Kiln Earth Salve

Old kiln and stove earth at five don, with phellodendron, red halloysite and red lead at the same weight and a don each of calomel, frankincense and myrrh, worked to a paste with sesame oil, spread on oiled paper and bound over the ulcer. The appended 丹心 note explains the design drug by drug, which is unusual and worth having: the stove earth dries and cools, phellodendron disperses the fire, the resins move the stagnant Blood. Fired earth and red halloysite are both, in effect, absorbent clays, and an absorbent clay dressing on a weeping ulcer is a real and old idea. The instruction to leave it alone through the itching until a scab forms, 縱痒不可忍, 直待結痂去之, is good dressing discipline — not disturbing a healing ulcer is most of the battle — and the itching it anticipates is the surrounding venous eczema that goes with these ulcers. Against that, the materials. **Earth from a kiln or stove floor applied to an open ulcer is a tetanus and clostridial risk and introduces soil organisms into a chronic wound; it is the one ingredient here that could kill. The salve also contains red lead and calomel, lead and mercury salts that are absorbed through ulcerated skin and accumulate over the months such an ulcer takes. This must not be prepared.** The chapter's own advice at the head of the section is the part to keep: 須翹足端坐, 勿多行履 — sit with the leg up and do not walk about. Elevation and compression heal venous ulcers; the dressing only keeps them clean. — Eui Young (Justin) Chung, L.Ac., Dipl. O.M.