Wondrous Powder

The three yellows at full strength — coptis, scutellaria and phellodendron — with honeysuckle and forsythia over them, oyster shell and rhubarb leading at 3 don to soften the node and drain it, and then the surgical drugs: pangolin scale and momordica seed to pierce what is hard and closed, and beeswax to hold and protect a broken surface. It is the most forceful of the groin formulas and the one meant for the lesion that has already ulcerated. The leaf glosses its own second indication, which is unusual and useful: 便毒潰破者卽魚口瘡也 — the fish-mouth sore is simply the groin toxin after it has burst. The name describes the opening it leaves, gaping and everted. In modern terms that is an inguinal bubo which has suppurated through the skin and left a discharging sinus, and these sections of the chapter sit directly beside the venereal material without ever naming it: the section's own aetiology allows that a groin node may follow 疳瘡, a sore on the genitals. An ulcerating bubo in that setting is the picture of lymphogranuloma venereum or chancroid, and it may equally be ordinary bacterial adenitis that has pointed and burst. **Contains pangolin scale, from a CITES-protected animal; it is illegal to trade and must be omitted. Momordica seed is toxic. Contains rhubarb and must not be used in pregnancy. A discharging groin sinus needs examination, culture and antibiotics, and where it follows a genital ulcer it needs testing for sexually transmitted infection, for the patient and for their partners.** — Eui Young (Justin) Chung, L.Ac., Dipl. O.M.