Formulas · Purge Downward 瀉下 · Sokbang (俗方)

Oil and Soy Sauce Method

Yujang-beop

한글 유장법 · Pinyin You Jiang Fa

油醬法

A 法 rather than a prescription, and registered under the house form for one: -beop. The transcription stands it up as its own leaf with its own head, so it takes an entry. 香油 reaches the herb dictionary as a registered alias of 淸油. 淸醬 does not: the dictionary's headword is 醬淸, the same two characters in the other order, for the same substance — clear soy sauce. The corpus has already resolved a bare 醬 to jangcheong once, in hajeup-bang, and that id is used here; it is a reversed-order match and not an exact one, and it is flagged as such rather than passed off as a dictionary hit. 一合 is a volume and takes no grams. The small bamboo tube is apparatus and stays in the translation. The leaf's indication is doubled: it carries its own 治大便久不通, and 1.85.17 便秘 names it as well — 痘熱壅盛便閉不通蜜皂丸導之或用油醬法潤之.

Composition 構成

Cheongyu Qing You
淸油 청유 · Clear Sesame Oil

—
Chief 君

香油, fragrant sesame oil, 一合
Jangcheong Jiang Qing
醬淸 장청 · Clear Soy Sauce

—
Deputy 臣

淸醬, clear soy sauce, 一合

Total 0 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

Moistens and opens a stool long unpassed
Sesame oil and clear soy sauce stirred together and run into the rectum through a small bamboo tube
The tube blown into, or the mixture pushed in with something, until it goes gradually in

Indications 主治

Pattern-based

Stool long unpassed (大便久不通)
Pox heat dammed up and heavy, the stool shut and not passing (痘熱壅盛, 便閉不通)

Biomedical correlates

Constipation in a child with smallpox, treated by a retention enema

Source text 原文

Donguibogam 東醫寶鑑

治大便久不通. 香油ㆍ淸醬各一合, 攪令十分和勻. 以小竹筒揷入肛門內, 取油醬灌入竹筒內, 令人吹之, 令漸入, 或以物推入肛內, 卽通. 《俗方》

Translation

Treats a stool long unpassed. Fragrant sesame oil and clear soy sauce, 1 hop each; stir them until they are thoroughly mixed. Insert a small bamboo tube into the anus, pour the oil and soy sauce into the tube, and have someone blow into it so that it goes gradually in; or push it in with something. It passes at once. — Sokbang 俗方 (Donguibogam · Soa)

Clinical commentary 臨床

An enema, described completely and without embarrassment: a hop each of sesame oil and clear soy sauce stirred together, a small bamboo tube put into the anus, the mixture poured into the tube and then blown down it by a second person until it goes in. The 俗方 label marks it as a Korean domestic practice rather than something taken from a Chinese book, and it reads like one — the apparatus is a piece of bamboo and the materials are from the kitchen. As a mechanism it is sound. An oil retention enema softens an impacted stool and lubricates the rectum, and it is still used for exactly that, as are glycerin and arachis-oil enemas. The first half of this preparation is therefore a real treatment for the thing it names. The chapter also has the pairing right: 1.85.17 sends the suppository and the enema to the same patient, 導之 and 潤之, lead it out and moisten it. The second half is where it goes wrong, and it goes wrong badly enough to need saying. **Clear soy sauce is a concentrated salt solution, the patient is a child, and the leaf gives no measure scaled to age or weight — a full hop of it, whatever the child's size.** Sodium is absorbed readily across the rectal mucosa, and the mucosa of a child with smallpox is inflamed and more permeable than usual. A large salt load instilled into the rectum of a small, already dehydrated child produces acute hypernatraemia; that is not a theoretical hazard — fatal hypernatraemia is the recorded mechanism in reported deaths from salt-water enemas, and from soy sauce swallowed in quantity — and the injury is to the brain. The oil alone would have helped this child. The oil with the soy sauce could have killed him, and the more thoroughly the two were stirred together — 攪令十分和勻 — the more certainly the salt went in with the oil. **This must not be prepared.** One further hazard belongs to the apparatus rather than the drug: a bamboo tube pushed into an infant's anus, with the instruction to push the mixture in with something if blowing does not serve, can perforate the rectum. — Eui Young (Justin) Chung, L.Ac., Dipl. O.M.