Formulas · External Application 外用 · Gangmok (綱目)

Powder to Efface the Pockmarks

Myeolban-san

한글 멸반산 · Pinyin Mie Ban San

滅瘢散

韶粉 has no entry in this corpus, and no guess was needed: the leaf glosses it itself, 卽鉛粉, and 鉛粉 is an alias of 胡粉, so the drug is entered as hobun. The gloss sits inside the transcription's ≪≫ and is therefore printed as a sochu span rather than in parentheses, following 卽輕粉也 and 卽貫衆也 in the corpus; parentheses are kept for the bare preparation words, as in the 搽牙散 leaf below. This resolution by the leaf's own interlinear gloss follows the precedent of milmonghwa-san-an, whose 卽桑蠹也 settled 老桑樹內蠹蟲. Note that 鉛粉 and 胡粉 are lead and are a different substance from 膩粉, which the 湯液篇 entry for 輕粉 lists among that drug's own names (一名汞粉, 一名水銀粉, 亦名膩粉) and which is therefore mercury. Both metals are in this one leaf and they must not be confused with each other. 二分半 is read 2 fun 5 ri, 1 g on the project table.

Composition 構成

Hobun Hu Fen
胡粉 호분 · White Lead (toxic)

40 g
Chief 君

韶粉, 1 nyang, which the leaf glosses 卽鉛粉, that is lead powder
Gyeongbun Qing Fen
輕粉 경분 · Calomel (toxic)

1 g
Deputy 臣

2 fun 5 ri
Jeoji Zhu Zhi
猪脂 저지 · Lard

—
Envoy 使

煉猪油, rendered lard, as the vehicle

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

Ground fine, mixed into rendered lard and spread on the pockmarks three times a day
Given where the crusts have fallen but the marks are still dark and the flesh stands hollow or raised

Indications 主治

Pattern-based

痘痂雖落, 其瘢猶黯, 肉起而或凹或凸 — the crusts fallen but the marks still dusky, the flesh risen and either hollowed or heaped

Biomedical correlates

Post-variolous scarring and post-inflammatory hyperpigmentation of the face (historical)
Atrophic and hypertrophic scarring after a pustular eruption

Source text 原文

Donguibogam 東醫寶鑑

韶粉一兩<span class='sochu'>卽鉛粉</span>, 輕粉二分半. 右硏細, 煉猪油調和, 塗瘢上, 日三次. 《綱目》

Translation

Shaofen 1 nyang — that is lead powder — and calomel 2 fun 5 ri. Grind the above fine, mix it into rendered lard, and spread it on the scars three times a day. — Gangmok 綱目 (Donguibogam · Soa)

Clinical commentary 臨床

A lead salve. One nyang of lead powder and a bare two and a half fun of calomel, ground together into rendered lard and rubbed on a child's face three times a day until the marks go. The lead is forty parts to the mercury's one: it is not a trace, it is the body of the preparation. The indication is cosmetic, and the section is honest about that — the crusts have come off, the child has survived, and what is left is a dusky pitted face. Pockmarks are dermal scars: the virus destroyed the sebaceous glands and the dermis under each lesion, and the pit was made weeks before anything was spread on it. Nothing applied to the surface lifted them then, and nothing applied to the surface lifts them now; the modern options for scarring of this kind are laser resurfacing and dermabrasion, and they are partial. The leaf's one plausible effect is on the darkening rather than the pitting, since lead and mercury compounds were used as skin whiteners for exactly that reason — and that is the mechanism by which they poisoned people. **This leaf puts lead and mercury on an infant's face together. 韶粉, which the leaf itself glosses as 鉛粉, is basic lead carbonate — white lead. Lead is absorbed through skin, far more so from a fatty vehicle and far more so from skin that has just shed its crusts and is not yet whole; there is no safe level of lead exposure in a child, and the neurodevelopmental injury it causes does not reverse. The second drug, 輕粉, is calomel, mercurous chloride; the mercury account is written out in full at jinsa-go-soa and is not repeated here, except to say that it applies to a mercury salt rubbed into broken facial skin three times a day. The dose is a nyang of metal salt in a jar of lard with no measure of how much goes on at an application, and the patient is a small child being treated for the appearance of scars. This must not be prepared.** — Eui Young (Justin) Chung, L.Ac., Dipl. O.M.