Formulas · Purge Downward 瀉下 · Haejang (海藏)

Jujube-Transformed Hundred Auspices Pill

Jobyeonbaeksang-hwan

한글 조변백상환 · Pinyin Zao Bian Bai Xiang Wan

棗變百祥丸

紅芽大戟 has no entry of its own in the herb dictionary and is entered against `daegeuk` 大戟 with the sprout name carried in `prep`, as the corpus does in 太乙紫金丹. 如上法服之 refers back to 百祥丸 at the preceding leaf, where the dose is 10 to 20 pills in a sesame decoction. The transcription writes 黑䧟 and 為; printed 黑陷 and 爲 as the corpus prints them, and 盖 is kept. The twenty jujubes are a count and carry no grams.

Composition 構成

Daegeuk Da Ji
大戟 대극 · Peking Spurge (toxic)

40 g
Chief 君

紅芽大戟, the red-sprout kind, 去骨 the woody core removed, 1 nyang; boiled with the jujubes and then discarded · violent purgative, toxic
Daejo Da Zao
大棗 대조 · Jujube

—
Deputy 臣

去核, stoned, twenty of them; the flesh alone is made into the pills

Total 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

Given for the pox gone black and sunken, and for bound stool
Red-sprout spurge root boiled with stoned jujubes until the water is gone; the spurge is then discarded and only the jujube flesh made into pills
Taken by the method of Baeksang-hwan — 10 to 20 pills in a sesame decoction

Indications 主治

Pattern-based

痘黑陷 — the pox gone black and sunken
大便秘結 — the stool bound

Biomedical correlates

Haemorrhagic smallpox with constipation

Source text 原文

Donguibogam 東醫寶鑑

治痘黑陷及大便秘結. 紅芽大戟(去骨) 一兩, 大棗(去核) 二十枚. 右水二盞同煎, 水盡爲度, 去大戟不用, 將棗肉作丸, 如上法服之. 盖大戟性峻, 以棗變者緩其性也. 《海藏》

Translation

Treats the pox gone black and sunken, and bound stool. Red-sprout spurge root, the woody core removed, 1 nyang; large jujubes, stoned, twenty. Decoct the above together in two cups of water, the measure being until the water is gone. Take out the spurge root and do not use it; take the jujube flesh and make it into pills, and give them by the method above. For spurge root is drastic in nature, and transforming it by means of the jujube is a way of slackening that nature. — Haejang 海藏 (Donguibogam · Soa)

Clinical commentary 臨床

This is the leaf the preceding one tells you to use instead, and it says what it changes and why. A nyang of red-sprout spurge root, cored, is boiled with twenty stoned jujubes in two cups of water until the water has gone. **Then the spurge root is thrown away.** Only the jujube flesh, which has cooked in the liquor, is rolled into pills. The closing line states the principle: 盖大戟性峻, 以棗變者緩其性也 — spurge root is drastic in nature, and transforming it by means of the jujube slackens that nature. As a piece of pharmacy this is not naive. The drug the child swallows is whatever the jujube flesh took up from the decoction, which is a smaller and a sweeter thing than the powdered root of 百祥丸; the jujube is itself a mild bulk laxative and a corrigent. It is a deliberate, reasoned dose reduction carried out by someone with no way to measure what he had reduced — and that last point is the limit of it. The quantity of diterpene ester delivered in a jujube pill cannot be known, only that it is less. The indication is the same as before, the pox gone black and sunken, with the stool bound. Nothing here could have altered haemorrhagic smallpox. What the leaf shows is a tradition that had noticed its own drug was hurting children and had worked out a way to give less of it, two leaves running, in print, under the name of the formula it was replacing. **Built on 大戟, spurge root, a violent purgative and a mucosal caustic. The root is discarded before the pills are made, but the jujube flesh carries an unmeasurable part of it, and the patient is an infant. This must not be prepared or given.** — Eui Young (Justin) Chung, L.Ac., Dipl. O.M.