Regulate the Origin Powder

What stands out here is the scale. Every weight in the formula is in 分, not 錢, and the whole packet comes to about 9.5 g of dry drug before the ginger and jujube — roughly a tenth of what an adult packet in this book weighs, and a rare instance in this chapter of the dose being adjusted downward for the patient rather than left unstated. Nothing in it is toxic: it is essentially 八物湯 with yam leading, both porias, honey-roasted astragalus and a single 分 of acorus, a mild and food-like tonic of the kind that could be given to a small child for months without harm. **The text still gives no dose by weight for the child, only for the packet.** The indication the 回春 passage above this leaf attaches to it is the broadest in the section — 行遲, 齒遲, 解顱, 五軟, 鶴膝, 睛白多愁, all 因稟受腎氣不足, all from Kidney Qi received short at birth. That list is the strongest evidence in the chapter that the author was looking at one disease and grouping it correctly by observation while having no name for it. Late walking, late teeth, the unclosed skull, the floppy limbs and the knobbed knees are the presentation of **rickets**, vitamin D deficiency, and the full statement is at 三神散 in 解顱. The single acorus 分 is the one drug here aimed at the mind rather than the body, and it points at the other half of the picture: a child who is slow to walk is often slow to speak, and that needs a cause found rather than a tonic. The treatable one is deafness — see 菖蒲丸. — Eui Young (Justin) Chung, L.Ac., Dipl. O.M.