Formulas · Tonify Yin 補陰 · Uihak Jeongjeon (醫學正傳)

Oil Drink

Yu-eumja

한글 유음자 · Pinyin You Yin Zi

油飮子

Composition 構成

Cheongyu Qing You
淸油 청유 · Clear Sesame Oil

—
Chief 君

眞麻油, genuine sesame oil, 1 seung

Total g per packet (첩) · representative dosage — verify against source texts. Excludes 1 ingredient 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

Drunk over successive days by a well child while pox is about, to stop it erupting
Moistens where yang is abundant and there is no yin to restrain it

Indications 主治

Pattern-based

Yang abundant with no yin to check it (陽盛無隂以制)
Hair standing upright and appetite falling off, taken as a sign of latent heat (伏熱之兆)
Pox in the neighbourhood (鄕隣有痘證)

Biomedical correlates

Smallpox — attempted prophylaxis, historical

Source text 原文

Donguibogam 東醫寶鑑

小兒陽盛無陰以制, 令頭髮竪直, 飮食減少, 此伏熱之兆. 鄕隣有痘證, 取眞麻油一升, 逐日飮之令盡, 則永不出痘. 《正傳》

Translation

In a child, yang is abundant and there is no yin to restrain it, so that the hair of the head stands upright and food and drink fall off; this is the sign of latent heat. Where there is pox in the neighbourhood, take 1 seung of genuine sesame oil and drink it day after day until it is finished, and the pox will never come out. — Jeongjeon 正傳 (Donguibogam · Soa)

Clinical commentary 臨床

One drug and one instruction: a seung of sesame oil, drunk off over successive days by a child who is not ill. The reasoning is internal to the system — hair standing on end and a falling appetite are read as heat banked up under the surface, and oil is the bland moistening thing that yin lacks. The claim at the end, that the pox will then never come out, is false; see samdu-eum for what actually ended smallpox. **A seung of oil is roughly 1.8 litres, and it is being drunk by a child over a few days. A fat load of that size is not absorbed: it passes, and it carries water and salt with it. The predictable result is steatorrhoea, and in a small child diarrhoea of that kind is itself dangerous.** The text gives no dose by the child's weight or age here; it gives a total volume and tells the family to finish it. That is the one leaf in 1.61 where the prophylaxis could have made a well child ill. — Eui Young (Justin) Chung, L.Ac., Dipl. O.M.