Rouge Salve

Yeonji-go

한글 연지고 · Pinyin Yan Zhi Gao

臙脂膏

The transcription writes 臙脂 and the corpus prints 臙 eighteen times against nine for 胭, so 臙 stands; bg.VAR folds the pair, so the choice does not affect the character check. 臙脂 resolves to the herb id yeonji. Two words of the leaf carry weight and neither is glossed: 乾, dried, and 眼眶, the eye socket or orbital rim rather than the globe. The leaf is the shortest in this round and gives no weights at all.

Composition 構成

Yeonji Yan Zhi
臙脂 연지 · Rouge (safflower pigment)

—
Chief 君

乾臙脂, the dried rouge
Bongmil Feng Mi
蜂蜜 봉밀 · Honey

—
Assistant 佐

蜜, honey, as the vehicle

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

Dried rouge worked up with honey and spread on both eye sockets, so that the pox does not get into the eye
Named in the section prose as the external application to go with a decoction taken by mouth

Indications 主治

Pattern-based

痘出太盛, 恐入眼爲害 — the pox coming out too thickly, with the fear that it will get into the eye and do harm

Biomedical correlates

Smallpox with dense periocular lesions — attempted prophylaxis of ocular involvement (historical)

Source text 原文

Donguibogam 東醫寶鑑

乾臙脂, 蜜調, 塗兩眼眶, 則痘不入眼. 《丹心》

Translation

Dried rouge, worked up with honey and spread on both eye sockets; then the pox does not get into the eye. — Dansim 丹心 (Donguibogam · Soa)

Clinical commentary 臨床

Two things, one of them honey. Dried rouge — the cosmetic red cake, a safflower-derived pigment — is slackened with honey and put on the orbital rim of both eyes. It is the external half of the section prose's second prescription, where a decoction is drunk and this is laid on outside. The choice of rouge is not arbitrary within the system: 臙脂 is made from safflower, and safflower is in the 黃栢膏 of the leaf above as well. But the practical reasoning is barrier reasoning again, and it fails for the same reason: the eye lesions of smallpox arrived through the blood, not across the lid. Nothing smeared on the orbital rim altered whether the cornea ulcerated. **A pigment cake and honey put on the orbital rim will run onto the eye. Rouge of this period was not a standardised material and what went into a given cake cannot be known from the name. Honey is not sterile, and neither is the pigment; material of this kind on a cornea that smallpox has already inflamed is how microbial keratitis starts, and keratitis is what blinded these children. The patient is an infant. This must not be prepared.** — Eui Young (Justin) Chung, L.Ac., Dipl. O.M.