Frankincense and Musk Mica Paste

Named for its three additions — 乳 frankincense, 麝 musk, 雲母膏 the Mica Paste — this is the 局方 plaster bought or made in bulk and then rebuilt as a pill around four nyang of roasted pangolin scale. Fifteen plasters' worth is a large quantity of a compound that itself ran to dozens of drugs, so the leaf is a recipe for modifying a finished medicine rather than for making one. It is a 膏 by name and a pill in use: 和丸梧子大, 溫酒下三十丸. The 直指 habitually treats 雲母膏 both ways — 幷可外貼內服, it may be laid on outside or taken inside — and the 疳瘻 section lists this among the 通治 formulas, the general treatments, with no claim about which sinus or which stage. **Contains pangolin scale, whose trade is prohibited under CITES Appendix I, and musk, a CITES-protected material. This must not be prepared.** The roasting method is the interesting part and the only part that is reproducible: scale roasted in shell powder until it blisters is being made friable enough to grind. Nothing in it reaches a fistula, which persists while retained pus or dead bone sits at the bottom of the tract. — Eui Young (Justin) Chung, L.Ac., Dipl. O.M.