Pig's Trotter Wash

Pig trotters boiled soft in three seung of water, the broth skimmed of its fat and settled clear, and seven drugs simmered in half of it — 白芷 and 羌活 to open the surface, 露蜂房 for the sore itself, 黃芩 for the heat, 芍藥 and 當歸 for the blood, raw 甘草 to soothe. The finished liquid is dabbed on warm with an old cloth. The broth is divided before the drugs go in because the other half is kept back for the next washing, which is how the leaf expects it to be used — morning and evening, not once. Nothing here is swallowed. The section it belongs to, 癰疽湯洗法, argues the case for washing directly: when pus and blood have gathered, what the patient depends on is the washing of the wound morning and evening, and a wound left unwashed is eaten into tendon and bone. That is sound, and it is still the first thing done to a suppurating wound. The warm gelatinous broth would have loosened slough and crust without the trauma of scrubbing, which is a real advantage of a bland viscous irrigant over plain water. Two cautions. A trotter broth standing between washings is a growth medium, and warm unsterile fluid poured into an open wound is one of the ways a local infection is seeded or spread; the same job is done now with sterile saline. **Pig trotters are a raw-animal material and carry an infection risk when applied to broken skin.** — Eui Young (Justin) Chung, L.Ac., Dipl. O.M.