Formula for a Deep, Wide Abscess Wound

Two methods for the same problem: an abscess that has drained and left a hole too deep and too wide to close over. The first packs the cavity full of ox dung and seals it under paper for three or four days, and the leaf offers its own justification — the mountain ox eats the hundred grasses, so its dung is held to carry their virtue. The second is the one that reads like wound care: decoct 白芷, 大腹皮 and 露蜂房, irrigate the cavity, wipe it dry, dust powdered mulberry leaf into it, and feed the patient up on 十宣散, strong wine and fatty meat. The second half is recognisable practice. A deep wound does need irrigating, drying and packing, and the patient does need feeding; 自然生肌易合 — flesh grows of itself and the wound closes easily — is what happens when a cavity is kept clean and the person has protein to build with. The instruction to eat fatty meat is the chapter's blunt version of nutritional support. **Packing a wound cavity with ox dung is a tetanus and sepsis risk of the first order, and this must not be done.** Animal faeces carry Clostridium tetani and C. perfringens along with the whole gut flora, and a deep anaerobic cavity sealed under paper for three or four days is precisely the condition those organisms require; the method could be expected to kill people, and the same practice is still occasionally met with in traditional wound care and still produces tetanus. A deep post-abscess cavity is packed with sterile material, irrigated at each change, and reviewed medically. — Eui Young (Justin) Chung, L.Ac., Dipl. O.M.