Toxin-Washing Powder

Seven drugs at three don each plus three stalks of scallion white, boiled and used as a warm bath. Cnidium fruit leads it — the standing drug for an itching, weeping sore anywhere on the body and the one ingredient that turns up in nearly every wash in the 疥癬 and 陰蝕瘡 sections. Lycium root bark and Japanese thistle cool, schizonepeta and saposhnikovia are the wind pair, ephedra opens the surface, and calcined alum is the astringent that dries the ulcer after the water has carried the discharge away. The chapter places this second in its three-step local routine for 陰蝕瘡, after the licorice soak and before the salve, and widens the indication to 諸般惡瘡 — any bad sore. That generalisation is honest about what the formula is: a general-purpose antiseptic-astringent bath rather than anything specific to the genitals. Calcined alum has a real astringent and mildly antibacterial action, which is more than can be said for most of the chapter's topicals. Irrigating and then drying an ulcer is the correct local principle and the chapter states it plainly at the head of this section — 常須藥湯淋洗, 以去膿汁惡水. **A genital ulcer still needs serological and swab testing and systemic treatment; alum washes do not treat the cause. Keep the liquor only warm, never hot, on broken skin.** — Eui Young (Justin) Chung, L.Ac., Dipl. O.M.