Ten Thousand Cups Never Drunk Elixir

Pattern-based

• Habitual heavy drinking requiring year-round protection (經年不醉)
• Mid-drinking resolution — taken at half-drunkenness
• The social drinker's maximal armor

Biomedical correlates

• Historical alcohol-tolerance preparations
• Pre- and mid-drinking protective dosing
• Ceremonial-drinking era pharmacy

Donguibogam 東醫寶鑑

白葛根 四兩(鹽水浸一晝夜, 取出曬乾), 白果芽(卽銀杏內靑芽) 一兩(蜜水浸一日, 砂鍋內焙乾), 細芽茶 四兩, 菉豆花 四兩(陰乾), 葛花 一兩(童便浸七日焙), 陳皮 四兩(鹽水浸一日焙), 菊花蘂(未開口菊靑朶頭) 四兩, 豌豆花 五錢, 眞牛黃 一錢, 靑鹽 四兩(盛牛膽內煮一炷香, 同膽皮共用). 右爲細末, 用牛膽和丸梧子大, 飮酒半醉呑一丸, 其酒自解, 再飮時再服, 如此經年不醉. 《種杏》

Translation

White kudzu root 4 nyang (soaked a day and night in salt water, taken out and sun-dried); gingko sprout — the green sprout within the silver apricot — 1 nyang (soaked a day in honey water, baked dry in an earthen pot); fine tea buds 4 nyang; mung bean flower 4 nyang (shade-dried); kudzu flower 1 nyang (soaked seven days in boys' urine and baked); tangerine peel 4 nyang (soaked a day in salt water and baked); chrysanthemum buds — the green unopened heads — 4 nyang; pea flower 5 don; true ox bezoar 1 don; blue rock salt 4 nyang (packed inside an ox gallbladder and cooked the length of one incense stick, used together with the bladder skin). Powder the above finely and bind with ox bile into pills the size of parasol-tree seeds. When drinking reaches half-drunkenness, swallow one pill and the wine resolves of itself; when drinking again, take it again — continued thus, a whole year passes without drunkenness. — Jonghaeng 種杏 (Donguibogam · Naesang)