Five Sages Decoction

Five drugs and a name that counts them, all of it in wine. Gleditsia spine leads at a nyang — the chapter's standing drug for piercing a swelling and letting it open — with honeysuckle flower for toxin, rhubarb to drain the toxin downward through the bowel, licorice to reconcile, and one whole ripened trichosanthes fruit for the pus. Two seung of wine reduced to eight-tenths is a strong vehicle and is what makes it reach the surface. It is the only plain decoction in the 疔疽 group, and the chapter uses it as the follower to the attacking pills rather than as an alternative to them: the unnamed 一方 a few leaves earlier ends by sending the patient on to this formula once the sore has turned to yellow water, and the 疔疽治法 passage lists it among the drugs for general use in 疔. Read beside 返魂丹 or 蟾酥丸 it shows what the chapter thought a safe formula looked like — no minerals, no venom, four plant drugs and a fruit. Honeysuckle flower is the drug this whole chapter leans on most, and the 4.2 passage on dry mouth says of it that long-standing dryness will certainly breed an abscess and that honeysuckle tea taken constantly is best. Gleditsia spine and trichosanthes have real pus-related uses in the tradition, and rhubarb in a sores formula is a purgative rather than a topical. **Rhubarb at 5 don is a cathartic dose and two seung of wine is a large amount of alcohol; neither is appropriate in a septic patient.** A clove sore that is coming to a head is drained surgically and covered with antibiotics. — Eui Young (Justin) Chung, L.Ac., Dipl. O.M.