Cut Off the Gan Powder

A dusting powder of eight drugs for a tract that has been open for years: two astringent roots, two lead compounds, coptis, and a trace each of borneol, musk and calomel. 截, to cut off, is the claim — stopping the 疳 at the sore rather than coaxing it closed — and the instruction allows either use, dusted dry on the surface or packed down into the tract on a plug. The composition is the standard shape of this chapter's external powders. Bletilla and ampelopsis root are genuinely astringent and absorbent and would have taken up discharge. Red lead and litharge are there as drying, crust-forming escharotics, and that is also what makes the formula dangerous. **Contains red lead and litharge, which are lead compounds, and calomel, which is mercurous chloride. All three are absorbed from an open wound surface, and a powder packed into a deep tract is the worst case for absorption: lead and mercury poisoning from wound dressings of exactly this kind is well documented. It also contains musk, a CITES-protected material. This must not be prepared.** The chapter's own doctrine applies to the claim in the name: 苟有宿膿朽骨停蓄其間皆爲之漏, while retained pus or dead bone sits in the tract it stays a fistula, and no powder at the mouth of it cuts anything off. — Eui Young (Justin) Chung, L.Ac., Dipl. O.M.