Four Skins Drink

Sapi-eum

한글 사피음 · Pinyin Si Pi Yin

四皮飮

No formula of this name stood in the database and the folded name collides with nothing. The four skins the name counts are read from the leaf itself and they are not four kinds of bark: three are bean testas — mung bean, black soybean and adzuki bean, steeped and the skin alone taken — and the fourth is fresh mulberry root bark. 菉豆皮 reaches the id nokdu through the alias table; 黑豆 and 赤小豆 are heukdu and jeoksodu, the skins being entered as a prep rather than as separate ids, no testa having one. The steeping gloss 水浸取皮 is read as governing all three beans and is given in parentheses after the third. 蟬菊散 is linked to the entry registered for it in this batch; it is the drug taken, not a decoction used as a vehicle, so the link is correct. The closing ○ clause carries its own source label 《入門》, which differs from the leaf's 《俗方》, and both are printed.

Composition 構成

Nokdu Lu Dou
菉豆 녹두 · Mung Bean

2 g
Chief 君

菉豆, steeped in water and the skin alone taken; half a don
Heukdu Hei Dou
黑豆 흑두 · Black Soybean

2 g
Chief 君

steeped in water and the skin alone taken; half a don
Jeoksodu Chi Xiao Dou
赤小豆 적소두 · Adzuki Bean

2 g
Chief 君

steeped in water and the skin alone taken; half a don
Sangbaekpi Sang Bai Pi
桑白皮 상백피 · Mulberry Root Bark

4 g
Deputy 臣

新採, freshly gathered, 1 don

Total 10 g per packet (첩) · representative dosage — verify against source texts.

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 a screen bred in the eye after the pox
Cut up and decocted in water, the liquid used to take Seonguk-san down with
Holds that fresh mulberry root bark drains the lung membrane, so that no screen forms and one already there withdraws

Indications 主治

Pattern-based

A screen bred in the eye after the pox (痘後生瞖)

Biomedical correlates

Corneal opacity following smallpox

Source text 原文

Donguibogam 東醫寶鑑

治痘後生瞖. 菉豆ㆍ黑豆ㆍ赤小豆(水浸取皮) 各半錢, 新採桑白皮一錢. 右剉, 煎水, 調下<a href='/formulas/seonguk-san'>蟬菊散</a>, 最妙. 《俗方》 ○生桑白皮能瀉肺膜, 不生瞖便退. 《入門》

Translation

Treats a screen bred in the eye after the pox. Mung bean, black soybean and adzuki bean, steeped in water and the skins alone taken, half a don each; freshly gathered mulberry root bark 1 don. Cut up and decoct in water, and use the liquid to take Seonguk-san down with. Most effective. ○ Fresh mulberry root bark is able to drain the lung membrane, so that no screen forms and one already there withdraws. — Sokbang 俗方 (Donguibogam · Soa)

Clinical commentary 臨床

The only leaf in the section built on a principle rather than on a drug list, and the principle is in the closing clause: fresh mulberry root bark drains the lung membrane, and a membrane on the eye will not form or will withdraw. 肺膜 to 瞖膜, membrane to membrane — the formula is reasoning from the word. Around it, three bean skins, chosen the same way: the skin of a thing to treat a skin on the eye. And the drink is not really the medicine. It is the vehicle, decocted so that Seonguk-san can be taken down with it, which makes this leaf a prescription for how to give another prescription. What this section is treating, and what could and could not be done about it, is set out under Milmonghwa-san. Mulberry root bark is a real drug with a real use — it is the corpus's standing drug for cough and for lung heat, and it is a mild diuretic — and none of that reaches the cornea. The bean skins are food. The one thing the leaf is right about is incidental and it belongs to the folk practice rather than to the theory: a pleasant bean-and-bark decoction is fluid, and a convalescent child with a confluent eruption needed fluid more than anything else in this chapter. **The patient is a child and the leaf gives no dose scaled to age or weight.** Nothing in it is toxic. It is the safest of the thirteen, and the caution that goes with Seonguk-san — which this decoction is made to carry — applies to the honey in that leaf, not to this one. — Eui Young (Justin) Chung, L.Ac., Dipl. O.M.