Inner Expression Redecocted Powder

The name is the method: 復煎, decocted again. Atractylodes lancea at 8 nyang is boiled down in water by itself, the drug is lifted out, and the other thirteen are decocted in that liquor; then the atractylodes dregs are boiled a second time and the dregs of the rest are decocted in them again. It is drunk through the whole day in three or four goes rather than as a single packet, which is unusual in this chapter and makes the prescription a continuous infusion rather than a dose. It belongs to the supporting side of the chapter's central pair. Ginseng, astragalus, white atractylodes and Korean angelica are the 內托 core — supplement the qi and blood so the swelling is pushed up and out and ripens to a head — and this is set against the draining formulas, Naesohwangryeon-tang, Oridaehwang-tang and Cheongeumnuro-tang, which carry the toxin downward in a strong body. The method leaf cites the Hagan for the indication that picks this one out of the group: a sore flaring at the surface whose root is shallow and whose pulse is mostly floating, where the qi is not strong, so it will certainly invade inward unless it is expressed. What the Hagan says the formula does there is 除濕散鬱, eliminate dampness and scatter depression, which is what the enormous dose of atractylodes lancea is for. The honest reading is that this is a long warm drink of a tonic and damp-dispelling decoction given to a run-down patient with an indolent deep abscess. It would do nothing against the infection, and the chapter's own anxiety — that the toxin will reach the viscera — describes sepsis, which needs drainage and antibiotics. — Eui Young (Justin) Chung, L.Ac., Dipl. O.M.