Formulas · External Application 外用 · Boncho (本草)

Raw and Cooked Water

Saengsuk-tang

한글 생숙탕 · Pinyin Sheng Shu Tang

生熟湯

The same water is a separate leaf in the Cholera chapter, where it is drunk rather than bathed in and carries the second name 隂陽湯; the Internal Damage chapter's use is external only. The leaf prints 苽 for 瓜.

Composition 構成

Baekbitang Bai Fei Tang
百沸湯 백비탕 · Much-Boiled Water

—
Chief 君

much-boiled water
Singeupsu Xin Ji Shui
新汲水 신급수 · Newly Drawn Water

—
Chief 君

newly drawn water

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

Soaking the body in it draws off wine and melon
Used for the heavily drunk and for a surfeit of fruit

Indications 主治

Pattern-based

Heavy drunkenness
Excess of melon and fruit

Biomedical correlates

Acute alcohol intoxication — historical external method
Overeating of fruit

Source text 原文

Donguibogam 東醫寶鑑

人大醉, 及食苽果過多, 以生熟湯浸身, 湯皆爲酒及苽味. 卽百沸湯和新汲水也. 《本草》

Translation

When a person is heavily drunk, or has eaten too much melon and fruit, soak the body in Saengsuk-tang, and the water all takes on the taste of the wine and the melon. That is, much-boiled water mixed with newly drawn water. — Boncho 本草 (Donguibogam · Naesang)

Clinical commentary 臨床

Boiled water and fresh-drawn water mixed — two bowls of ordinary water, named for the mixing and not for anything in it. Here it is a bath. The claim is that the bathwater ends up tasting of the wine and the melon, the drunkenness and the surfeit having passed out through the skin, which is the clearest statement anywhere in the chapter of how this tradition imagined the surface drawing off what the inside could not hold. Soaking does not clear alcohol, and a hot bath on a heavily intoxicated patient is dangerous rather than merely useless — the risk is drowning, falls and heat. The entry is kept for the reading, not for the practice. — Eui Young (Justin) Chung, L.Ac., Dipl. O.M.