Musk and Calomel Powder

Four drugs, and the name says which two matter: musk and calomel. Alum at a full nyang is the bulk of the powder and does the astringing and drying; frankincense is the resin that this chapter uses to bring flesh over an ulcer; the calomel is the antisyphilitic and the musk the penetrant that is supposed to drive it in. 每取少許, only a little at a time, is a real restraint and probably reflects experience of what happens when more is used. The indication runs wider than the section it sits in — 諸惡瘡, malign sores of any kind, not only the 天疱瘡 of the syphilis section — which is how a mercury dusting powder came to be used on chronic ulcers that had nothing to do with the pox. **Contains calomel, mercurous chloride, a quarter of the powder by weight, applied to broken skin. Mercury is absorbed through an ulcer and the resulting poisoning — salivation, tremor, renal injury — is the complication the chapter itself describes at 2.2. The musk is from a CITES-protected animal. This must not be prepared or applied.** — Eui Young (Justin) Chung, L.Ac., Dipl. O.M.