Peucedanum and Bitter Orange Decoction

Five drugs at 6 fun each, 12 g in a packet, and the whole design points downward: peucedanum and bitter orange descend qi and phlegm from the chest, red poria drains, licorice harmonizes, and rhubarb moves the bowel. It is the short, forceful counterpart to 人參淸膈散, which the section names in the same breath; the clinical reading of 痰喘 as smallpox pneumonia or a secondary bacterial pneumonia is set out on that leaf. **Contains rhubarb, an anthraquinone stimulant laxative, at a fifth of a 12 g packet, given to a child who in this part of the chapter is often already losing fluid to the pox diarrhoea of the preceding section. A purgative in a dehydrated infant with pneumonia points the wrong way: it takes out more water and more potassium from a child who needs both, and hypokalaemia in a child who is working hard to breathe weakens the muscles he is breathing with. The patient is an infant and the leaf gives no dose scaled to age or weight. This must not be prepared.** — Eui Young (Justin) Chung, L.Ac., Dipl. O.M.