Sage Recovery Decoction

四物湯 with the 白芍藥 dropped and 人參 and 黃芪 put in — the 補氣血 base of the whole 托裏 group, and Dongwon's own formula. Both rehmannias are used together, the prepared one to fill the blood and the raw one to cool what prolonged suppuration has heated, and 川芎 at a full two don keeps the supplementing moving rather than cloying. The indication is the late picture, not the acute one: an abscess that has been draining for a long time, 膿水出多, with 心煩少睡 — vexation and broken sleep. The chapter reads those two symptoms as the cost of what has gone out with the pus, and gives the formula to the patient the discharge has worn down rather than to the swelling itself. Read now, this is supportive care for the systemic toll of a long-suppurating wound, and the observation is sound: chronic discharge leaves a patient anaemic, hypoproteinaemic and sleepless, and a wound will not close over while that is true. It is not a treatment for the infection. Source control, drainage and antibiotics are, and the nutritional support that this formula gestures at is given now as protein and iron. — Eui Young (Justin) Chung, L.Ac., Dipl. O.M.