Formulas · Release the Exterior 解表 · Dansim (丹心)

Loofah Decoction

Sagwa-tang

한글 사과탕 · Pinyin Si Gua Tang

絲瓜湯

絲瓜 is entered under 乾絲瓜, the headword this corpus uses for the drug. 爲 is printed as the corpus prints it. The half spoon is a measure of the powder and carries no weight; no weight is given for any ingredient in the leaf.

Composition 構成

Geonsagwa Gan Si Gua
乾絲瓜 건사과 · Dried Loofah

—
Chief 君

絲瓜連皮子, the whole gourd with skin and seeds, burnt with its nature preserved (燒存性) and powdered, no weight given
Jacho Zi Cao
紫草 자초 · Purple Gromwell Root

—
Assistant 佐

紫草茸, the downy young shoot, in the alternative vehicle, a decoction, no weight given
Sadang Sha Tang
砂糖 사당 · Granulated Sugar

—
Envoy 使

砂糖, sugar in warm water as the vehicle, about half a spoon of the powder taken down in it
Gamcho Gan Cao
甘草 감초 · Licorice

—
Envoy 使

in the alternative vehicle, a decoction, no weight given

Total 0 g per packet (첩) · representative dosage — verify against source texts. Excludes 4 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

Brings out the pox and rash, and is best at it
The whole loofah with skin and seeds burnt with its nature preserved and powdered
Taken down in sugared warm water, about half a spoon, or stirred into a decoction of arnebia shoot and licorice

Indications 主治

Pattern-based

The pox and rash not yet out

Biomedical correlates

Smallpox, eruptive stage

Source text 原文

Donguibogam 東醫寶鑑

發痘疹最妙. 取絲瓜連皮子, 燒存性爲末, 砂糖溫水調下半匙許. 或以紫草茸ㆍ甘草煎湯調服尤妙. 今人水煎服亦得. 《丹心》

Translation

For bringing out the pox and rash it is the most wonderful thing. Take a loofah with its skin and seeds, burn it with its nature preserved and powder it; take down about half a spoon in sugared warm water. Or stir it into a decoction of the downy shoot of arnebia and licorice, which is better still. People nowadays also decoct it in water and take it, and that answers too. — Dansim 丹心 (Donguibogam · Soa)

Clinical commentary 臨床

A loofah gourd, skin and seeds and all, charred until black but not to white ash — that is what 燒存性 means, burnt with its nature preserved — then ground and taken half a spoon at a time in warm sugar water. The alternative vehicle is a decoction of arnebia shoot and licorice, and a third option, noted as current practice, is simply to decoct the gourd itself. **What is actually being given is carbon.** Charring a vegetable to black powder destroys essentially everything in it that could have an action and leaves a porous carbon skeleton with mineral residue. Activated charcoal is a real adsorbent and is still used for some acute poisonings; a hand-charred loofah is not that, and in any case there was nothing in the gut to adsorb. Against a viral exanthem it is inert. 最妙 — the most wonderful thing — is the strongest claim in this section, made for the emptiest preparation in it. That said, this is also the least harmful leaf in the fifteen, and the vehicle is the interesting part. Half a spoon of charcoal in sugared warm water, repeated, is a child being given sweetened fluid by mouth — and fluid by mouth is the one intervention that genuinely moved outcomes in severe smallpox, where a confluent eruption, fever and diarrhoea together could kill a child by dehydration alone. It is nowhere near oral rehydration solution, which needs sodium in fixed proportion with the glucose to work, and the quantities here are tiny. But the direction is right, which is more than can be said for most of the section. On smallpox having no treatment at all, see sodok-eum-soa. **The patient is a child with smallpox, and the leaf gives no weight for any ingredient and no dose scaled to the child's age or weight.** — Eui Young (Justin) Chung, L.Ac., Dipl. O.M.