Formulas · Supplement 補益 · Seui Deukhyobang (世醫得效方)

Yang-Refined Autumn Mineral Elixir

Yangnyeonchuseok-dan

한글 양련추석단 · Pinyin Yang Lian Qiu Shi Dan

陽煉秋石丹

This is the method 虛勞門 points at. Its entry there gives the indications, the alternative names 元陽秋石丹 and 還元丹 and the dosage of thirty pills in warm wine, and refers the preparation away with the interlinear note 製法詳見雜方; the referent is a section of this chapter, 5.3.41 陽煉秋石法, not a formula leaf, and it is printed here as the source text, closing that composition-less cross-reference. 更准丁淋 is printed as transcribed; 准丁 makes no sense in context and the sense required is "filter it again in the same way", so this looks like a transcription or block-cutting error for 准前 or the like. A collation note 用 : 同(First Edition) stands at the foot of the page and bears on 煉用 or 用磁缸 in the last lines of this section. A second note, 紛 : 粉(First Edition), sits in this section but annotates 色如紛白 in the preceding 陰煉秋石法, where that character actually occurs. 隂 is printed 陰, 清 as 淸 and 浄 as 淨 by the usual normalisations.

Composition 構成

Dongbyeon Tong Bian
童便 동변 · Child's Urine

—
Chief 君

人尿, human urine, gathered in quantity — the whole substance of the medicine; the leaf prefers the urine of unmarried boys and girls of thirteen to sixteen, kept in glazed jars until one or two seok have accumulated, but allows the urine of any healthy person · human-derived material
Jogak Zao Jiao
皂角 조각 · Gleditsia Pod

—
Envoy 使

皂角汁少許, a little soap-bean juice, stirred in at the start to kill the foulness

Total g per packet (첩) · representative dosage — verify against source texts. Excludes 2 ingredients measured by count or used as a vehicle, shown as —.

Received this formula from your practitioner? Amounts shown here are classical reference values — granule and prepared products differ. Always follow your prescribed dosage and directions.

Actions 效能

Treats vacuity taxation and cold diseases of every kind
Treats long-standing kidney vacuity and taxation damage
Taken long, fortifies the yang and raises what has wilted
Thirty pills at a time, on an empty stomach, swallowed down with warm wine

Indications 主治

Pattern-based

Long-standing kidney vacuity with cold
Yang wilting from taxation damage
諸般冷疾ㆍ久年虛損 — cold diseases of every kind and years of depletion

Biomedical correlates

Chronic debility with cold intolerance — historical treatment

Source text 原文

Donguibogam 東醫寶鑑

人尿多聚置盆中, 入皂角汁少許以殺其穢, 攪百餘遭, 直候小便澄淸, 白濁皆碇, 辟去淸水, 只取濁脚. 又入水攪百餘匝, 更澄淸去水取濁, 更以布濾去滓, 取濃汁入淨鍋內熬乾, 刮下擣篩, 再入鍋以淸水煮令化, 乃於箕筲內布厚紙兩重, 傾汁于其上, 淋過去水, 再入鍋熬乾, 又用湯煮化, 布紙淋汁. 如色未潔白, 更准丁淋, 候色如霜雪卽止. 因入固濟砂盒內, 歇口火煆成汁, 傾出候瑩白玉色卽止. 細硏入砂盒內固濟, 頂火四兩養七晝夜, 久養火尤善. 謂之陽煉秋石, 治諸般冷疾ㆍ久年虛損, 服之皆愈. ○煉秋石謂之取龍虎水法. 龍屬木, 虎屬金, 卽童男童女之稱. 擇年方十三四ㆍ十五六, 無疾病未破陰陽者, 各置淨室, 精潔飮食, 用磁缸收貯小便, 積至一二石煉用, 但功力甚大. 故只取無病人小便, 積多亦可煉用. 《入門》

Translation

Gather human urine in quantity and set it in a basin; put in a little soap-bean juice to kill the foulness, stir it a hundred rounds and more, and wait until the urine has settled clear and all the white turbidity has sunk. Pour the clear water off and take only the turbid bottom. Stir water into it again a hundred turns and more, let it settle clear again, pour the water off and keep the turbid part; strain it through cloth to remove the dregs, and put the thick liquor into a clean pan and boil it dry. Scrape it down, pound and sieve it, put it back in the pan with clear water and boil it until it dissolves; then lay two thicknesses of thick paper in a basket-sieve, pour the liquor onto it and let it filter through, boil the filtrate dry in the pan again, dissolve it once more in hot water and filter it through paper again. If the colour is not yet clean white, filter it again in the same way, and stop when the colour is like frost or snow. Then put it in a luted sand-box, calcine it with the mouth left open until it runs to a liquid, pour it out, and stop when it is a lustrous white jade colour. Grind it fine, put it back in the sand-box and lute it, nourish it under a four-nyang top fire seven days and nights — the longer the nourishing fire the better. This is called yang-refined autumn mineral; it treats cold diseases of every kind and years of depletion, and taken it cures them all. ○ Refining autumn mineral is called the method of taking the dragon-and-tiger water. The dragon belongs to wood and the tiger to metal: these are names for the virgin boy and the virgin girl. Choose those aged thirteen or fourteen, fifteen or sixteen, free of illness and with the yin and yang not yet broken; house each of them in a clean room on pure and clean food, and collect their urine in glazed jars until one or two seok have accumulated, and refine that — its potency is very great indeed. Failing that, take only the urine of healthy people; if much is accumulated, that too can be refined. — Immun 入門 (Donguibogam · Japbang)

Clinical commentary 臨床

秋石, autumn mineral, is a salt crystallised from human urine, and the two refinings — yang by fire and yin by water — were held to yield different medicines from the same source. The claim made for it here is the strongest in the chapter: 洞入骨髓, it penetrates to the marrow. The chapter names three preparations of it, this one, Eumryeon-chuseok-dan and Chuseok-ojeong-hwan, and groups them with the kidney and life-gate vacuities. The method, now recovered, is a careful recrystallisation. Urine is collected, deodorised with soap-bean juice, settled and decanted twice, strained, boiled to dryness, redissolved, paper-filtered, boiled down and filtered again — and that cycle is repeated until the salt comes out frost-white. Only then is it fired: calcined in a luted sand-box until it melts and runs, poured out while it is a glassy white, reground and held under a slow top fire for seven days and nights. That firing is the whole difference between this and the 陰 method, which stops at settling, washing and sun-drying. The product is in both cases largely the inorganic salts of urine — sodium and potassium chlorides, phosphates, some urate — with traces of steroid metabolites; the firing drives off more of the organic fraction than the washing does, which is as much chemistry as the yang-and-yin distinction amounts to. The reputation it had for restoring sexual function has no support. The 龍虎水 passage is worth reading for what it tells about the practice rather than the drug: virgin boys and girls of thirteen to sixteen were to be kept in clean rooms on clean food so that their urine could be collected by the hundredweight. The chapter then concedes, in one sentence, that any healthy person's urine will serve. **The medicine is refined from human urine, a human-derived material, and the method as written involves collecting it from children. It is not prepared or used in contemporary practice, and this entry is recorded for textual and historical completeness only.** — Eui Young (Justin) Chung, L.Ac., Dipl. O.M.