Cinnabar Sinking Preparation

The preparation is the whole point of the leaf. Oil is dropped on a cup of fresh-drawn water so that it spreads into a film, the powder is scooped onto the film, and the dose is whatever sinks through it; the water is then poured off and the sunken medicine given in warm water instead. It is a crude separation — the heavy mineral falls and the lighter material stays above — dressed as a statement about the direction of the illness. Vomiting is qi going the wrong way, so the medicine is made to be seen going downward. The text says as much: 墜其邪氣, sink the evil qi, so that the foul matter goes down of itself. The same floated-oil trick is used again in 馬脾風散 and in the chapter's 奪命散. Agastache, clove and talc are an unremarkable antiemetic and damp-draining trio, and if the formula consisted of those three it would be harmless. **It contains cinnabar at 2 don, which is mercuric sulfide, and the patient is a baby in its first month of life. This must not be prepared or given.** The full statement on mercury in this chapter is on 辰砂膏; what the preparation adds here is that the step which sinks the powder sinks the heaviest thing in it first, so the dose the child actually swallows is enriched in the mineral. The text gives **no dose by weight anywhere** — 5 fun scooped onto an oil film is a measure of powder, not of a patient. The illness beneath it is acute gastroenteritis and the treatment is fluid. The full statement on oral rehydration is on 玉露散, the first leaf of this section. — Eui Young (Justin) Chung, L.Ac., Dipl. O.M.