Red Halloysite Powder

Three drugs in equal parts, two of them drying minerals and the third a cool bitter, made into a paste with fresh cold water. It is the first of the five burn powders the chapter lists at 2.15 and the simplest, and as a dressing for a superficial burn it is close to harmless: a cool wet paste eases pain, and halloysite and glauberite absorb exudate without biting. **The chapter's own first aid for a burn is dangerous and must not be followed.** At 2.15 the instruction is 急向火灸, hold it at once to the fire, and 愼勿以冷物搨之, take care not to press anything cold on it. Both are exactly backwards. A burn needs twenty minutes of cool running water, begun as soon as possible and still worth doing within the first three hours: it limits the burn's progression after the heat source is gone, reduces its final depth and relieves pain. Further heat extends the injury. The reasoning behind the error is visible in the text — 使熱毒不出, lest the heat toxin be kept from coming out — and it is the same logic that leads this chapter to read harm as the disease departing. Of everything the burn section offers, the one remedy with modern evidence behind it is the honey in the 單方 at 2.15.1, 湯火傷及熱油傷白蜜塗之. Honey on a burn is antibacterial, osmotically draws fluid from the wound bed, keeps the surface moist and lifts off at a dressing change without tearing new epithelium, and medical-grade honey dressings are in ordinary clinical use. A burn that blisters widely, is deeper than superficial, or involves the face, hands, feet or a joint needs assessment, not a powder. — Eui Young (Justin) Chung, L.Ac., Dipl. O.M.