Formulas · Reduce Food Stagnation 消食 · Uihak Immun (醫學入門)

Crucian Carp and Level the Stomach Pill

Pyeongjeuk-hwan

한글 평즉환 · Pinyin Ping Ji Wan

平鯽丸

The powder worked into the baked fish is Pyeongwi-san, given in the Inward Damage chapter; the leaf names it without weights, so it does not appear in the ingredient list here.

Composition 構成

Jeugeo Ji Yu
鯽魚 즉어 · Crucian Carp

—
Chief 君

one large fish, gutted with the scales left on, baked in clay and then boned
Daesan Da Suan
大蒜 대산 · Garlic

—
Deputy 臣

sliced and packed into the fish's belly

Total g per packet (첩) · representative dosage — verify against source texts. Excludes 2 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

Treats diaphragm qi with inability to eat

Indications 主治

Pattern-based

Diaphragm qi blocking the passage of food
Spleen and stomach vacuity with food not going down

Biomedical correlates

Oesophageal obstruction with cachexia — historical treatment

Source text 原文

Donguibogam 東醫寶鑑

治膈氣不食. 大鯽魚一箇(去腸留鱗), 以大蒜切片塡魚腹內, 濕紙包, 黃泥固濟, 慢火煨熟, 去鱗骨, 入平胃散末, 杵丸梧子大. 每三五十丸, 空心米飮呑下. 《入門》

Translation

Treats diaphragm qi with inability to eat. Take one large crucian carp, gut it but leave the scales on, pack sliced garlic into the belly, wrap it in wet paper, seal it with yellow clay, and bake it through over a slow fire; remove the scales and bones, work in powdered Level the Stomach Powder, and pound into pills the size of a paulownia seed. Thirty to fifty pills each time, swallowed on an empty stomach with rice water. — Uihak Immun 入門 (Donguibogam · Guto)

Clinical commentary 臨床

A food more than a formula: a carp baked in clay with garlic, boned, and kneaded with Level the Stomach Powder into pills. The thinking is visible in the choice of carrier — a patient whose gullet is obstructed can swallow almost nothing, and fish flesh with rice water is the most concentrated nourishment that will go down. What the chapter calls 膈氣 with inability to eat is, in the cases it describes, oesophageal obstruction. **A patient who cannot swallow solid food needs endoscopic assessment; the cause is usually structural and often malignant.** — Eui Young (Justin) Chung, L.Ac., Dipl. O.M.