrolyte loss driving the convulsion; see the note on `baekchul-san-soa` for what would actually have helped. The clinical instruction 時時服, take it little and often, is at least the right way to give fluid to a vomiting child. — Eui Young (Justin) Chung, L.Ac., Dipl. O.M.