Warm the Spleen Elixir for the Drooling Child

Five drugs, and they are 木香半夏丸 with the costus and the aged tangerine peel taken out: pinellia leaven and clove at 5 don, atractylodes, green tangerine peel and dried ginger at 2 don 5 pun, flour-bound into millet-sized pills. The proportions are identical to the other formula's, the dried ginger is the same drug under its other name, and nothing has been added. What separates them is not composition but the section's own allocation: the 入門 pill for the cold drool of a vacuous stomach, this Tangssi one for the cold pattern of the complaint as a whole. It is the simpler and the name says what both are for — 法當溫脾, the method is to warm the spleen. For what the drooling actually is, see 木香半夏丸: in a small child it is normal, driven by rising saliva production and immature swallowing and made worse by teething, and it resolves on its own. It is worth attention only when it lasts well past the preschool years or comes with other signs, when the question becomes neurological control of swallowing rather than an excess of saliva — and when a blocked nose or large tonsils holding the mouth open have been excluded first. **Contains pinellia, which is toxic raw, in a pill for a small child, and the text gives no dose by weight here.** The leaven form 半夏麴 is the processed material, and that processing is what makes the drug usable at all; raw pinellia is a severe oral and pharyngeal irritant and airway swelling in an infant is an emergency. — Eui Young (Justin) Chung, L.Ac., Dipl. O.M.