Formulas · Warm the Interior 溫裏 · Uihak Immun (醫學入門)

Sulphur and Mercury Elixir

Yuhong-dan

한글 유홍단 · Pinyin Liu Gong Dan

硫汞丹

The chapter's prose list at 噎膈反胃治法 gives the name as 硫汞丸; the leaf heads it 硫汞丹, and that is the form printed here.

Composition 構成

Sueun Shui Yin
水銀 수은 · Mercury (toxic)

32 g
Chief 君

mercury · toxic
Yuhwang Liu Huang
硫黃 유황 · Sulphur

8 g
Chief 君

raw, powdered; fused with the mercury over a slow fire
Cho Cu
醋 초 · Vinegar

—
Envoy 使

sprinkled on when the mixture flares

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

Treats stomach reflux with vomiting and counterflow

Indications 主治

Pattern-based

Cold reflux of the stomach with food vomited back

Biomedical correlates

Gastric outlet obstruction — historical treatment

Source text 原文

Donguibogam 東醫寶鑑

治反胃吐逆. 水銀八錢, 生硫黃末二錢, 同入銚內, 慢火化開, 柳枝拌炒; 有焰起, 以醋洒之. 候結成砂子, 再硏爲末, 以粽尖拌丸菉豆大. 生薑橘皮湯下三五十丸. 《入門》

Translation

Treats stomach reflux with vomiting and counterflow. Mercury, 8 don; raw sulphur powder, 2 don. Put them together in a pan and melt them open over a slow fire, stirring with a willow twig; when a flame rises, sprinkle vinegar on it. Wait until it sets into grains, grind it to a powder again, and make pills the size of mung beans with the tip of a rice dumpling. Thirty to fifty pills, taken down with Fresh Ginger and Tangerine Peel Decoction. — Uihak Immun 入門 (Donguibogam · Guto)

Clinical commentary 臨床

**Contains mercury. This must not be prepared.** What the method makes is mercuric sulfide, cinnabar, by grinding mercury with sulphur over heat — and a patient was then given thirty to fifty pills of it. Mercury is a cumulative neurotoxin and nephrotoxin, and the fumes given off during the fusion are themselves dangerous to whoever is stirring the pan. The entry is kept because it shows what the alchemical tradition contributed to the pharmacy and how the Bogam treated it: the formula is printed plainly, with no warning, among a dozen others for the same complaint. Mercurial preparations for intractable vomiting persisted in European medicine just as long, and with the same results. — Eui Young (Justin) Chung, L.Ac., Dipl. O.M.