Six Spirits Powder

Sagunja-tang with the licorice cut back and hyacinth bean and Chinese yam added — the gentlest kind of spleen-warming powder, taken 1 don at a time with ginger and jujube. Of the six formulas this chapter gives for night crying, it is the only one that is simply food-like, and the only one a modern reader can look at without alarm. The condition it is given for is the problem. Crying at night in an otherwise well, growing baby is infantile colic: it begins in the first weeks, peaks at about six weeks, is worst in the evening, and resolves by three or four months whatever is done. No treatment has ever been shown to work reliably — not simethicone, not elimination diets, not probiotics beyond a marginal and contested effect. That is exactly the shape of a condition that collects remedies, and this chapter has collected six. This one at least cannot hurt. A don of poria, bean, ginseng, atractylodes, yam and licorice in a ginger-and-jujube decoction is a weak, warm, sweet drink, and the honest reading is that the baby would have stopped crying at three months either way. The warning that belongs on this section belongs to its neighbours: four of the other five night-crying formulas contain cinnabar. — Eui Young (Justin) Chung, L.Ac., Dipl. O.M.