Formulas · External Application 外用 · Uihak Gangmok (醫學綱目)

Silk Cocoon Powder

Myeongyeon-san

한글 면견산 · Pinyin Mian Jian San

綿繭散

The transcription prints 蠒 for 繭 at the leaf head and in the body; 蠒 is on the project's variant-glyph table and the corpus prints 繭, so the name is registered 綿繭散. The same correction is already recorded at the 蠶繭散 entry of the Sores chapter. 綿繭 resolves to jamgyeon by the alias the herb table already carries for it; the herb entry's own head form is 蠶繭. 塡 is kept as transcribed, the corpus printing 塡滿 three times against none for 填滿. The leaf gives no 治 clause; the indication stands in the section prose beside that of 雄黃散, which the prose names in the same breath. No formula of this name stood in the database.

Composition 構成

Jamgyeon Can Jian
蠶繭 잠견 · Silkworm Cocoon

—
Chief 君

綿繭一箇 — one cocoon, and it must be one the moth has left and is empty (須用出蛾空者)
Baekban Bai Fan
白礬 백반 · Alum

—
Deputy 臣

生白礬末 — raw alum powdered, packed into the cocoon and burnt out over charcoal

Total g per packet (첩) · representative dosage — verify against source texts. Excludes 2 ingredients 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

Dusted dry onto a lanced pox abscess that has become an eroding sore
One empty cocoon packed with raw alum and burnt over charcoal until the alum has run out, then ground fine

Indications 主治

Pattern-based

痘癰鍼後成疳蝕瘡 — a pox abscess that has been needled and become an eroding sore
膿水不止 — pus and serum that will not stop

Biomedical correlates

Chronic infected ulcer after incision of a smallpox abscess

Source text 原文

Donguibogam 東醫寶鑑

綿繭一箇(須用出蛾空者), 以生白礬末塡滿其中, 炭火燒令礬汁盡, 取出硏細, 乾糝之. 《綱目》

Translation

One silk cocoon — it must be one the moth has come out of and left empty. Pack it full of raw powdered alum, burn it over a charcoal fire until the alum has all run out, take it out, grind it fine and dust it on dry. — Gangmok 綱目 (Donguibogam · Soa)

Clinical commentary 臨床

A single preparation rather than a formula: one spent silkworm cocoon is packed with raw alum, burnt over charcoal until the alum has melted and run out, and what is left is ground and dusted on the sore. The specification that the cocoon must be one the moth has already emerged from and left hollow is practical — a cocoon with the pupa still in it would not take the alum, and would burn differently. Calcined alum is astringent and mildly antiseptic, and the cocoon contributes burnt sericin and fibroin, which is to say carbonized protein. On a weeping ulcer the alum would dry the surface and tighten the tissue, and that is a visible effect; it is not the same as clearing the infection. The sore this is for is the same one 雄黃散 is for, a lanced pox abscess that has gone on eroding, and the section prose is explicit that untreated it destroys sinew and bone. **This is an unsterilized ash dusted into an open wound in a child. The burning would have killed most organisms in the cocoon itself, but the powder was ground and stored and handled, and tetanus spores survive calcination poorly but handling well; a deep eroding wound is exactly the anaerobic site in which Clostridium tetani germinates.** No quantity is given beyond the one cocoon. — Eui Young (Justin) Chung, L.Ac., Dipl. O.M.