Bupleurum Clear the Liver Decoction for Temple Abscess

A Bupleurum formula read onto an abscess. The territory named — ear, nape, chest, breast, ribs — is the course of the liver, gallbladder and triple burner channels down the side of the body, and the chapter's claim is that a swelling anywhere along that line belongs to the same fire. Bupleurum at 2 don leads, gardenia and scutellaria drain it downward, green tangerine peel and cnidium move the stuck qi and blood, and forsythia with platycodon is the chapter's standard pair for a suppurating swelling. 鬢疽 is the specific indication: an abscess at the temple, in the hair above the ear. It is a bad place for one, which is why it has its own name — the tissue planes there run toward the orbit and the skull base, and the tradition treated it as grave for reasons that still hold. 怒火, anger-fire, is the aetiology given. That part is a reading of the patient rather than of the lesion, and it is what the Bupleurum is answering. **A spreading facial, temporal or peri-orbital infection needs antibiotics and urgent assessment; infections in this region can track intracranially.** — Eui Young (Justin) Chung, L.Ac., Dipl. O.M.