Formulas · Invigorate Blood 活血祛瘀 · Dansim (丹心)

Frankincense Powder for Heart Pain after the Pox

Yuhyang-san

한글 유향산 (두후잡병) · Pinyin Ru Xiang San

乳香散

A fifth prescription called 乳香散 stands in the corpus and this is it. It is one drug, 2 don of frankincense decocted in a cup of water, from 丹心, for heart pain after the pox; the four already registered share nothing with it but that drug. yuhyang-san-soa is the 湯氏 leaf of 1.47 腹痛腹脹 in this same chapter — frankincense and myrrh, a little of each, stirred into water a lump of costus has been rubbed into, for 盤腸內吊腹痛. yuhyang-san-gu is the 綱目 dusting powder of frankincense, myrrh, alum and verdigris for red mouth sores in 口舌門. yuhyang-san-jeonbak is the 得效 powder of stir-fried white atractylodes, stir-fried Korean angelica, angelica dahurica, cinnamon bark, frankincense, myrrh and licorice in equal parts for a contusion, in 諸傷門 1.4. yuhyang-san-jangsang is the 精要 powder built on calcined pyrite with Korean angelica and fennel for a flogging wound, in 諸傷門 1.10. Since the chapter tail -soa is already held by the 1.47 leaf, and the two cannot be parted by a chapter tail, this one takes its section name, following the 托裏黃芪湯 and 乳香散 precedents in 諸傷門: 痘後雜病 gives -duhu. The leaf carries no 治 line of its own; the indication is in the section prose above it, 痘愈後心痛不可忍, 此餘毒歸心, 急服乳香散.

Composition 構成

Yuhyang Ru Xiang
乳香 유향 · Frankincense

8 g
Chief 君

2 don

Total 8 g per packet (첩) · representative dosage — verify against source texts.

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

Frankincense alone, 2 don, decocted in a cup of water and taken
Given urgently for unbearable heart pain after the pox has healed, which the section reads as the residual toxin going to the Heart

Indications 主治

Pattern-based

痘愈後心痛不可忍 — after the pox has healed, heart pain past bearing
餘毒歸心 — the residual toxin gone to the Heart

Biomedical correlates

Chest pain in a child convalescing from smallpox (historical)
Myocarditis, pericarditis or pleurisy after a severe viral illness — pain

Source text 原文

Donguibogam 東醫寶鑑

乳香二錢, 水一盞, 煎服. 《丹心》

Translation

Frankincense 2 don, water 1 jan; decoct and take. — Dansim 丹心 (Donguibogam · Soa)

Clinical commentary 臨床

One drug and a cup of water, which makes it the plainest of the five formulas of this name. The section has a reason for choosing frankincense: in this system the resin moves Blood and settles pain, and the complaint is pain in the Heart, which is where the leftover poison is thought to have gone once the pox is over. 急服 — take it urgently — is the section's own word, and the section is right that this is an emergency. It is right about the urgency and wrong about everything else. A child who has just been through severe smallpox and develops chest pain past bearing has a differential, and the items on it are the things that killed children in convalescence: myocarditis and pericarditis after a severe viral illness, pleurisy from a secondary bacterial pneumonia, and empyema. Those are diagnosed by examination, imaging, an electrocardiogram and an echocardiogram, and several of them are treatable. None of them responds to a resin, and the formula's only contribution is delay. **Frankincense is the oleoresin of Boswellia, a weak anti-inflammatory at best, and it is being given here by mouth to an infant. The leaf gives a fixed 2 don with nothing scaled to the child's size. This chapter gives no dose by weight anywhere, and where it does scale a dose it scales it by age, which is not the same thing. The hazard is not the resin; it is that a cup of it is being offered in place of looking at a child with severe chest pain. This must not be prepared.** — Eui Young (Justin) Chung, L.Ac., Dipl. O.M.