Formulas · External Application 外用 · Uihak Jeongjeon (醫學正傳)

Certain Victory Salve

Pilseung-go

한글 필승고 · Pinyin Bi Sheng Gao

必勝膏

The leaf gives no 治 clause; the indication stands in the section prose of 1.87.2, 痘後癰毒腫痛, 宜消毒飮方見上ㆍ必勝膏. All three materials are in equal part with no weight given, so they are entered with prep and no grams, following corpus practice for 各等分. The Sores chapter's 馬齒膏 is a related purslane salve from the 入門, purslane juice boiled down with yellow beeswax, and is a different formula. No formula of this name stood in the database.

Composition 構成

Machihyeon Ma Chi Xian
馬齒莧 마치현 · Purslane

—
Chief 君

擣取汁 — pounded and the juice taken; in equal part
Jeoji Zhu Zhi
猪脂 저지 · Lard

—
Deputy 臣

in equal part
Bongmil Feng Mi
蜂蜜 봉밀 · Honey

—
Deputy 臣

白蜜, white honey; in equal part

Total g per packet (첩) · representative dosage — verify against source texts. Excludes 3 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

Smeared on the hot swollen abscesses that follow the pox
Purslane juice, lard and white honey in equal parts, boiled down together to a salve

Indications 主治

Pattern-based

痘後癰毒腫痛 — abscess toxin after the pox, swollen and painful

Biomedical correlates

Secondary bacterial abscess and cellulitis following smallpox

Source text 原文

Donguibogam 東醫寶鑑

馬齒莧(擣取汁)ㆍ猪脂ㆍ白蜜. 右等分, 合和熬膏, 塗之. 《正傳》

Translation

Purslane, pounded and the juice taken; lard; white honey. Take the above in equal parts, mix them together, boil them down to a salve and smear it on. — Jeongjeon 正傳 (Donguibogam · Soa)

Clinical commentary 臨床

Three things in equal part, boiled down to an ointment: purslane juice, lard and white honey. It is the gentlest preparation in this section and the only one with nothing poisonous in it. Honey is the ingredient that does something. Medical-grade honey is used in modern wound care, has genuine antibacterial activity from hydrogen peroxide generation, high osmolarity and low pH, and there is reasonable evidence for it in burns and in some chronic wounds; the honey available in 1613 was not sterile and could carry Clostridium botulinum spores, which is why honey is still not given by mouth to infants under twelve months, but laid on skin that is the lesser worry. Lard is an occlusive base and purslane juice is mucilaginous and cooling. Taken together this is a soothing emollient dressing, which on a painful swollen area is not nothing. What it is not is a treatment for an abscess. A collection of pus has to be drained; no ointment reaches it, and a deep abscess under intact skin will go on enlarging under the best dressing in the world. The formula is honest about its scope — it is listed for 腫痛, swelling and pain, alongside a decoction given internally — and the honest reading is that it would have eased the surface while the infection underneath took its own course. — Eui Young (Justin) Chung, L.Ac., Dipl. O.M.