Immortal's Leftover Grain Pill

A geun of smilax against five don of everything else — the formula is smilax with a retinue. Akebia, coix, stephania and white poria drain the damp downward, dictamnus root bark and chaenomeles work on the skin and the sinews, honeysuckle takes out the toxin, and the soap-bean thorn and white mustard seed are the pair the book uses wherever a lump has to be broken open from inside. Tangkuei body supplies the blood. The lumps being treated are the gummata and periosteal nodes of late syphilis, which is why the section keeps returning to the bones and sinews. The dietary prohibition at the end — nothing raw or cold, no chicken, pork, fish or fried food — is the standard list for a toxic sore and tells you the eruption was understood to be fed by what the patient ate. **防己 is sourced as Sinomenium acutum (청풍등) in Korea and as Stephania tetrandra (분방기) in China; neither contains aristolochic acid. The danger is substitution: 광방기 (Aristolochia fangchi) and 한중방기 (A. heterophylla) are Aristolochiaceae, they do contain aristolochic acid, and they have caused end-stage renal failure and urothelial carcinoma — the Belgian cases arose precisely because A. fangchi was supplied in place of Stephania. Their use is prohibited in Korea. So the drug must be sourced as Sinomenium with the species verified; it is the adulterant, not the medicinal, that destroys kidneys.** Smilax glabra itself is comparatively benign, and it is the one drug here with a real reputation; it has no effect on Treponema pallidum. — Eui Young (Justin) Chung, L.Ac., Dipl. O.M.