Walling Application

The method is what the name says. The paste is not put on the swelling but laid in a closed ring round it — 隨四圍匝如墻壁, running right round the circumference like a wall. 白芨 and the roasted 五倍子 are the astringents that make the ring tight and binding, 南星 and 草烏 the two drugs the external chapters reach for in a hard painful swelling, and 黃栢 the cold one. 可移險處於不險處 is the claim, and it is about location rather than cure: it can shift a dangerous place to a place not dangerous. A 癰 on the nape or over the spine was far more feared than the same swelling on a limb, so an application that could stop one widening into dangerous ground was worth having, and the ring is a reasonable physical expression of the wish. Walling a spreading infection is an impulse we still have, and the modern form of it is the ink line drawn round the edge of an erythema to see whether it is advancing by morning. The paste cannot in fact confine anything; a cellulitis spreads in the tissue plane beneath, not across the skin. **Contains 南星, which is toxic raw and must be properly processed, and 草烏, a wild aconite that is toxic. This must not be prepared.** Aconitine is absorbed through skin and is cardiotoxic, and the paste is to be left in contact with the skin around a hot, tense, inflamed area where absorption is increased. Spreading cellulitis needs systemic antibiotics and a pen. — Eui Young (Justin) Chung, L.Ac., Dipl. O.M.