The Instillation Method for a Screen on the Eye

Jeom-beop

한글 점법 · Pinyin Dian Fa

點法

A 法 and not a prescription, and it takes the house form for one: 點法 is jeom-beop, by the rule that 法 is -beop as 方 is -bang. No formula or method of this name stood in the database and the folded name collides with nothing. It is registered because the transcription stands it up as its own leaf with its own head line, and every leaf head requires an entry. 鱔魚 resolves to the herb id seoneo. The second ○ clause carries the same source label as the first and both are printed.

Composition 構成

Seoneo Shan Yu
鱔魚 선어 · Swamp Eel

—
Chief 君

生鱔魚, a live rice-field eel hung head-downward and pricked below the throat; the blood that runs is what is used

Total 0 g per packet (첩) · representative dosage — verify against source texts. Excludes 1 ingredient measured by count or used as a vehicle, shown as —.

Received this formula from your practitioner? Amounts shown here are classical reference values — granule and prepared products differ. Always follow your prescribed dosage and directions.

Actions 效能

Treats a screen and membrane after the pox by dropping blood onto the screen itself
A live eel is hung head-downward and pricked below the throat, and the blood is dropped on the screen
Held to be the one exception to the rule that medicine should not be instilled into the eye after the pox

Indications 主治

Pattern-based

A screen and membrane after the pox (痘後瞖膜)
Instilling medicine is said to be inadvisable, yet this alone is best (痘後瞖雖云不宜點藥, 惟此最妙)

Biomedical correlates

Corneal opacity following smallpox

Source text 原文

Donguibogam 東醫寶鑑

治痘後瞖膜. 生鱔魚倒懸, 刺項下取血, 點瞖上, 最妙. 《直指》 ○痘後瞖雖云不宜點藥, 惟此最妙. 《直指》

Translation

Treats a screen and membrane after the pox. Hang a live eel head-downward, prick it below the throat, take the blood and drop it on the screen. Most effective. ○ Although it is said that medicine should not be instilled into the eye for a screen after the pox, this alone is best. — Jikji 直指 (Donguibogam · Soa)

Clinical commentary 臨床

Hang a live eel upside down, prick it under the throat, catch the blood and drop it on the clouded cornea. It is the only one of the thirteen leaves that is actually put into the eye, and the leaf knows that it is breaking the section's own rule: two lines above the formulas the section says 不宜點藥, medicine should not be instilled, and 點藥攻逼反以為害, instilling attacks and presses and does harm instead — and this leaf answers 雖云不宜點藥, 惟此最妙, although it is said to be inadvisable, this alone is best. Whoever wrote the rule and whoever wrote the exception were arguing, in the text, about the most dangerous thing in the section. The rule was right. **Raw animal blood dropped onto the cornea of a child whose cornea is already ulcerated or scarred is the single most dangerous act in this section. This must not be done.** The surface of an eye recovering from smallpox keratitis is broken epithelium, and freshwater eel blood carries Aeromonas and Vibrio species, mycobacteria and whatever else was on the fish and the hands; what follows an inoculation like that is bacterial keratitis, corneal ulceration, perforation and loss of the eye, and in a malnourished child it can go on to endophthalmitis and orbital infection. Eel serum is also haemolytic and directly toxic to tissue, which is why eel blood was used as a laboratory toxin. The eye this was dropped into was an eye that still had some sight left to lose. What this section is treating, and what could and could not be done about it, is set out under Milmonghwa-san. The honest summary of 1.87.1 is that eleven of its thirteen leaves were harmless and useless, one blew lead and mercury into a child's ear, and this one put raw blood on a damaged cornea — and that the best medicine in the section is the sentence in the prose that told the physician not to do the last of those. — Eui Young (Justin) Chung, L.Ac., Dipl. O.M.