Formulas · Text · Donguibogam 東醫寶鑑
The tree chapter: eighty-six headwords and seventy-two of their parts, bark and resin and fruit and gall, opening on cinnamon and its grades and running through pine, locust, goji, elm, poria, amber, jujube, zanthoxylum, phellodendron, mulberry paper, lacquer, acanthopanax, vitex, magnolia bud and mistletoe to the mulberry group, then on through the aromatics — sandalwood, clove, aloeswood, frankincense, dragon's blood — to the oaks, the willow, sumac gall and the bamboo.
The most valuable line in the chapter is a clinical observation about one person. The lacquer entry says 素畏漆者勿服 — those who have always been afraid of lacquer must not take it. That is individual hypersensitivity, written down in 1613, and the book then puts the observation to work: 畏漆者, 入雞子淸和藥內用, for those who react, mix the drug with egg white. It is a bad trade — egg white is another allergen — but it is a response to a patient, not a doctrine. The same entry adds its own antidote, 蟹黃能化漆爲水, crab roe dissolves lacquer. Urushiol is the textbook contact allergen, sensitisation is lifelong, and Korea has a published record of systemic contact dermatitis, toxic hepatitis and anaphylaxis after lacquer-boiled chicken. And here one preparation makes things worse rather than better: 炒令烟出, fry until the smoke rises, puts urushiol into smoke, which is the worst exposure there is — the processing protects the patient's gut and moves the risk to whoever is compounding it.
Cinnamon opens the chapter in five forms and the book itself folds them: 桂心ㆍ菌桂ㆍ牡桂同是 一物, 厚者必嫩, 薄者必老 — one material, graded by thickness and age, with 桂心 given a yield figure, a pound of bark for five ounces of trimmed heart. Only 桂枝 is kept apart, because the book separates it by part, 枝者枝條, 非身幹也, and because the prescriptions use its own name. Amber gets an authenticity test that is a physics experiment: 熟於布上拭摩, 吸得芥者 爲真 — rubbed on cloth, the genuine stone picks up chaff. That is triboelectricity, and the Greek word for amber is where electricity comes from.
Two entries hold a danger the modern literature confirms and one that it reverses. 五加皮 is the seat of a lethal substitution: the market has sold Periploca sepium under this name, an apocynaceous plant carrying the cardiac glycoside periplocin, with arrhythmia and deaths recorded, which is why the Chinese pharmacopoeia separates the two — and the book's own grading rule, 葉五出者佳, protects the person who gathers the plant and cannot protect the person who buys the bark. 桑上寄生 goes the other way: 他木上皆有寄生, 惟桑上者入藥, mistletoe grows on every tree but only the mulberry's enters medicine, which is pharmacologically shrewd, because a hemiparasite concentrates its host's chemistry and mistletoe on a poisonous tree is a poisonous drug. Fixing the host is a safety specification, not a superstition.
Fifteen entries carry a Korean gloss, and the best of them confirms the characters from the other side: 辛夷's 붇곳 is brush-flower, and three passages later the book writes 呼爲木筆, they call it the wood brush — the same metaphor reached independently in both languages. But modern 붓꽃 is Iris, so reading the gloss forward would replace a magnolia bud with an iris; and 五加皮's ᄯᅡᆺ둘훕 fixes the family and not the genus, since today's 땃두릅나무 is Oplopanax. The last of the mulberry's seven leaves, 柘木 — glossed 뫼ᄲᅩᆼ, hill-mulberry — is not a part of the mulberry at all but another tree, and the book says nothing either way; the gloss is what records that it only resembles one.
Two findings are left open because the book leaves them open. 桑根白皮 has no 性味 line at all, goes straight to its indications, carries no toxicity mark anywhere — and then prints 出土者殺人, roots that have come above the soil kill. Three readings of that are possible and none can be chosen from the text. And the chapter's own head reads 木部凢一百五十六種, one hundred and fifty-six kinds, where the entries number one hundred and fifty-eight. One unit is accounted for at 1.85.1, where 紫礦 says 與血竭同條, 而功效全別 — it stands in the same entry as dragon's blood though its effects are entirely different — so what the source counted as one kind is printed here as two. The second is not accounted for, and three candidate explanations were measured and rejected rather than asserted.
1.1 Cinnamon Bark 桂皮
譯 1.1.1 Source원문
性大𤍠, 味甘辛, 有小毒. 主溫中, 通血脉, 利肝肺氣, 治霍亂轉筋, 宣導百藥, 無所畏, 能墮胎.
Translation영역
Its nature is greatly hot, its flavour sweet and acrid, and it has slight toxicity. It governs warming the centre, frees the blood vessels, disinhibits the qi of liver and lung, treats sudden turmoil with cramping sinews, and leads and conducts the hundred medicinals, fearing none of them. It can make a foetus drop.
Clinical note임상 주석
Cinnamomum cassia, the cassia-cinnamon of commerce, and the drug the Bogam's formulary leans on more heavily than almost any other woody medicinal: 322 ingredient rows across the book carry this entry's identifier. The chapter opens on it, and it opens with 唐 — cinnamon is an import, and the single marked import in this part of the chapter.
Two things in this passage are the book's own cautions and must not be read past. 有小毒, slight toxicity, is unusual for a kitchen spice and the compilers wrote it anyway. 能墮胎, it can make a foetus drop, is an abortifacient claim stated flatly and without qualification, and it is the reason cinnamon bark in medicinal quantity is on every modern pregnancy-caution list for this materia medica. Culinary amounts are not what the entry means; 桂皮 in the prescriptions below runs to three don and more.
Modern reading. Cassia bark is pharmacopoeial and in daily use, and nothing here argues against that. The one real safety fact that distinguishes it from Ceylon cinnamon (C. verum) is coumarin: cassia bark carries it at several thousand milligrams per kilogram where Ceylon bark carries almost none, coumarin is hepatotoxic in susceptible people, and the European tolerable daily intake of 0.1 mg per kg body weight is exceeded by a few grams of cassia a day. A patient on a cinnamon preparation for glycaemic control — a common self-medication — can reach that intake, and the species on the label is the thing to check. Cinnamaldehyde is also a frequent cause of allergic contact dermatitis and of contact stomatitis from cinnamon-flavoured products.
宣導百藥無所畏 — it leads the hundred medicinals and fears none of them — is a statement about compatibility rather than action, and it is why cinnamon appears as an envoy or a courier in so many formulas rather than as the chief.
譯 1.1.2 Translation영역
Cinnamon softens when it meets scallion, and scallion juice can be used to boil cinnamon down into a liquid.
譯 1.1.3 Source원문
生南方. 三月四月生花, 全類茱萸. 九月結實. 二月八月十月採皮, 陰乾. 凢使刮去麄皮. 《本草》
Translation영역
It grows in the south. In the third and fourth months it puts out flowers, entirely of the kind of the cornel. In the ninth month it sets fruit. In the second, eighth and tenth months the bark is gathered and dried in the shade. Whenever it is used, the coarse outer bark is scraped away.
Clinical note임상 주석
生南方 is the whole of the identification problem for this drug in Korea: it does not grow here, which is what the 唐 above records. 刮去麄皮, scraping off the coarse outer bark, is the processing step that the next three leaves turn into three separate grades, and it is worth noticing that the instruction appears here at the headword rather than being invented later.
1.1.1 Scraped Cinnamon Heart 桂心
譯 1.1.1.1 Source원문
治九種心痛, 殺三虫, 破血, 止腹內冷痛, 治一切風氣, 補五勞七傷, 通九竅, 利關節, 益精明目, 煖腰膝, 除風痺, 破痃癖癥瘕, 消瘀血, 續筋骨, 生肌肉, 下胞衣.
Translation영역
It treats the nine kinds of heart pain, kills the three worms, breaks blood, checks cold pain inside the abdomen, treats wind qi of every kind, supplements the five taxations and seven damages, frees the nine orifices, disinhibits the joints, boosts the essence and brightens the eyes, warms the lumbus and knees, dispels wind impediment, breaks string-like and lodged accumulations and concretions and conglomerations, disperses static blood, knits sinew and bone, engenders flesh, and brings down the placenta.
譯 1.1.1.2 Source원문
卽是削除皮上甲錯處, 取近裏辛而有味. 桂皮一斤, 只得五兩爲正. 《本草》
Translation영역
This is what you get by paring away the scaly, cracked surface of the bark and taking the part next to the inside, which is acrid and has flavour. From one geun of cinnamon bark only five nyang are obtained, and that is correct.
Clinical note임상 주석
This is the Bogam explaining its own headword, and the explanation settles what 桂心 is. It is not a different plant, a different part or a different species: it is 桂皮 with the scaly outer layer pared off, and the yield is stated — one geun (sixteen nyang) of bark gives five nyang of heart, a little under a third. A grade, not a drug.
That is why this site's materia medica holds 桂心 and 桂皮 as alias names against the single entry 肉桂, and the book's own closing passage at 1.1.4 says the same thing in so many words: 桂心ㆍ菌桂ㆍ牡桂同是一物, they are one and the same substance. The formulary bears it out — 桂心 names the ingredient in 84 prescriptions, 桂皮 in 63, 肉桂 in 122, 官桂 in 26, and every one of them resolves to the same bark.
九種心痛 is the nine heart pains of the Bencao and the Jingui tradition, a category that runs from epigastric pain to what we would now separate out as cardiac ischaemia. 下胞衣, bringing down the placenta, belongs with the headword's 能墮胎 and is the same pharmacology read in the other direction: a retained placenta is a postpartum haemorrhage emergency managed by controlled cord traction, uterotonics and manual removal, not by a decoction.
1.1.2 Thick Cinnamon Bark 肉桂
譯 1.1.2.1 Source원문
能補腎, 宜入治藏及下焦藥. 入手足少陰經. 色紫而厚者佳. 刮去麄皮用. 《入門》
Translation영역
It can supplement the kidney, and belongs in medicines that treat the viscera and the lower burner. It enters the hand and foot lesser-yin channels. The kind purple in colour and thick is the good one. Scrape off the coarse outer bark and use it.
Clinical note임상 주석
肉桂 is the same bark again, selected thick and purple, and the whole of its difference from 桂枝 below is where it is sent: 下焦, the lower burner, and the kidney. This is the grading rule that the Yixue rumen hands on and that 1.1.4 derives from thickness and age — thick bark comes from old trunk, thin bark and twig from young growth, and the book assigns the heavy end to the deep interior and the light end to the surface.
肉桂 is the name under which this drug is registered in this site's materia medica, and in modern Korean and Chinese practice it is the standard name for the trunk bark as against 桂枝 for the twig. The distinction is clinically live: a formula built on 肉桂 to warm the kidney and one built on 桂枝 to release the exterior are not interchangeable, and the Bogam says so explicitly at 1.1.3.
1.1.3 Cinnamon Twig 桂枝
譯 1.1.3.1 Source원문
枝者枝條, 非身幹也. 盖取其枝上皮, 取其輕薄而能發散, 正合內經辛甘發散爲陽之義.
Translation영역
By twig is meant the branching shoots, not the trunk of the tree. The point is to take the bark on the twig, to take it light and thin so that it can effuse and disperse — which agrees exactly with the Neijing's principle that the acrid and the sweet effuse and disperse and are yang.
Clinical note임상 주석
The book defines 桂枝 against 肉桂 in its first six characters, and the definition is the reason this leaf gets its own entry in the materia medica while 桂心 does not. 非身幹也 — not the trunk. 桂心 is trunk bark pared down; 桂枝 is a different part of the plant, and this site's table accordingly holds it as a separate drug, gyeji, with 90 ingredient rows of its own against 肉桂's 322.
譯 1.1.3.2 Source원문
入足太陽經, 能散血分寒邪. 《本草》
Translation영역
It enters the foot greater-yang channel and can scatter cold evil in the blood aspect.
譯 1.1.3.3 Source원문
表虛自汗, 以桂枝發其邪, 衛和則表密, 汗自止, 非桂枝能收汗也. 《丹心》
Translation영역
In exterior vacuity with spontaneous sweating, cinnamon twig is used to effuse the evil; when the defence is harmonised the exterior closes and the sweating stops of itself. It is not that cinnamon twig can gather in sweat.
Clinical note임상 주석
This is one of the best-argued four lines in the chapter and it is worth keeping. A drug that is used to stop sweating is not therefore an astringent; here the sweating stops because the cause is removed, and Zhu Zhenheng takes the trouble to deny the obvious wrong inference — 非桂枝能收汗也. The clinical consequence is that 桂枝 and a true astringent such as 黃芪 or 牡蠣 are not substitutes for one another even where the presenting complaint is identical, and that a formula like 桂枝湯 is doing something different from 玉屛風散.
譯 1.1.3.4 Source원문
桂枝氣味俱輕, 故能上行發散於表. 《丹心》
Translation영역
Cinnamon twig is light in both qi and flavour, and so it can move upward and effuse and disperse at the exterior.
譯 1.1.3.5 Source원문
仲景用桂枝發表, 肉桂補腎, 本乎天者親上, 本乎地者親下, 自然之理也. 《湯液》
Translation영역
Zhang Ji used cinnamon twig to release the exterior and thick cinnamon bark to supplement the kidney. What is rooted in heaven is akin to what is above, and what is rooted in earth is akin to what is below; this is the natural order of things.
Clinical note임상 주석
本乎天者親上, 本乎地者親下 is from the Book of Changes, and here it is being used to justify a division of labour that is really empirical: the twig is used for the surface, the trunk bark for the depths. The attribution to Zhang Ji is accurate — Guizhi tang and the whole of its family use the twig, and the kidney-warming formulas use the bark. For a reader of this site the practical content of the passage is the pairing of names with uses, and it is the clearest statement in the chapter that 桂枝 and 肉桂 are two drugs and not one.
1.1.4 Willow Cinnamon, the Tender Twig 柳桂
譯 1.1.4.1 Source원문
乃小枝嫩條, 善行上焦, 補陽氣. 薄桂乃細薄嫩枝, 入上焦, 橫行肩臂. 《入門》
Translation영역
It is the small twigs and tender shoots. It is good at moving in the upper burner and supplements the yang qi. Thin cinnamon is the fine, thin, tender twig; it enters the upper burner and moves crosswise into the shoulder and arm.
譯 1.1.4.2 Source원문
桂心ㆍ菌桂ㆍ牡桂同是一物. 厚者必嫩, 薄者必老. 嫩旣辛香, 兼又筒卷; 老必味淡, 自然板薄. 板薄者卽牡桂也, 筒卷者卽菌桂也. 筒厚者宜入治藏及下焦藥, 輕薄者宜入治頭目發散藥. 又有柳桂, 乃桂之嫩小枝, 尤宜入治上焦藥. 《本草》
Translation영역
Cinnamon heart, gyun cinnamon and mo cinnamon are one and the same substance. The thick is always from young growth and the thin always from old. The young is acrid and fragrant and curls into a quill as well; the old is necessarily bland in flavour and naturally flat and thin. The flat and thin is mo cinnamon, and the quilled is gyun cinnamon. The thick quill belongs in medicines that treat the viscera and the lower burner, and the light and thin in medicines that treat the head and eyes and effuse and disperse. There is also willow cinnamon, which is the young small twig of the cinnamon, and it belongs above all in medicines that treat the upper burner.
Clinical note임상 주석
同是一物 — one and the same substance — is the sentence that resolves this whole group, and it is the book's own. Three of the classical cinnamon names are declared a single material differing only by the age of the wood it came off, and the grading is then derived from a real observation: bark from young growth is thick and curls into a quill, bark from old wood is thin and lies flat. The therapeutic assignments follow from the physical grades, not from any claim about different plants.
Where that leaves the four leaves of 1.1. 桂心, 肉桂 and the headword 桂皮 are grades of trunk bark and the materia medica is right to hold them as one entry; 桂枝 is the twig and is rightly separate; 柳桂 is a finer twig again, and the Bogam is the only place in this corpus that names it — it appears in no prescription in the book, under this name or any other, so it is left unlinked here rather than given an entry of its own.
One inconsistency should be recorded rather than smoothed over. 薄桂 is described in the first passage, on the authority of the Yixue rumen, as a fine thin twig that goes to the shoulder and arm; in this second passage, on the authority of the Bencao, 板薄 thin-and-flat is bark off old wood. The two sources do not agree about whether 薄桂 is bark or twig, and the Bogam prints both without choosing. This site's alias table files 薄桂 under 肉桂, which follows the Bencao reading; the Rumen reading would put it with the twig. The contradiction is the book's own and is left standing.
1.2 Pine Resin 松脂
`소나모진` 은 `소나모`(소나무) + `진`(津, 나무에서 흐르는 끈끈한 수액)의 짜임이고 셋 다 지금 말로 그대로 이어진다 — `나모 > 나무` 는 이 문에 열 번 넘게 나오는 꼴이고(槐實 `회화나모여름`ㆍ枸杞子 `괴좃나모여름`ㆍ楡皮 `느릅나모겁질`), `진` 은 지금도 송진ㆍ 옻진의 그 진이다. 곧 `소나모진` 은 현대어 **송진**을 우리말로 풀어 적은 것이고, 표제어 `松脂` 의 글자 뜻(솔의 기름)과 정확히 맞물린다. 이 문의 향명 가운데 종(種)을 가리는 데 쓸 수 있는 자리가 아니다 — `소나무` 는 *Pinus* 속 전체를 가리키는 말이어서 어느 솔인지는 향명이 말해 주지 않는다.
譯 1.2.1 Source원문
性溫, 味苦甘一云平, 無毒. 安五藏, 除𤍠, 治風痺死肌, 主諸惡瘡ㆍ頭瘍ㆍ白禿ㆍ疥瘙, 去死肌, 療耳聾, 牙有蛀孔, 貼諸瘡生肌, 止痛殺虫.
Translation영역
Its nature is warm, its flavour bitter and sweet one says balanced, and it is without toxicity. It quiets the five viscera, dispels heat, treats wind impediment and dead flesh, governs malign sores of every kind, sores of the head, white baldness and scabby itch, removes dead flesh, treats deafness and teeth with worm-holes in them, and applied to sores of every kind engenders flesh, checks pain and kills worms.
Clinical note임상 주석
松脂 is pine oleoresin, and once the volatile turpentine has gone off what remains is rosin — colophony. The indications here are almost all topical: dead flesh, sores of the head, scabby itch, worm-holed teeth, and resin applied to a sore to make it granulate. That is a correct use of the material. Rosin is adhesive, mildly antiseptic and occlusive, and it was the base of plasters and salves in Europe on the same reasoning.
Modern reading, and it is the single most important fact about this drug. Colophony is one of the most clinically significant contact allergens in existence and sits in the baseline patch-test series of every dermatology department. The sensitisers are oxidation products of abietic and dehydroabietic acid, which form as the resin ages in air — so old resin is more allergenic than fresh, not less. Rosin is everywhere a patient will not think to look for it: sticking plasters and adhesive dressings, depilatory wax, mascara, varnish, violin and gymnasts' rosin, chewing gum base, printing ink. A patient with a chronic dermatitis under an adhesive dressing, which is exactly the situation this entry's topical uses create, should be patch-tested rather than given a stronger resin plaster.
譯 1.2.2 Source원문
一名松膏, 一名松肪. 六月採. 自流出者勝於鑿孔及煮取脂也. 以通明如熏陸香者爲勝.
Translation영역
One name for it is pine paste and one is pine fat. It is gathered in the sixth month. What flows out of its own accord is better than what is got by chiselling a hole, or by boiling to extract the resin. The kind that is translucent like frankincense is the best.
譯 1.2.3 Source원문
煉法, 以桑灰水或酒煮軟, 挼內寒水中數十過, 白滑則可用. 《本草》
Translation영역
The method of refining it: boil it soft in mulberry-ash water or in wine, then knead it and put it into cold water several tens of times over; when it is white and slippery it may be used.
Clinical note임상 주석
桑灰水, mulberry-ash water, is the lye of 1.17.5 below, and the two entries should be read together: a strongly alkaline solution is being used here as a reagent to saponify and soften the resin, which is chemically exactly what it does. The repeated kneading into cold water is washing out the alkali and the water-soluble fraction.
Does the processing reduce the hazard? Partly, and it is worth being precise. Boiling and repeated washing drives off the volatile turpentine fraction — the α-pinene and Δ3-carene that are the respiratory and primary-irritant hazard of fresh oleoresin — so the refined resin is less of an irritant than the raw. It does not remove the diterpene resin acids, which are the allergens, and the air-oxidation that creates the actual sensitisers continues in the finished product. So the refining makes the drug less irritant and no less allergenic, and a patient already sensitised to colophony is not protected by it.
譯 1.2.4 Source원문
又法, 用河水煮化, 投冷水中, 令兩人扯拔, 旣凝再煮, 如此三次, 再用酒煮三次, 以白如飴糖爲度. 凢用, 入石臼中另搗爲末, 不可晒焙, 亦不可單服, 塞實腸胃. 《入門》
Translation영역
Another method: melt it by boiling in river water, throw it into cold water, have two people pull and stretch it, and when it has set boil it again — three times like this, then boil it three more times in wine, taking as the measure that it is white as malt sugar. Whenever it is used, put it in a stone mortar and pound it separately into powder. It must not be sun-dried or oven-dried, and it must not be taken alone either, for it blocks and stuffs the intestines and stomach.
Clinical note임상 주석
不可單服, 塞實腸胃 — it must not be taken alone, for it blocks and stuffs the intestines and stomach. This is the book's own warning and it is pharmacologically sound. Rosin is a solid, water-insoluble, thermoplastic mass; swallowed in quantity and without a vehicle it is a bezoar waiting to happen, and the mechanical obstruction the Rumen describes is the predictable result. The instruction not to dry it with heat is the other half of the same practical knowledge — heat softens and fuses the powder back into a lump.
The pulling and stretching between two people is the traditional way of working a thermoplastic resin to drive out water and occluded impurities, and it is still how pine pitch is clarified by hand.
1.2.1 Pine Seed 松實
譯 1.2.1.1 Source원문
性溫, 味甘, 無毒. 主風痺, 虛羸少氣不足. 《本草》
Translation영역
Its nature is warm, its flavour sweet, and it is without toxicity. It governs wind impediment, and emaciation from vacuity with shortness of qi and insufficiency.
Clinical note임상 주석
This leaf and 果部 1.29 海松子 are close enough to need separating deliberately. The fruit chapter's headword is the Korean pine nut, jat, Pinus koraiensis, registered in this site's materia medica as 松子仁 with 海松子 and 海松子仁 as its aliases; its text reads 性小温, 味甘, 無毒 … 補虗羸少氣, and the overlap with this line — 虛羸少氣 in both — is nearly complete. But the Bencao carried the two as separate entries, 松實 among the pine products and 海松子 as a thing brought from Silla, and the Bogam keeps them in different chapters with different natures, 溫 here and 小溫 there. They are not folded together here, and this leaf is left unlinked: it names no ingredient anywhere in the book's prescriptions, so there is nothing to attach it to and nothing to be gained by attaching it to the pine nut.
What the entry describes is the edible seed of a pine, and for a patient that is what matters. If someone is eating what this entry names they are eating pine nuts, and the two cautions that belong to pine nuts belong here: pine nut is a cause of IgE-mediated anaphylaxis independent of tree-nut allergy, and pine mouth — a benign metallic dysgeusia lasting up to a fortnight, associated with the seeds of non-food Pinus species in the commercial supply — is set out at 果部 1.29.
1.2.2 Pine Needle 松葉
譯 1.2.2.1 Source원문
主風濕瘡, 生毛髮, 安五藏, 不飢延年. 《本草》
Translation영역
It governs wind-damp sores, engenders hair, quiets the five viscera, and keeps off hunger and lengthens the years.
Clinical note임상 주석
Pine needle is in this site's materia medica and is still drunk as a tea and brewed as 송엽주 in Korea, and there is no reason to warn anyone off it in those amounts. The needles carry a volatile oil of α- and β-pinene with shikimic acid and proanthocyanidins; 生毛髮, engendering hair, is the claim that keeps pine-needle preparations in the cosmetic market and there is no clinical evidence for it.
不飢延年 places this with 1.2.5 below among the famine foods of the chapter rather than among its medicines, and that is the honest reading. The one caution worth stating is that the turpentine fraction of the needles is a primary irritant: pine-needle baths and poultices for 風濕瘡 can produce the dermatitis they are meant to treat, and the distinction between that irritant reaction and colophony allergy needs patch-testing to make.
1.2.3 Pine Knot 松節
譯 1.2.3.1 Source원문
主百節風, 脚痺, 骨節痛. 釀酒, 療脚軟弱. 《本草》
Translation영역
It governs wind in the hundred joints, impediment of the legs, and pain in the bones and joints. Fermented into wine it treats weakness and softness of the legs.
Clinical note임상 주석
松節 is the resin-saturated knot where a branch met the trunk, the densest and most resinous part of the wood, and it is pharmacopoeial — the materia medica of this site carries it as Pini Lignum Nodi, and the Bogam uses it in three prescriptions, twice under the name 黃松節. 釀酒, fermenting it into wine, is 松節酒, which is still made and still sold in Korea for joint pain; the alcohol is doing the extraction of a resinous drug that water handles badly, and that part of the reasoning is sound.
Modern reading. For the indications given — polyarticular joint pain and leg weakness — the thing a clinician needs is the diagnosis underneath: inflammatory arthritis, osteoarthritis, a radiculopathy, a peripheral neuropathy and a proximal myopathy all present as 脚軟弱, and they are treated differently. A medicinal wine taken daily for joint pain also carries the ordinary harms of daily alcohol, which the entry does not mention and a clinician should.
1.2.4 Pine Pollen 松花
譯 1.2.4.1 Source원문
名松黃. 輕身療病. 卽花上黃粉, 勝皮葉及子. 《本草》
Translation영역
It is called pine yellow. It lightens the body and cures illness. It is the yellow powder on the flower, and is superior to the bark, the leaf and the seed.
Clinical note임상 주석
卽花上黃粉 — the yellow powder on the flower — is pine pollen, gathered from the male strobili in late spring, and it is the one leaf in this pine group that the Bogam's formulary actually uses under its own name: 松蘂丹 for 龜背, humpback, is built on 松花 一兩 with bitter orange, saposhnikovia and pubescent angelica. It has no entry in this site's materia medica, and on the evidence of that prescription it should have one.
Pine pollen is eaten in Korea as 송화다식 and sold as a supplement. It is unusually safe for an inhalant allergen source because the grains are large and waxy and sediment rather than staying airborne — pine is a minor cause of pollinosis despite the visible quantity it produces. 勝皮葉及子, better than the bark, leaf and seed, is a grading claim with nothing behind it.
1.2.5 Pine Root Inner Bark 松根白皮
譯 1.2.5.1 Source원문
辟穀不飢, 益氣, 補五勞. 《本草》
Translation영역
It lets one do without grain and not be hungry, boosts the qi, and supplements the five taxations.
Clinical note임상 주석
辟穀不飢 — doing without grain and not being hungry — is the formula for a famine food, and pine inner bark is the famine food of Korean history. 송피떡, pine-bark cake, made from the inner bark pounded and mixed with whatever grain there was, is recorded through every major famine of the Joseon period and into the twentieth century. The bark's food value is the starch and the inner phloem; the fibre is what fills the stomach.
What the entry does not say is the harm, and it is well attested. Pine-bark subsistence produced severe constipation and faecal impaction — the historical Korean term 송피병 names it — because the lignified fibre is indigestible and holds no water. That is the same mechanism as 1.2's 塞實腸胃 one leaf above, and in a dehydrated, starving patient it is dangerous. The entry is a record of what people ate when there was nothing, and should be read as that rather than as a medicine.
1.2.6 Pine Tar 松㶆
譯 1.2.6.1 Source원문
音諸. 主牛馬疥瘡. 燒松枝取汁也. 《本草》
Translation영역
Pronounced je. It governs scabby sores in cattle and horses. It is the liquid got by burning pine branches.
Clinical note임상 주석
燒松枝取汁 is destructive distillation of pine wood, and the liquid is pine tar. The veterinary indication is exact: tar has been the standard dressing for mange in cattle and horses for as long as there are records of it, and sarcoptic and chorioptic mange is what 牛馬疥瘡 names.
Modern reading. Pine tar is still a real therapeutic, available over the counter in soaps, shampoos and ointments for psoriasis, seborrhoeic dermatitis and chronic eczema, and it works — tars are antipruritic and antiproliferative in the epidermis. Two things to hold. Pine tar is a different and much lower-polycyclic-aromatic-hydrocarbon material than coal tar, and the occupational carcinogenicity established for coal tar and pitch should not be transferred to it wholesale; but tars are photosensitising, so a tar preparation and a sunny day or a phototherapy cabinet do not go together without care. And tar is irritant on broken skin and in the flexures.
The entry is also a reminder that this chapter is not only about people. A drug whose only stated indication is in livestock is still carried, numbered and sourced, and that is worth noticing about how the Bogam was compiled.
1.2.7 Green Lichen on Pine Bark 松樹皮上綠衣
譯 1.2.7.1 Source원문
名艾蒳香, 一名狼苔. 合諸香燒之, 其烟不散, 團聚靑白可愛. 《本草》
Translation영역
It is called aenap incense, and one name for it is wolf-moss. Burned together with the other aromatics, its smoke does not scatter but gathers in a mass, blue-white and lovely to see.
Clinical note임상 주석
This leaf is not a part of the pine at all, and the Bogam's own formulary confirms what it is twice over. 瑞雲香毬, the auspicious-cloud incense ball, lists 艾蒳香 and glosses it in the text itself: 卽松木上靑苔衣也, the green moss-coat on the pine tree — which is this headword word for word. 聚仙香 lists 狼苔 and glosses it 卽艾蒳香也. So the material is a lichen growing on pine bark, used at one nyang and five don as a real ingredient in two of the book's incense formulas, and it has no entry in this site's materia medica and neither of those two prescriptions carries an ingredient row for it. It should have one.
其烟不散, 團聚靑白 is an accurate observation and the reason the material was wanted: lichen thallus burns to a dense, slow, cohesive smoke and was used as a fixative and a binder of incense smoke rather than for a scent of its own.
Modern reading. These are the only two uses in the book and both are incense, so nobody is being asked to swallow it. That matters, because lichens of this kind carry usnic acid, and usnic acid taken internally is hepatotoxic: weight-loss supplements standardised on it caused a cluster of acute hepatitis and fulminant hepatic failure requiring transplantation, which is why it was withdrawn. Lichen is also a classic cause of occupational allergic contact dermatitis in perfumery through the oak-moss and tree-moss absolutes, and the sensitisers are the same atranorin and usnic-acid class of compounds. Burned indoors, any incense is a source of fine particulate and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, and regular use in an unventilated room is a documented respiratory exposure.
1.3 Pagoda Tree Pod 槐實
`회화나모여름` 은 `회화나모`(회화나무) + `여름`(열매)이다. `여름` 은 「열매」의 16세기 말로 이 문에 네 번 나오고(槐實ㆍ枸杞子ㆍ栢實ㆍ楮實), 지금은 계절 이름 `여름` 에 밀려 쓰이지 않으나 `열다/열매` 와 한 뿌리이므로 뜻은 또렷하다. `회화나무` 는 지금도 *Styphnolobium japonicum*(옛 *Sophora japonica*)의 표준 우리말 이름이고, 이 자리는 **향명이 종을 그대로 확인해 주는 자리**다 — 한자 `槐` 만 보면 느티나무(槐, 중국에서 쓰는 또 다른 뜻)로 읽을 길이 열려 있는데 향명이 그것을 막아 준다. 느티나무는 *Zelkova serrata* 이고 약이 아니다.
譯 1.3.1 Source원문
性寒, 味苦酸醎, 無毒. 主五痔ㆍ火瘡, 除大𤍠, 療難産, 墮胎, 殺虫去風, 治男女陰瘡濕痒及腸風, 能催生.
Translation영역
Its nature is cold, its flavour bitter, sour and salty, and it is without toxicity. It governs the five haemorrhoids and burn sores, dispels great heat, treats difficult delivery, makes a foetus drop, kills worms and dispels wind, treats genital sores with damp itch in men and women and intestinal wind, and can hasten the birth.
Clinical note임상 주석
無毒 and 墮胎 stand four characters apart, and both are the book's own words. The entry says the drug is without toxicity and then says it makes a foetus drop and hastens labour; the compilers did not treat an abortifacient and uterotonic action as toxicity, and a modern reader has to supply that connection. In practice this is an absolute pregnancy contraindication stated by the book itself, and 能催生, hastening the birth, is the same action named approvingly at term.
五痔, the five haemorrhoids, is the indication this drug is actually used for today. 槐角 — the pod, which is what this headword names, as the next-to-last sentence of the second passage says outright — is pharmacopoeial and is the chief in 槐角丸 for bleeding haemorrhoids; 槐花, the flower at 1.3.4, is used for the same thing. 腸風 is bleeding from the lower bowel, and the whole indication-set of this entry is anorectal bleeding and perianal inflammation.
Modern reading. Rectal bleeding is a symptom and not a diagnosis, and it is the symptom of colorectal carcinoma as well as of haemorrhoids. A patient over fifty, or any patient with a change in bowel habit, weight loss, iron-deficiency anaemia or a family history, needs the bleeding investigated endoscopically before it is treated as 五痔. That is the one thing this entry cannot tell you and the one thing that matters most.
譯 1.3.2 Source원문
十月上巳日採實, 和莢新盆盛, 以牛膽汁拌濕, 封口塗泥, 經百日取出, 皮爛爲水, 子如大豆, 紫黑色, 能踈導風𤍠, 入藥微炒. 有服法, 久服則令腦滿髮不白而長生. 一名槐角, 卽莢也. 《本草》
Translation영역
On the first sa day of the tenth month gather the fruit, put it pods and all into a new earthen pot, moisten and mix it with ox gall, seal the mouth and coat it with clay, and after a hundred days take it out: the skin will have rotted to water and the seeds will be like soybeans, purple-black in colour, and able to dredge and conduct away wind heat. For putting into medicine it is lightly stir-fried. There is a method of taking it, and taken over a long time it fills the brain and keeps the hair from whitening, and lengthens life. One name for it is goegak, which is to say the pod.
Clinical note임상 주석
一名槐角, 卽莢也 — one name for it is goegak, which is to say the pod. This is the book glossing its own headword, and the gloss is what links this entry to the materia medica. This site's table holds the drug as 槐角子 with 槐實, 槐角 and 槐子 all filed against it, and the Bogam's own sentence is the warrant for that: the headword 槐實 and the prescription name 槐角 are one thing, the pod. The formulary uses 槐角 in 23 places and the pod is what it means in all of them.
The hundred-day fermentation in ox gall inside a sealed clay-luted pot is a genuine processing method and not a flourish — the alkaline bile macerates the pericarp away and leaves the seed, which is what 皮爛爲水 describes. Whether anything pharmacologically useful is added by the bile is unknown; the Bencao thought it was.
Modern reading of the seed. The pod and seed of Styphnolobium japonicum carry quinolizidine alkaloids of the cytisine family and the isoflavone glycoside sophoricoside, and the raw seed is reported toxic in quantity — gastrointestinal upset, and with cytisine-type alkaloids the possibility of nicotinic effects. 微炒, light stir-frying, is the processing the entry specifies for medicinal use, and dry heat does degrade some of this class; it should not be relied on as detoxification. 久服則令腦滿髮不白而長生 is a longevity claim and there is nothing in it.
譯 1.3.3 Source원문
槐者, 虛星之精. 葉晝合夜開, 故一名守宮. 《入門》
Translation영역
The pagoda tree is the essence of the star Heo. Its leaves close by day and open by night, and so one name for it is palace-guardian.
Clinical note임상 주석
The observation is real and the explanation is astrological. Styphnolobium is a legume, and legume leaflets fold on a circadian rhythm driven by the pulvinus — nyctinasty, the sleep movement of leaves. The Bogam has the direction of the movement reversed from what the plant actually does, which is to fold at night, but the phenomenon it is pointing at is there to be seen. 虛星 is the eleventh of the twenty-eight lunar lodges; the name 守宮 belongs with the practice of planting these trees at palace and government gates, which is also why the species is called the scholar tree.
1.3.1 Pagoda Tree Twig 槐枝
譯 1.3.1.1 Source원문
煮汁洗陰囊下濕痒. 燒灰揩齒, 去蚛. 《本草》
Translation영역
Boil it and wash the damp itch under the scrotum with the liquid. Burn it to ash and rub the teeth with it to get rid of worm-eaten decay.
Clinical note임상 주석
Both uses are external. 陰囊下濕痒 is intertrigo of the scrotal and inguinal folds, which in practice is usually tinea cruris or candidal intertrigo and is treated by keeping the area dry and by a topical antifungal; a tannin-containing decoction as an astringent wash is not unreasonable adjunctively and will not cure a dermatophyte. 蚛 is worm-eaten, the classical account of dental caries, and tooth ash as a dentifrice is abrasive — ash dentifrices do remove stain and do wear enamel, which is the trade-off every abrasive powder has.
This leaf has no entry in the materia medica and does not need one, but it is used. 槐枝 appears in three of the book's prescriptions and the three are not alike: in 三神膏 the twig is the stirring stick, 槐枝攪成膏, which is an instrument and not an ingredient; in 蠟礬紙 forty-nine inches of twig are decocted in oil until charred and then strained out; and in 雲母膏 it stands in a list of ingredients with willow twig, tangerine peel and mulberry root bark. The last two are genuine ingredient uses, and 雲母膏's willow twig already has its own entry in the table while the sophora twig next to it does not.
1.3.2 Pagoda Tree Inner Bark 槐白皮
譯 1.3.2.1 Source원문
煮湯洗五痔及惡瘡ㆍ疳𧏾ㆍ湯火瘡. 《本草》
Translation영역
Boil it into a decoction and wash the five haemorrhoids with it, and malign sores, gan-erosion and scalds and burns.
Clinical note임상 주석
A wash, and a reasonable one: sophora bark is tannin-rich and astringent, and an astringent soak for prolapsed, weeping haemorrhoids is still what a sitz bath is for. 湯火瘡 is a scald or burn, and this is one of the places where the book's practice and modern practice part company — a burn is cooled with running water for twenty minutes, not bathed in a hot decoction, and a decoction poured on a partial-thickness burn is an infection risk.
On the link. The form the prescriptions use is 槐皮, not 槐白皮: four of the book's formulas name it and three of those are 槐皮一片, a single piece of bark pierced with holes and laid over the navel as a shield for moxibustion, which is a use as an appliance rather than as a drug. This site's table has 槐皮 as Sophorae Cortex, which is the same material this headword names, and the link is made to it; the pairing of the Bencao headword 槐白皮 with the table's short form 槐皮 is reported for the alias table rather than assumed by the checker.
1.3.3 Pagoda Tree Gum 槐膠
譯 1.3.3.1 Source원문
主急風口噤, 或四肢不收, 或破傷風口眼喎斜, 筋脉抽掣, 腰脊强硬. 雜諸藥用之. 《本草》
Translation영역
It governs urgent wind with the mouth clamped shut, or the four limbs not gathering, or lockjaw-wound wind with the mouth and eyes drawn awry, the sinews and vessels twitching and jerking, and the lumbus and spine stiff and rigid. It is used mixed in with the other medicinals.
Clinical note임상 주석
破傷風, 口噤, 口眼喎斜, 筋脉抽掣, 腰脊强硬 — this is a clinical description of tetanus, and it is a good one. 破傷風 is literally wind that has got in through a broken wound; the mouth clamped shut is trismus, the mouth and eyes drawn awry is risus sardonicus, the sinews twitching and jerking are the generalised spasms, and the lumbus and spine stiff and rigid is opisthotonos. Four of the cardinal signs in nineteen characters, and the aetiology — a wound — correctly identified.
Modern reading, and it has to be unambiguous. Nothing in this entry treats tetanus and no herb does. Generalised tetanus has a case fatality of twenty to fifty per cent even with intensive care, and it kills by laryngospasm, respiratory failure and autonomic instability. Management is airway protection and often tracheostomy, neuromuscular blockade and sedation in an intensive care unit, human tetanus immune globulin, metronidazole, wound debridement, and active immunisation — because surviving tetanus confers no immunity. Prevention is a vaccine that has been available since the 1920s and that has made the disease described here nearly unknown where it is used. A patient presenting with trismus after a wound is a medical emergency to be transported, not treated.
雜諸藥用之, used mixed in with the other medicinals, is the book conceding that it does not stand alone. The gum has no entry in the materia medica and names no ingredient in any of the book's prescriptions.
1.3.4 Pagoda Tree Flower 槐花
譯 1.3.4.1 Source원문
治五痔ㆍ心痛, 殺腹藏虫, 并腸風㵼血, 并赤白痢, 凉大腸𤍠, 微炒用. 一名槐鵝. 《本草》
Translation영역
It treats the five haemorrhoids and heart pain, kills worms in the abdomen and viscera, and likewise intestinal wind with downpour of blood and likewise red and white dysentery; it cools heat in the large intestine. It is lightly stir-fried for use. One name for it is goea.
Clinical note임상 주석
槐花 is pharmacopoeial and in current use, and it is one of the better-grounded drugs in this chapter. The flower buds of Styphnolobium japonicum are the commercial source of rutin, which they carry at up to a fifth of their dry weight — this is where the rutin in supplements comes from. Rutin and its aglycone quercetin reduce capillary fragility, which is a real if modest effect and is exactly the rationale for the indications here: anorectal bleeding, bloody dysentery, bleeding from the large intestine. The materia medica carries it with 25 ingredient rows.
微炒用, lightly stir-fried, is the standard processing and the Chinese pharmacopoeia distinguishes 槐花 from 槐花炭 on the same reasoning the Bogam uses — charring is for bleeding.
Modern reading. Safe at ordinary doses and widely used as a tea. Two notes. Rutin is a flavonoid with weak antiplatelet activity and there are case reports of bleeding risk with high-dose flavonoid supplements on top of anticoagulants, so a patient on warfarin or a direct oral anticoagulant taking concentrated rutin is worth asking about. And as at the headword: blood per rectum needs a cause found first.
1.4 Goji Berry 枸杞子
`괴좃나모여름` = `괴좃` + `나모`(나무) + `여름`(열매). 뒤의 두 낱말은 또렷하게 지금 말로 이어지나 **`괴좃` 은 이어지지 않는다** — 지금 이 나무의 표준 이름은 `구기자나무`(한자 枸杞를 음으로 읽은 것)이고 `괴좃나무` 는 쓰이지 않는다. 글자째 현대 표기로 옮겨 적었을 뿐이므로 「지금 말」로 읽지 말 것. 짜임은 `괴` + `좃` 으로 보는 것이 통설이고 `괴` 는 중세 한국어의 「고양이」(지금 `고양이`ㆍ`괭이` 에 남았다)인데, **뒤 음절 `좃` 이 무엇을 가리키는지는 이 자료만으로 가릴 수 없다.** 붉은 열매의 모양을 견준 것이라는 풀이가 있으나 寶鑑 본문에 그런 말이 없으므로 여기서 못 박지 않는다. 다만 `괴좃나모` 라는 이름 자체는 16세기 향약 이름 자료에 두루 나오는 꼴이다.
譯 1.4.1 Source원문
性寒一云平, 味苦一云甘, 無毒. 補內傷大勞噓吸, 堅筋骨, 强陰, 療五勞七傷, 補益精氣, 易顔色變白, 明目安神, 令人長壽.
Translation영역
Its nature is cold one says balanced, its flavour bitter one says sweet, and it is without toxicity. It supplements internal damage with great taxation and panting breath, strengthens sinew and bone, strengthens the yin, treats the five taxations and seven damages, supplements and boosts the essence and qi, changes the complexion and turns it fair, brightens the eyes and quiets the spirit, and makes a person long-lived.
Clinical note임상 주석
Both glosses in this line matter, and the second more than the first. The Bencao's 性寒, 味苦 is the character of the root bark; the alternative reading 平 and 甘 is the character of the berry. Anyone who has eaten a dried goji knows it is sweet, and the drug trade and the pharmacopoeias describe 枸杞子 as sweet and balanced. So the two sochu glosses are not idle variants: they preserve the reading under which the headword is the fruit, which is what the fourth passage below will spell out.
枸杞子 is the fruit of Lycium chinense and L. barbarum, it is pharmacopoeial, it is food, and it is in 77 ingredient rows of this book. There is no reason to warn anyone off it as a food.
Modern reading — the one interaction that is well enough reported to change practice. There are multiple published case reports of a rise in INR, with bleeding in some, in patients stabilised on warfarin who began drinking goji juice or goji tea; the mechanism offered is inhibition of CYP2C9, which metabolises S-warfarin. The effect appears within days to a fortnight and reverses on stopping. A patient on warfarin who starts a goji preparation needs their INR checked, and this is worth asking about directly, because goji is sold as a food and patients do not report foods. Separately, low-level atropine contamination has been found in commercial goji berries — far below a toxic dose, but it is the reason anticholinergic symptoms have occasionally been attributed to them.
譯 1.4.2 Source원문
一名地仙, 一名仙人杖. 處處有之. 春夏採葉, 秋採莖實, 久服之皆輕身益氣.
Translation영역
One name for it is earth-immortal, and one is the immortals' staff. It is found everywhere. In spring and summer the leaves are gathered and in autumn the stems and fruit; taken over a long time they all lighten the body and boost the qi.
譯 1.4.3 Source원문
嫩葉作羹茹食之甚佳. 色白無刺者良.
Translation영역
The young leaves made into a soup or a boiled green and eaten are very good. The kind that is white in colour and without thorns is the good one.
Clinical note임상 주석
The young leaves are eaten in Korea as 구기엽 and the practice is current. 色白無刺者良 is a selection rule by habit and it is the one place a gatherer could go wrong: Lycium is a solanaceous genus and several of its relatives are not food. The thorny, dark-stemmed plants the rule excludes are the wild forms.
譯 1.4.4 Source원문
莖名枸杞, 根名地骨. 枸杞當用梗皮, 地骨當用根皮, 枸杞子當用其紅實. 是一物有三用. 其梗皮寒, 根皮大寒, 子微寒, 性亦三等.
Translation영역
The stem is called gugi and the root is called jigol. For gugi one should use the stem bark, for jigol the root bark, and for gugija its red fruit. This is one thing with three uses. Its stem bark is cold, the root bark very cold, and the fruit slightly cold; the natures too are of three grades.
Clinical note임상 주석
This is the most useful single passage in the entry and it is the Bogam sorting out its own nomenclature. One plant, three drugs, three names, three grades of coldness — and the division it lays down is exactly the division modern pharmacopoeias keep. 枸杞子, the red fruit, is the supplementing drug. 地骨皮, the root bark, is the cooling one, and it has its own leaf at 1.4.1 below and its own entry in the materia medica with 80 ingredient rows. The stem bark, 枸杞 proper, is the one that has fallen out of use; this site's table holds 枸杞根 for the root and files the bare name 枸杞 as a variant of the fruit, which follows the formulary rather than this passage.
是一物有三用 is also the clearest statement in the chapter of the principle that governs the whole of it — that the leaves hanging under a headword are different medicines from different parts of one plant, with different natures, and are not interchangeable.
譯 1.4.5 Source원문
陜西枸杞子如櫻桃, 全少核, 極有味. 《本草》
Translation영역
The gugija of Shaanxi is like a cherry, with almost no stone at all, and extremely good in flavour.
Clinical note임상 주석
A note on provenance and grade: the large, fleshy, nearly seedless Shaanxi berry is the Lycium barbarum of the north-western Chinese trade, which is still the commercial standard, as against the smaller L. chinense fruit of Korea and the east. The entry is not marked 唐, so the compilers expected the Korean drug to be used, with the Shaanxi one as the ideal.
1.4.1 Lycium Root Bark 地骨皮
譯 1.4.1.1 Source원문
入足少陰經ㆍ手少陽經, 治有汗骨蒸, 善解肌𤍠. 《湯液》
Translation영역
It enters the foot lesser-yin and hand lesser-yang channels, treats steaming-bone fever with sweating, and is good at resolving heat in the flesh.
Clinical note임상 주석
有汗骨蒸 — steaming-bone fever with sweating — is a deliberately narrow indication and the qualifier is the whole point. 骨蒸 is the sensation of heat rising from within the bones with afternoon or nocturnal fever, the pattern of yin vacuity with internal heat; the classical pairing is that 地骨皮 is for the sweating form and 牡丹皮 for the form without sweat, and the distinction is still taught. This is the drug in 清骨散 and in 地骨皮湯, and with mulberry root bark it is half of 瀉白散.
Modern reading. Lycium root bark is pharmacopoeial and safe at ordinary doses; it carries kukoamines, which are hypotensive, and betaine. It is unobjectionable in itself. What needs saying is what 有汗骨蒸 looks like to a modern clinician: a drenching night sweat with low-grade fever is the presentation of tuberculosis, of lymphoma, of endocarditis and of thyrotoxicosis, and in a Korean practice tuberculosis remains common enough that it is the first thing to exclude. Night sweats with weight loss are not a pattern to treat for weeks while the cause goes unlooked-for.
1.5 Arborvitae Seed 栢實
Medicinal entry 측ᄇᆡᆨ나모여름 측백나무 열매 fruit of the cheukbaek, the oriental arborvitae `측ᄇᆡᆨ나모여름` 의 `ᄇᆡᆨ` 은 첫가끝으로 적힌 `ᄇ + ᆡ + ᆨ` 이고 지금 `백` 이다 (`ᆡ > ㅐ`). 곧 `측백나무 열매` 이고, **`측백` 은 한자 側柏의 음**이다. 이 자리가 이 문에서 **향명이 종(種)을 못 박아 주는 가장 또렷한 자리**다. 표제어는 `栢實` (= 柏實)뿐이어서 한자만으로는 柏이 가리키는 여러 나무 가운데 어느 것인지 알 수 없는데 — 중국 문헌의 柏은 측백ㆍ편백ㆍ향나무ㆍ사이프러스를 두루 덮는다 — 향명이 `측백`, 곧 **側柏**이라고 말해 주고, 본문 첫 구절의 `此側葉子也`(이는 側柏의 씨다)가 같은 것을 한자 쪽에서 되풀이한다. 향명과 본문이 서로를 받쳐 주는 꼴이므로 이 약은 *Platycladus orientalis* 로 확정된다. `측백나무` 는 지금도 그 나무의 표준 우리말 이름이다.
譯 1.5.1 Source원문
性平, 味甘, 無毒. 主驚悸, 安五藏, 益氣, 治風, 潤皮膚, 除風濕痺, 虛損吸吸, 興陽道, 益壽.
Translation영역
Its nature is balanced, its flavour sweet, and it is without toxicity. It governs fright palpitations, quiets the five viscera, boosts the qi, treats wind, moistens the skin, dispels wind-damp impediment and the gasping of vacuity detriment, raises the yang way, and lengthens the years.
Clinical note임상 주석
柏子仁, the kernel of this seed, is pharmacopoeial and in daily use, and the indication the Bogam leads with — 驚悸, fright palpitations — is the one it is still used for: it is a quieting-the-spirit drug for insomnia with palpitations, in 柏子養心丸 and in 天王補心丹. The materia medica of this site carries it as baekjain with 33 ingredient rows, and files 栢子仁 against it as the variant graph.
潤皮膚 and 虛損吸吸 point at the other half of what the drug does, which is that the kernel is about half fixed oil. That is the basis of its second standard use, as a gentle laxative for constipation in the old and the depleted, and it is why the processing instruction at the end of this section insists the oil be driven off for some purposes.
Modern reading. Safe. The seed is bland and oily and the only predictable adverse effect is loose stool from the oil at higher doses. Palpitations, though, are worth the same caution as night sweats one entry above: new palpitations deserve a pulse, a blood pressure and an electrocardiogram before they are treated as 驚悸, because atrial fibrillation, thyrotoxicosis and anaemia all present this way and the first of those carries a stroke risk that is managed with anticoagulation.
譯 1.5.2 Source원문
此側葉子也. 九月結子, 候成熟收採, 蒸乾去殼用. 《本草》
Translation영역
This is the seed of the side-turned leaf. In the ninth month it sets seed; wait until it has ripened, gather it, steam it dry, remove the shell and use it.
Clinical note임상 주석
此側葉子也 is the gloss that identifies the plant, and it should be read with the Korean name: 側, side-turned, is the 側 of 側柏, and what it names is the flattened sprays of Platycladus orientalis whose scale-leaves lie edge-on in one plane. The leaf at 1.5.1 below opens with the same observation from the other side, 皆側向而生.
譯 1.5.3 Source원문
令人潤澤, 美顔色, 耳目聦明, 則澤腎之藥也. 《湯液》
Translation영역
It makes a person moist and lustrous, beautifies the complexion, and makes the ears and eyes keen and clear — so it is a medicinal that moistens the kidney.
譯 1.5.4 Source원문
萬木向陽, 惟栢西向, 故字從白, 稟金之正氣, 木之最堅者. 實去殼取仁, 微炒去油用. 《入門》
Translation영역
All the ten thousand trees face the sun; only the arborvitae faces west, and so its character takes 白 as its element. It receives the correct qi of metal and is the hardest of the woods. As for the seed, remove the shell, take the kernel, lightly stir-fry it to drive off the oil, and use it.
Clinical note임상 주석
字從白 is a graphic argument: 柏 is written with 木 and 白, 白 is the colour and the direction of metal and of the west, so the tree is assigned to metal. The botany is invented — Platycladus does not face west — but the second half of the sentence is a real observation, since the wood is dense and rot-resistant, which is why it was the wood of coffins and of temple pillars.
微炒去油用, lightly stir-fried to drive off the oil, is the processing step that separates the two uses of the kernel: the de-oiled kernel is the spirit-quieting drug, and the oil left in is the laxative. A practitioner who wants the one and not the other has to specify which.
1.5.1 Arborvitae Leaf 葉
譯 1.5.1.1 Source원문
味苦辛, 性澁. 皆側向而生. 主吐血ㆍ衂血ㆍ痢血, 補陰之要藥. 四時各依方面採, 陰乾, 入藥蒸用. 《本草》
Translation영역
Its flavour is bitter and acrid and its nature astringent. The leaves all grow turned to the side. It governs spitting of blood, nosebleed and bloody dysentery, and is an essential medicinal for supplementing the yin. It is gathered in each of the four seasons from the quarter that belongs to the season, dried in the shade, and steamed before being put into medicine.
Clinical note임상 주석
Of the three leaves under 栢實 this is the one in current use. 側柏葉 is pharmacopoeial, it is the standard haemostatic of its class, and the indications here — haematemesis, epistaxis, bloody stool — are the indications it still carries, in 四生丸 and as 側柏葉炭 for bleeding. The materia medica holds it as cheukbaekyeop, Platycladi Cacumen, with 16 ingredient rows, and files 柏葉 against it as an alias, which is the name this bare headword 葉 resolves to.
皆側向而生 is the plant character again, and 性澁, astringent, is the tannin that does the haemostatic work on a mucosal surface.
Modern reading, and there is one caution that belongs specifically to the leaf and not to the seed. The essential oil of Platycladus orientalis leaf contains thujone, the same monoterpene ketone that makes Thuja and wormwood neurotoxic: thujone is a GABA-A antagonist and in sufficient dose causes vomiting, gastroenteritis and convulsions. Thuja occidentalis leaf preparations have caused seizures and, taken as abortifacients, maternal deaths. The medicinal doses of 側柏葉 in decoction are far below that and the drug has a long record of safe use, but the margin is not infinite: concentrated extracts, essential oil, and the folk use of strong leaf infusions over long periods are a different exposure from a few grams in a decoction, and the external use for alopecia — which is the commonest contemporary use, in tinctures — is safer than the internal.
As at 槐花: 吐血 and 痢血 are presentations that need a source found. Haematemesis is an upper gastrointestinal bleed until proved otherwise, and it is an emergency.
1.5.2 Arborvitae Inner Bark 白皮
譯 1.5.2.1 Source원문
主火灼爛瘡, 長毛髮. 《本草》
Translation영역
It governs sores from fire-scorching that have broken down, and makes the hair grow long.
Clinical note임상 주석
火灼爛瘡 is a burn that has gone on to ulcerate, and this leaf has no use beyond that and the hair claim. It names no ingredient in any prescription in the book and has no entry in the materia medica, and there is no modern use for it. As at 1.3.2: a broken-down burn is a wound needing debridement, dressing and assessment of depth and infection, and the hair claim is the same cosmetic hope that attaches to 側柏葉 above with better evidence behind it there than here.
1.6 Poria 茯苓
譯 1.6.1 Source원문
性平, 味甘, 無毒. 開胃, 止嘔逆, 善安心神, 主肺痿痰壅, 伐腎邪, 利小便, 下水腫淋結, 止消渴, 療健忘.
Translation영역
Its nature is balanced, its flavour sweet, and it is without toxicity. It opens the stomach, checks retching and counterflow, is good at quieting the heart spirit, governs lung wilting with phlegm congestion, cuts down evil in the kidney, disinhibits urine, brings down water swelling and dribbling blockage, checks dispersion-thirst, and treats forgetfulness.
Clinical note임상 주석
茯苓 is a fungus, and this is the one entry in the chapter where that has to be said at the front. It is the sclerotium of Wolfiporia extensa (long known as Poria cocos), a polypore that grows on and in the roots of pines, and what is dug up is a hard, dense, buried mass of fungal tissue, not wood and not root. It is pharmacopoeial, and it is the most-used drug in this part of the chapter by a wide margin: this site's materia medica carries white poria with 482 ingredient rows and red poria with 326, and the plain name 茯苓 is filed against the white.
The indications are the two things the drug is actually for — moving water, and quieting the spirit. 利小便, 下水腫淋結 is the diuretic action, and 安心神, 療健忘 the sedative one, and the pair of them is why 茯苓 turns up in formulas as different as 五苓散 and 歸脾湯.
Modern reading. Safe, bland and well tolerated; this is as close to an inert drug as the chapter has. The polysaccharide fraction (pachyman and its derivatives) and the triterpenes (poricoic acids, eburicoic acid) are the studied constituents, and the diuretic effect in human terms is weak. Two practical points. A patient with oedema being treated for 水腫 may have heart failure, nephrotic syndrome, cirrhosis or a venous cause, and all four need identifying. And 消渴, dispersion-thirst, overlaps heavily with diabetes mellitus — polydipsia, polyuria and weight loss in a thirsty patient should prompt a glucose measurement, not a diuretic.
譯 1.6.2 Source원문
仙經服食亦爲至要. 云其通神而致靈, 和魂而鍊魄, 明竅而益肌, 厚腸而開心, 調榮而理胃, 上品仙藥也. 善能斷穀不飢.
Translation영역
In the immortals' canon it is likewise held to be of the first importance as a daily article. It is said that it frees the spirit and brings on the numinous, harmonises the hon soul and refines the baek, clears the orifices and benefits the flesh, thickens the intestines and opens the heart, regulates the construction and puts the stomach in order — a first-grade immortals' drug. It is very good at cutting off grain without hunger.
譯 1.6.3 Source원문
生山中處處有之. 松脂入地千歲爲茯苓. 其抱根而輕虛者爲茯神. 二月八月採, 皆陰乾. 大如三四升器, 外皮黑細皺, 內堅白, 形如鳥獸龜鼈者良. 《本草》
Translation영역
It grows in the mountains and is found everywhere. Pine resin that has gone into the ground for a thousand years becomes poria. The kind that clasps a root and is light and hollow is boksin. It is gathered in the second and eighth months and all of it is dried in the shade. The good kind is as big as a three- or four-seung vessel, with the outer skin black and finely wrinkled and the inside hard and white, and shaped like a bird, a beast, a tortoise or a turtle.
Clinical note임상 주석
松脂入地千歲爲茯苓 is wrong about the mechanism and right about the association, and that is worth separating out. Poria is not transformed pine resin; it is the sclerotium of a fungus. But the fungus does live on pine, it does form its sclerotium around and on the roots of pines, and a digger looking for it does look under pines — which is exactly what this passage tells him to do. The observation that the light, hollow kind clasping a root is a different grade is likewise accurate: that is 茯神 at 1.6.1, where the sclerotium has formed around a root that is still inside it.
外皮黑細皺, 內堅白 is a good description of the drug as it is sold: a black, wrinkled rind over a dense white interior. 形如鳥獸龜鼈 is a grading by shape with nothing behind it.
譯 1.6.4 Source원문
有白赤二種. 白者入手太陰經ㆍ足太陽經ㆍ足少陽經, 赤者入足太陰經ㆍ手太陽經ㆍ少陰經. 又云, 色白者入壬癸, 色赤者入丙丁. 《湯液》
Translation영역
There are two kinds, white and red. The white enters the hand greater-yin, foot greater-yang and foot lesser-yang channels; the red enters the foot greater-yin, hand greater-yang and lesser-yin channels. It is also said that the white-coloured enters im and gye and the red-coloured enters byeong and jeong.
Clinical note임상 주석
The white and the red are two commercial grades of the same sclerotium — the white is the inner flesh and the red the outer, pinker layer nearer the rind — and this site's materia medica keeps them as two entries, 白茯苓 and 赤茯苓, because the formulary treats them as two drugs. 壬癸 are the water stems and 丙丁 the fire stems, so the second assignment says the white belongs to water and the red to fire, which is the same division as the next passage's supplementing and draining.
譯 1.6.5 Source원문
白色者補, 赤色者㵼. 《本草》
Translation영역
The white-coloured supplements and the red-coloured drains.
譯 1.6.6 Source원문
凢用去皮爲末, 水飛浮去赤膜, 晒乾用, 免致損目. 陰虛人勿用. 《入門》
Translation영역
Whenever it is used, remove the skin and powder it, levigate it in water and float off the red membrane, then sun-dry it and use it, which avoids causing damage to the eyes. A person with yin vacuity must not use it.
Clinical note임상 주석
Two cautions from the book, and the second is the clinically live one. 水飛浮去赤膜 … 免致損目 — levigating the powder in water to float off the red membrane, so as to avoid damaging the eyes — is a processing instruction tied to a specific harm, and it is the kind of statement worth recording even when the mechanism is obscure. Levigation is a real and still-used technique for separating a fine powder from coarser material by suspension; what the discarded red membrane was thought to do to the eyes is not explained.
陰虛人勿用, a person with yin vacuity must not use it, is a genuine contraindication within the book's own system and it follows from the pharmacology: this is a drug that moves water out, and in a patient already dry that is the wrong direction. The modern equivalent is straightforward — a diuretic given to a volume-depleted patient, or to an elderly patient on an angiotensin-converting-enzyme inhibitor and a thiazide, is how acute kidney injury and hyponatraemia happen.
1.6.1 Poria with Hostwood 茯神
譯 1.6.1.1 Source원문
性平, 味甘, 無毒. 療風眩風虛, 止驚悸, 治健忘, 開心益智, 安魂魄, 養精神, 安神定志, 主驚癎.
Translation영역
Its nature is balanced, its flavour sweet, and it is without toxicity. It treats wind dizziness and wind vacuity, checks fright palpitations, treats forgetfulness, opens the heart and benefits the wits, quiets the hon and baek souls, nourishes the essence-spirit, quiets the spirit and settles the mind, and governs fright epilepsy.
Clinical note임상 주석
茯神 is pharmacopoeial and it is the spirit-quieting member of the poria pair: where 茯苓 leads with the stomach and the water, this leads with 驚悸, 健忘, 安神定志 and 驚癎, and the formulary follows that — 105 ingredient rows, concentrated in the heart and spirit formulas. This site's table files 白茯神 and 茯神心 against it.
驚癎, fright epilepsy, is the one indication here that needs translating into modern terms carefully. In a child it covers both febrile convulsions, which are common and usually benign, and epilepsy, which is not; and the sudden jerk on falling asleep that frightens a parent is neither. A first seizure needs assessment, and recurrent seizures need an anticonvulsant — a quieting-the-spirit drug is not a substitute, and the gap between the two is measured in injuries and in status epilepticus.
譯 1.6.1.2 Source원문
茯苓乃採斫訖多年松根之氣所生. 盖其氣味噎欝未絶, 故爲是物. 其津氣盛者, 方發泄於外, 結爲茯苓; 雖有津氣而不甚盛, 止能結伏於本根, 故曰茯神. 《本草》
Translation영역
Poria is engendered by the qi of a pine root that has been cut and felled for many years. The point is that its qi and flavour are choked and pent up and not yet finished, and so this thing comes to be. Where the fluid-qi is abundant it breaks out to the outside and binds into poria; where there is fluid-qi but not greatly abundant it can only bind and lie hidden at the root itself, and so it is called boksin, hidden spirit.
Clinical note임상 주석
The etymology is the Bencao's and the explanation is a fluid theory rather than a mycology, but the distinction being drawn is the real one: 茯神 is the sclerotium that has formed around the pine root and still has the root running through it, which is why the drug is sold with a visible wooden core and why this site's materia medica gives its Latin as Poria cum Radice Pini. 伏, lying hidden, is the character behind both names.
譯 1.6.1.3 Source원문
松木斫不再抽芽, 其根不死, 津液下流, 故生茯苓. 茯神因用治心腎, 通津液. 《入門》
Translation영역
When a pine is felled it does not shoot again, yet its root does not die, and the fluid runs downward — and so poria is engendered. Boksin is accordingly used to treat the heart and kidney and to free the fluids.
Clinical note임상 주석
This is the observation underneath the theory, and it is sound: a cut pine stump does not coppice, and the fungus fruits on and in the dying root system over years. The therapeutic conclusion — heart and kidney, which is to say the spirit and the water — is drawn from the image of the fluid running downward rather than from anything observed in a patient, but it is the reason 茯神 sits in the heart formulas and 茯苓 in the water ones.
1.7 Amber 琥珀
譯 1.7.1 Source원문
性平, 味甘, 無毒. 安五藏, 定魂魄, 殺精魅邪鬼, 治産後血疹痛, 利水道, 通五淋, 明目磨瞖.
Translation영역
Its nature is balanced, its flavour sweet, and it is without toxicity. It quiets the five viscera, settles the hon and baek souls, kills spectres, bewitchments, evils and ghosts, treats postpartum blood rash and pain, disinhibits the waterways, frees the five dribbling blockages, and brightens the eyes and grinds away corneal film.
Clinical note임상 주석
Amber is neither a plant nor a mineral, and this entry sits in the woods chapter for a reason the book itself gives three passages below: it comes out of pines. It is fossil conifer resin, tens of millions of years polymerised, and the Bogam is placing it with 茯苓 and 松脂 as one of the three things that pine leaves behind — which, for a 1613 classification without a geology, is a remarkably good guess.
The indications split in two. 安五藏, 定魂魄, 殺精魅邪鬼 is the apotropaic and spirit-quieting register, and 琥珀 is still in formulas of that kind — 琥珀抱龍丸 for childhood fright and convulsion is the best known. 利水道, 通五淋 is the other half, for urinary dribbling and stone, and 琥珀散 is built on it. The materia medica carries it with 47 ingredient rows.
Modern reading. Amber is succinic-acid-bearing fossil resin: hard, amorphous, essentially insoluble in water and in gastric acid, and chemically inert. Ground amber swallowed in a pill passes through. There is no demonstrated pharmacology and no demonstrated toxicity either, and the honest statement is that it is very unlikely to do anything at all. Two practical notes. The commercial problem with amber has always been counterfeiting — copal, glass, phenolic resin and polyester are all sold as it, and the modern fakes are the ones that could carry something harmful. And 明目磨瞖, grinding away corneal film, means abrading the eye with a hard powder, which must not be done: 瞖 covers corneal scar, pterygium and cataract, and a mechanical abrasive on the cornea causes ulceration and loss of sight. Cataract is treated surgically and the operation is one of the most effective in medicine.
磨瞖 aside, the other indication to read carefully is 産後血疹痛. Pain and a rash after childbirth is a presentation that includes puerperal sepsis, and fever with abdominal pain in the first weeks postpartum is an emergency.
譯 1.7.2 Source원문
如血色, 熟於布上拭摩, 吸得芥者爲真. 凢用另搗如粉, 重篩用. 《本草》
Translation영역
It is the colour of blood; the genuine kind, well rubbed and polished on cloth, will pick up mustard seed. Whenever it is used it is pounded separately to a flour and sifted twice over.
Clinical note임상 주석
This is a test for authenticity that works, and it is the oldest observation in the history of electricity. Rubbing amber on cloth charges it triboelectrically and it will then lift chaff, straw and small seeds — which is precisely what 熟於布上拭摩, 吸得芥者爲真 says to do. The Greeks made the same observation about the same material, and their word for amber, ēlektron, is where the word electricity comes from. The Bogam is using it as a trade test to distinguish real amber from stone and glass, and as a trade test it is a good one, because the common substitutes of the period did not hold a charge in the same way.
另搗如粉, 重篩 — pounded separately and twice sifted — is the processing that any hard insoluble material needs if it is to be swallowed at all, and it is the same instruction given for cinnabar and for pearl.
譯 1.7.3 Source원문
茯苓ㆍ琥珀皆自松出而所稟各異. 茯苓生成於陰, 琥珀生於陽而成於陰, 故皆治榮而安心利水. 《入門》
Translation영역
Poria and amber both come out of the pine, yet what they receive is different in each. Poria is engendered and completed in the yin; amber is engendered in the yang and completed in the yin. So both of them treat the construction, and quiet the heart and disinhibit water.
Clinical note임상 주석
皆自松出 — both come out of the pine — is the sentence that explains why amber is filed in this chapter and under this part of it, four entries after 松脂 and one after 茯苓. The reasoning is that poria forms underground in the dark and amber forms from resin that flowed in the light and then was buried, and that the shared pine origin explains the shared action on the construction, the heart and the water. The pharmacology is invented; the classification is better than it looks, since amber genuinely is conifer resin and poria genuinely is a pine-root organism.
1.8 Elm Bark 楡皮
`느릅나모겁질` 은 `느릅` + `나모`(나무) + `겁질`(껍질)이고 셋 다 지금 말이다 — `겁질 > 껍질` 은 어두 된소리되기의 흔한 꼴이고 이 문에 네 번 나온다(楡皮ㆍ黃蘗ㆍ 桑根白皮, 그리고 木部 뒤쪽의 여러 자리). `느릅나무` 는 지금도 *Ulmus* 속의 표준 우리말 이름이므로 **향명이 속(屬)까지 그대로 확인해 준다.** 다만 어느 종인지는 말해 주지 않는다 — 우리나라에서 약으로 쓰는 것은 대개 *Ulmus davidiana* var. *japonica*(느릅나무)와 *U. macrocarpa*(왕느릅나무)이고, 본문의 `二月採皮取白` (속껍질의 흰 부분을 취한다)이 가리키는 것은 두 종에 다 있는 점액질 내피다.
譯 1.8.1 Source원문
性平, 味甘, 無毒. 性滑利. 主大小便不通, 利水道, 除腸胃邪𤍠, 消浮腫, 利五淋, 治不眠, 療齁.
Translation영역
Its nature is balanced, its flavour sweet, and it is without toxicity. Its nature is slippery and disinhibiting. It governs stool and urine that will not pass, disinhibits the waterways, dispels evil heat from intestines and stomach, disperses puffy swelling, frees the five dribbling blockages, treats sleeplessness, and treats snoring.
Clinical note임상 주석
性滑利, slippery and disinhibiting, is the whole pharmacology of this drug in three characters and it is accurate. Elm inner bark is loaded with mucilage — the same material that gives slippery elm, Ulmus rubra, its English name and its place in Western herbal practice. A mucilage does three things: it lubricates and bulks the stool, which is 大小便不通; it coats and soothes an inflamed mucosal surface, which is 除腸胃邪𤍠; and it holds water. Every indication in the line except the last two follows from that.
The materia medica carries this as 楡白皮, Ulmi Cortex, and the pairing of the headword 楡皮 with the table's 楡白皮 is one of the true short-form pairs in this chapter — the second passage's 採皮取白, take the bark and take the white of it, is the book's own warrant for the longer name.
Modern reading. Elm inner bark is food as well as drug: 느릅나무 떡 and elm-bark noodles are made from it in Korea, and it is sold as 유근피 in enormous quantity for gastritis and for rhinitis. At food doses it is benign. The one systematic caution for any bulk mucilage is that it should be taken with plenty of water and not swallowed dry — a mucilage that swells in the oesophagus can obstruct it — and that it can slow the absorption of other oral drugs taken at the same time, so a two-hour separation from any medicine that matters is sensible.
療齁, treating snoring, is the oddest indication here and the one worth stopping at. Snoring with daytime somnolence is obstructive sleep apnoea, which carries hypertension, arrhythmia and road-traffic risk, and it is diagnosed by sleep study and treated with continuous positive airway pressure or a mandibular device. 不眠 and 齁 appearing together in one line is, read charitably, the Bogam noticing that the two go together — which they do, though not in a way a mucilage can help.
譯 1.8.2 Source원문
生山中處處有之. 二月採皮取白, 暴乾. 三月採實作醬, 食甚香美. 《本草》
Translation영역
It grows in the mountains and is found everywhere. In the second month the bark is gathered and the white taken from it, and dried in the sun. In the third month the fruit is gathered and made into a fermented paste, which is very fragrant and good to eat.
Clinical note임상 주석
採皮取白 is the instruction that makes this drug what it is: the outer rhytidome is scraped away and only the white inner bark — the mucilage-bearing phloem — is kept. 實作醬 is the elm-seed paste, 느릅장, a real Korean and Chinese ferment; the same elm fruit appears later in this chapter as its own headword, 蕪荑, the pounded and fermented seed of the large-fruited elm.
1.9 Sour Jujube Seed 酸棗仁
`묏대쵸ᄡᅵ` = `묏`(뫼 + 관형격 ㅅ, 곧 「산의」) + `대쵸`(대추) + `ᄡᅵ`(씨). 셋 다 지금 말로 이어진다 — `대쵸 > 대추`, `ᄡᅵ > 씨` 는 ㅄ 계 어두자음군이 된소리로 바뀐 꼴이다. `묏대추` 는 지금도 *Ziziphus jujuba* var. *spinosa* 의 표준 우리말 이름(묏대추나무ㆍ멧대추나무)이고, **향명이 본문의 식물 기술을 그대로 받는 자리**다 — 본문이 `狀如大棗樹而不至高大, 其實極小`(대추나무 같으나 크게 자라지 않고 열매가 아주 작다)고 적은 것이 곧 `묏대추`, 산에 나는 작은 대추다. 果部의 `大棗` 와 한 종의 두 변종이라는 것까지 이름이 말해 준다.
譯 1.9.1 Source원문
性平, 味甘, 無毒. 主煩心不得眠, 臍上下痛, 血泄虛汗, 益肝氣, 堅筋骨, 令人肥健, 又五筋骨風.
Translation영역
Its nature is balanced, its flavour sweet, and it is without toxicity. It governs vexation of the heart with inability to sleep, pain above and below the navel, flux of blood and vacuity sweating; it boosts the liver qi, strengthens sinew and bone, makes a person stout and sturdy, and also governs wind in the sinews and bones.
Clinical note임상 주석
煩心不得眠 is the indication this drug is still prescribed for, and 酸棗仁 is the chief of 酸棗仁湯 and of 歸脾湯's relatives for exactly that. It is pharmacopoeial, it carries 62 ingredient rows in this book, and the studied constituents — the saponin jujubosides and the flavone C-glycoside spinosin — do have sedative and anxiolytic activity in animal models. It is one of the better-supported hypnotic drugs in the traditional materia medica, which is not a high bar but is worth saying.
Modern reading. Safe at ordinary doses; the seed is also eaten. The honest caution is about what insomnia is. Chronic insomnia responds better to cognitive behavioural therapy for insomnia than to any hypnotic, herbal or pharmaceutical, and the gains last longer; and insomnia that is new, severe, or accompanied by early-morning waking and anhedonia is often depression, in which case treating the sleep alone leaves the illness. Insomnia with snoring and daytime sleepiness is sleep apnoea, as at 1.8 above. A sedating herb added on top of a benzodiazepine, a Z-drug or an antihistamine compounds the sedation, and in an older patient that is a fall and a fracture.
譯 1.9.2 Source원문
生山中, 狀如大棗樹而不至高大, 其實極小. 八月採實取核. 《本草》
Translation영역
It grows in the mountains; it is shaped like the jujube tree but does not grow tall and large, and its fruit is extremely small. In the eighth month the fruit is gathered and the stone taken from it.
譯 1.9.3 Source원문
血不歸脾而睡臥不寧者, 宜用此大補心脾, 則血歸脾而五藏安和, 睡臥自安矣. 凢使破核取仁, 睡多則生用, 不得睡則炒熟, 再蒸半日, 去皮尖, 硏用. 《入門》
Translation영역
When the blood does not return to the spleen and sleep is unquiet, this should be used to greatly supplement heart and spleen; then the blood returns to the spleen, the five viscera are quiet and harmonious, and sleep settles of itself. Whenever it is used, break the stone and take the kernel; for too much sleep use it raw, and for sleeplessness roast it done, then steam it again for half a day, remove the skin and tip, grind it and use it.
Clinical note임상 주석
睡多則生用, 不得睡則炒熟 — raw for too much sleep, roasted for sleeplessness — is one drug sent in opposite directions by its processing, and the Bogam states the rule flatly. This is the single clearest example in the chapter of 修治 being treated as determining the action rather than merely purifying the drug, and the same claim is made for 酸棗仁 in the Chinese literature to this day. Whether roasting actually reverses the pharmacology is unknown and unlikely; what roasting demonstrably does is break down the saponins somewhat and make the kernel grindable. A practitioner relying on the distinction should know that it rests on this passage and not on measurement.
血不歸脾 is the pattern of 歸脾湯, and the modern conditions it most often covers are iron-deficiency anaemia with fatigue and poor sleep, and depressive illness. The first is diagnosed with a full blood count and ferritin and treated with iron and by finding the source of the loss.
1.10 Phellodendron Bark 黃蘗
`황벽나못겁질` = `황벽나모`(황벽나무) + 관형격 `ㅅ` + `겁질`(껍질). `황벽` 은 한자 `黃蘗` 의 음을 그대로 읽은 것이고, `황벽나무` 는 지금도 *Phellodendron amurense* 의 표준 우리말 이름이다(`황벽나무`ㆍ`황병나무` 로도 적는다). 곧 이 향명은 **고유어 이름이 아니라 한자 이름의 우리 음**이므로 종을 가리는 데 새로 보태 주는 것은 없으나, 본문의 `俗名黃栢`(세간에서 黃栢이라 부른다)과 짝이 되어 `蘗`ㆍ`栢`ㆍ`柏` 셋이 한 나무를 가리킨다는 것을 확인해 준다. `蘗` 은 `bg.VAR` 이 접지 않는 글자이므로 전사본 글자대로 싣고, 약재표에는 `黃柏` 꼴로 들어 있다 (별칭표가 `黃栢`ㆍ`黃蘗` 둘을 다 그 항목에 걸어 두었다).
譯 1.10.1 Source원문
性寒, 味苦, 無毒. 主五藏腸胃中結𤍠ㆍ黃疸ㆍ腸痔, 療泄痢, 女子漏下赤白, 陰蝕瘡, 殺疳虫, 疥癬, 治目𤍠赤痛ㆍ口瘡, 除骨蒸勞𤍠.
Translation영역
Its nature is cold, its flavour bitter, and it is without toxicity. It governs bound heat in the five viscera and the intestines and stomach, jaundice and intestinal haemorrhoids; it treats diarrhoea and dysentery, red and white discharge in women, eroding genital sores, kills gam-worms, treats scab and lichen, treats hot red painful eyes and mouth sores, and dispels steaming-bone taxation heat.
Clinical note임상 주석
This is berberine, and the drug is in heavy use: 277 ingredient rows in this book, pharmacopoeial everywhere, and one of the three 黃 bitter-cold drugs with coptis and scutellaria. Phellodendron amurense bark carries berberine at a few per cent along with palmatine and jatrorrhizine, and berberine has genuine antibacterial, antidiarrhoeal and glucose-lowering activity — it is the one constituent in this chapter with a real modern pharmacology and a real modern problem list.
黃疸 — jaundice — is the indication that carries the most important caution in this entry, and it runs the opposite way from what the entry implies. Berberine displaces bilirubin from its binding sites on albumin. In a neonate, unbound bilirubin crosses the immature blood-brain barrier and deposits in the basal ganglia, and that is kernicterus: permanent choreoathetoid cerebral palsy, sensorineural deafness and gaze palsy. The effect has been shown in vitro and in animals and the risk is taken seriously enough that berberine-containing drugs are contraindicated in the newborn and in pregnancy near term; in parts of China where berberine was given for neonatal jaundice the association with kernicterus was the reason the practice stopped. Neonatal jaundice is managed by measuring the bilirubin against a treatment threshold, phototherapy, and exchange transfusion where needed. A berberine-bearing drug given to a jaundiced newborn can convert a treatable condition into lifelong brain injury, and this is the clearest paediatric contraindication in the whole chapter. It is also the basis of the general rule against 黃蘗 and 黃連 in infants and in breastfeeding.
Two further interactions worth holding. Berberine inhibits CYP3A4 and CYP2D6 and is a P-glycoprotein substrate and inhibitor, so it raises levels of cyclosporine — this is documented in transplant patients — and potentially of other narrow-margin substrates. And berberine lowers blood glucose with an effect size comparable to low-dose metformin, so a patient on a sulfonylurea or insulin who starts a berberine-bearing formula can become hypoglycaemic.
黃疸 in an adult, meanwhile, is obstruction, hepatitis, haemolysis or malignancy until proved otherwise, and it needs liver function tests and imaging.
譯 1.10.2 Source원문
生山中處處有之. 五月六月採皮, 去皺麄, 暴乾. 《本草》
Translation영역
It grows in the mountains and is found everywhere. In the fifth and sixth months the bark is gathered, the wrinkled coarse layer removed, and it is dried in the sun.
Clinical note임상 주석
生山中處處有之 is why this entry is not marked 唐 — Phellodendron amurense is native to Korea and northern Manchuria, and the Korean drug was the one used. 去皺麄 is removal of the thick, corky outer bark, which is what makes the tree's English name the Amur cork tree; the inner bark is the bright yellow layer the drug is named for.
譯 1.10.3 Source원문
俗名黃栢. 鮮黃色厚者佳. 足少陰ㆍ手厥陰本經藥, 足太陽引經藥也. 又㵼膀胱火, 亦治龍火, 有㵼火補陰之功. 《丹心》
Translation영역
Its common name is hwangbaek. The kind of a fresh yellow colour and thick is the good one. It is a channel drug of the foot lesser-yin and hand terminal-yin, and a channel-conducting drug for the foot greater-yang. It also drains bladder fire and treats dragon fire, and has the power of draining fire and supplementing the yin.
Clinical note임상 주석
俗名黃栢 is the book telling us that the drug trade used a different graph from the one the headword uses, and this site's alias table carries both — 黃栢 and 黃蘗 against the entry written 黃柏. 鮮黃色厚者佳 is a grading rule that is also a potency rule, since the yellow is the berberine.
㵼火補陰 — draining fire and supplementing the yin — is the pairing that puts this drug with 知母 in 知柏地黃丸 and in 大補陰丸, and 龍火, dragon fire, is the ministerial fire of the kidney stirring out of place. 治目𤍠赤痛 at the headword and 口瘡 are the topical uses; a yellow bitter astringent on an aphthous ulcer is reasonable, and on an acutely red painful eye it is not — a red painful eye with reduced vision is acute angle-closure glaucoma, keratitis, uveitis or scleritis, and it is a same-day ophthalmic referral.
譯 1.10.4 Source원문
銅刀削去麄皮, 蜜水浸半日, 取出灸乾用. 又云, 入下部𥂁酒炒; 火盛者童便浸蒸. 《入門》
Translation영역
With a copper knife pare away the coarse bark, steep it in honey water for half a day, take it out, roast it dry and use it. It is also said that for the lower part it is stir-fried with salted wine, and where fire is exuberant it is steeped in boys' urine and steamed.
譯 1.10.5 Source원문
銅刀切片, 蜜炒ㆍ酒炒ㆍ人乳汁炒ㆍ童便炒, 或生用, 大治陰虛. 《回春》
Translation영역
With a copper knife cut it into slices, and stir-fry it with honey, with wine, with human milk or with boys' urine, or else use it raw: it greatly treats yin vacuity.
Clinical note임상 주석
Five processings for one drug, and the logic is consistent across them: honey and milk moderate a bitter cold drug, wine carries it upward and outward, salt directs it downward to the kidney and bladder, and the raw drug is the coldest. The insistence on a copper and not an iron knife recurs through this chapter — at 1.17 as well — and the reasoning is that iron blackens a tannin- or alkaloid-rich bark on contact, which it does.
童便, boys' urine, is a human-derived material and is dealt with in the 人部 of this chapter; it is not used, and nothing recommends it. 人乳汁, human milk, is the same. Where a formula calls for either, the processing step is the thing to leave out.
1.10.1 Phellodendron Root 根
譯 1.10.1.1 Source원문
名檀桓. 主心腹百病, 久服輕身延年. 《本草》
Translation영역
It is called danhwan. It governs the hundred illnesses of the heart and abdomen, and taken over a long time it lightens the body and lengthens the years.
Clinical note임상 주석
主心腹百病 — the hundred illnesses of the heart and abdomen — is the formula the Bencao uses when it has nothing specific to record, and 久服輕身延年 is the longevity tag. The name 檀桓 appears nowhere else in the Bogam and the root names no ingredient in any of its prescriptions, so there is nothing here to link and nothing in modern use. The root bark of Phellodendron carries the same berberine as the stem bark and the caution at 1.10 applies to it unchanged.
1.11 Paper Mulberry Fruit 楮實
`닥나모여름` = `닥나모`(닥나무) + `여름`(열매). `닥나무` 는 지금도 *Broussonetia kazinoki* / *B. papyrifera* 의 표준 우리말 이름이고 **한지(韓紙)의 그 닥**이다. 이 자리는 향명과 본문이 서로를 받쳐 주는 가장 깨끗한 자리 가운데 하나다 — 본문이 `取皮以作紙者`(껍질로 종이를 만드는 것)라 적고, 향명이 `닥`, 곧 종이의 재료가 되는 그 나무라고 말한다. 한자 `楮` 만으로는 뽕나무붙이 가운데 어느 것인지 흐릴 수 있는데(桑ㆍ構ㆍ楮가 옛 문헌에서 섞인다) 향명이 그것을 막는다. 아래 둘째 구절의 `葉有瓣曰楮, 無瓣曰穀` 이 그 흐림을 책 스스로 가르는 자리다.
譯 1.11.1 Source원문
性寒, 味甘, 無毒. 主陰痿, 壯筋骨, 助陽氣, 補虛勞, 煖腰膝, 益顔色, 充肌膚, 明目.
Translation영역
Its nature is cold, its flavour sweet, and it is without toxicity. It governs yin wilting, strengthens sinew and bone, assists the yang qi, supplements vacuity taxation, warms the lumbus and knees, benefits the complexion, fills out the flesh and skin, and brightens the eyes.
Clinical note임상 주석
性寒 and 助陽氣, 煖腰膝 in the same line is a contradiction, and it is the book's own. A drug declared cold in nature is then credited with assisting the yang and warming the lumbus and knees, which is what a warm drug does. The Bencao carried both and the Bogam printed both; it is not resolved here and should not be. The same tension runs through the modern Chinese description of 楮實子, which is classified as cold and used in yang-supplementing formulas for 陰痿.
The materia medica carries this as 楮實子 with 10 ingredient rows and files the short headword 楮實 against it as a variant.
Modern reading. Broussonetia fruit is edible, the fleshy orange syncarp is eaten, and there is nothing toxic recorded for it. 陰痿 is erectile dysfunction, and this is the point at which the entry needs a modern reading rather than a caution: erectile dysfunction is a vascular symptom, and new erectile dysfunction in a man over forty is an independent marker of endothelial disease that often precedes coronary events by years. It warrants blood pressure, lipids, glucose and a medication review — many antihypertensives and most antidepressants cause it — rather than a tonic. Treating it as 虛勞 and stopping there misses the diagnosis that matters.
譯 1.11.2 Source원문
處處有之. 取皮以作紙者, 皮斑者是楮, 皮白者是穀. 又曰, 葉有瓣曰楮, 無瓣曰穀. 八月九月採實, 暴乾. 《本草》
Translation영역
It is found everywhere. Of those whose bark is taken to make paper, the one with mottled bark is jeo and the one with white bark is gok. It is also said that the one whose leaves have lobes is jeo and the one without lobes is gok. In the eighth and ninth months the fruit is gathered and dried in the sun.
Clinical note임상 주석
This is the Bogam sorting two look-alike trees by two independent characters, and both characters are real. Mottled against white bark, and lobed against entire leaves: Broussonetia papyrifera is notoriously variable in leaf, with deeply three- to five-lobed leaves on young and vigorous shoots and unlobed ovate leaves on mature flowering wood, and that heteroblasty is exactly what the two names are being hung on. Whether 楮 and 穀 are two species or two growth forms of one is a question the passage cannot settle and neither can modern taxonomy cleanly, since B. papyrifera and B. kazinoki hybridise and the Korean 닥나무 of the paper trade is often the hybrid.
What matters for a reader is that the sorting rule is given at all. 取皮以作紙者 also fixes the identification independently of both: this is the tree whose bark makes paper, which in Korea is 닥 and nothing else.
譯 1.11.3 Source원문
水浸去浮, 酒浸蒸, 焙乾用. 《入門》
Translation영역
Steep it in water and discard what floats, steep it in wine and steam it, then dry it over a fire and use it.
Clinical note임상 주석
去浮, discarding what floats, is a real and useful selection step for any seed drug: empty, immature and insect-damaged seeds float and sound ones sink, so a water float separates the inert fraction out. It is the same principle as the winnowing step for 酸棗仁.
1.11.1 Paper Mulberry Leaf 葉
譯 1.11.1.1 Source원문
主刺風身痒ㆍ惡瘡, 生肌. 可作浴湯. 《本草》
Translation영역
It governs stabbing wind with itching of the body, and malign sores, and engenders flesh. It can be made into a bath.
Clinical note임상 주석
A medicinal bath for generalised itch. 刺風身痒 is pruritus with a pricking quality, which in practice is most often xerotic eczema, scabies, urticaria or the itch of cholestasis or renal failure, and the four are distinguished by history and examination rather than by the character of the itch. A bland emollient bath helps the first; scabies needs permethrin for the patient and the household; generalised itch without a rash needs liver and renal function and a full blood count, because it is a presenting symptom of cholestasis, iron deficiency, thyroid disease and lymphoma.
This leaf names no ingredient in any of the book's prescriptions. 楮葉 does appear once, in 三仙丸, but there it is the covering laid over the drug to make it ferment and go yellow — 以楮葉或艾葉覆之, 令發黃色 — which is a step in the processing and not an ingredient, so it is not grounds for an entry in the materia medica.
1.11.2 Paper Mulberry Bark 樹皮
譯 1.11.2.1 Source원문
治水腫脹滿, 逐水, 利小便. 《本草》
Translation영역
It treats water swelling with distension and fullness, expels water, and disinhibits urine.
Clinical note임상 주석
The bark of the tree whose fibre makes paper, used as a diuretic. It names no ingredient in the book's prescriptions and has no entry in the materia medica.
水腫脹滿 — generalised oedema with abdominal distension — is the presentation in this chapter that most often means something serious, and it recurs at 1.11.2, 1.17 and 1.17.5. Ascites with peripheral oedema is decompensated cirrhosis, heart failure, nephrotic syndrome or a malignancy, and all four are diagnosed with examination, albumin, creatinine, urinalysis and imaging. A plant diuretic in that setting is at best weak and at worst dangerous, because the common error in treating ascites is to take fluid off faster than it can be mobilised from the peritoneum, which precipitates renal failure.
1.11.3 Mulberry-Paper Ash 楮紙
譯 1.11.3.1 Source원문
燒灰酒調服, 能止血暈ㆍ血崩ㆍ金瘡出血不止. 《入門》
Translation영역
Burn it to ash, mix it with wine and take it: it can stop blood dizziness, flooding of blood, and bleeding from a metal wound that will not stop.
Clinical note임상 주석
This leaf is paper — manufactured paper, burnt — and it is the clearest case in this part of the chapter of a drug that has to be read as history rather than practice. Carbonised organic matter was used as a haemostatic everywhere, and the reasoning is the same one behind every 炭 drug in the Chinese materia medica: char is dry, absorbent and astringent-seeming. It has no haemostatic pharmacology.
Modern reading, and there are two separate harms here. The first is the delay: 金瘡出血不止, bleeding from a wound that will not stop, is managed by direct pressure, elevation, a pressure dressing, a tourniquet where the bleeding is from a limb and catastrophic, and transfer; 血崩, flooding, is an obstetric and gynaecological emergency managed with uterotonics, tranexamic acid, intrauterine balloon tamponade and surgery. Minutes matter in both and ash costs minutes. The second is tetanus: applying ash, soil or any unsterile powder to an open wound is one of the classical routes of Clostridium tetani inoculation, and the disease that results is the one described at 1.3.3 above. The Bogam carries both entries, a hundred pages apart in effect, and the connection between them is one the modern reader has to make.
血暈 is the faint after blood loss or after the sight of blood; the first is hypovolaemia and needs the bleeding stopped, and the second is a vasovagal syncope and needs lying down.
1.12 Dried Lacquer 乾漆
`ᄆᆞ른옷` = `ᄆᆞ른`(마른) + `옷`(옻). 둘 다 또렷하게 지금 말로 이어진다 — `ᄆᆞ르다 > 마르다` 는 아래아의 규칙적인 변화이고, **`옷` 은 입는 옷이 아니라 `옻`**이다(16세기에 종성 ㅊ이 ㅅ 으로 적히는 꼴이며 지금은 `옻`). 곧 `마른 옻`, 표제어 `乾漆` 의 축자 번역이다. **이 향명이 종을 확정해 준다** — `옻` 은 지금도 *Toxicodendron vernicifluum*(옻나무)과 그 수액을 가리키는 말이고, 따라서 이 절은 옻나무 진이 굳은 것이며 아래 임상 주석의 urushiol 이 바로 그것이다. 한자만 보고 `漆` 을 「칠(도료) 일반」으로 읽으면 이 약이 무엇인지 흐려진다.
譯 1.12.1 Source원문
性溫, 味辛, 有毒. 消瘀血, 主女人經脉不通及疝瘕, 利小腸, 去蚘虫, 破堅積, 止血暈, 殺三虫, 治傳尸勞.
Translation영역
Its nature is warm, its flavour acrid, and it is toxic. It disperses static blood, governs blocked menstruation in women and mounting conglomeration, disinhibits the small intestine, gets rid of roundworm, breaks hard accumulations, checks blood dizziness, kills the three worms, and treats corpse-transmitted taxation.
Clinical note임상 주석
有毒 — toxic — is the book's own word, and this is one of the places in the chapter where the modern account is more alarming than the classical one rather than less. 漆 is the sap of Toxicodendron vernicifluum, the lacquer tree, and its active principle is urushiol: a mixture of catechols with long unsaturated side chains, and the archetypal cause of allergic contact dermatitis. It is the same hapten family as the one in poison ivy and poison oak (Toxicodendron radicans, T. diversilobum), in the mango peel and in the cashew shell, and cross-reaction between them is the rule.
What urushiol does is sensitise. On first exposure nothing may happen; the catechol is oxidised in the skin to a quinone, binds covalently to Langerhans-cell proteins and primes a T-cell response, and on re-exposure the patient develops a delayed-type hypersensitivity reaction at twenty-four to seventy-two hours — linear and streaked vesicles, intense itch, weeping, and in heavy exposure bullae and periorbital or genital oedema that can close an eye or obstruct an airway. Sensitisation is effectively lifelong. Something on the order of two-thirds to three-quarters of people can be sensitised, which means that most patients given this drug repeatedly will eventually react to it.
And the exposure route that matters most here is ingestion. 옻닭, chicken boiled with lacquer bark, is a folk tonic in Korea, and the Korean dermatological and emergency literature carries a substantial series of cases following it: systemic contact dermatitis with a generalised maculopapular or erythrodermic eruption, in some cases progressing to Stevens–Johnson-like presentations and toxic epidermal necrolysis, together with reports of acute toxic hepatitis, acute generalised exanthematous pustulosis, and anaphylaxis with hypotension. Several patients have needed intensive care. The reaction typically begins one to three days after the meal, which means the patient has often eaten more by the time it appears, and it does not respond to antihistamines — it needs systemic corticosteroid and supportive care.
So the practical statement is this. Lacquer taken internally is a drug that causes a severe, delayed, dose-independent immunological illness in a large fraction of the people who take it, and no amount of processing removes the hapten. It should not be given. Patients who have taken 옻닭 and present days later with a widespread rash and deranged liver enzymes are a recognised and recurring clinical picture in Korea.
The indications themselves — 消瘀血, 經脉不通, 破堅積 — are the ones that put 乾漆 in the strong blood-breaking formulas, and 經脉不通 is also a pregnancy contraindication by implication. 傳尸勞, corpse-transmitted taxation, is consumption, which is tuberculosis, and tuberculosis is curable with a six-month multidrug regimen and lethal without it.
譯 1.12.2 Source원문
漆桶中自然有乾者, 狀如蜂房, 孔孔隔堅若鐵石者爲佳. 入藥須擣碎炒令烟出, 不爾損人腸胃. 素畏漆者勿服. 《本草》
Translation영역
In the lacquer bucket there is naturally some that has dried; the good kind is shaped like a wasps' nest, hole upon hole partitioned off, and hard as iron or stone. For putting into medicine it must be pounded fine and stir-fried until the smoke comes off, for otherwise it harms a person's intestines and stomach. One who has always been afraid of lacquer must not take it.
Clinical note임상 주석
素畏漆者勿服 — one who has always been afraid of lacquer must not take it — is, in six characters, a statement of individual hypersensitivity, and it is remarkable for 1613. 畏漆, fearing lacquer, is not a psychological description: it is the ordinary idiom for a person who reacts to it, and the Bogam is recording that some people cannot be given this drug at all while others can. That is allergy, identified as a constitutional and individual property, three centuries before the concept existed. The next passage goes further and offers a workaround for such a patient, which means the observation was being acted on.
炒令烟出 — stir-fried until the smoke comes off — is the one processing instruction in this chapter that makes the drug more dangerous, not less, and it has to be said plainly. The claim is that roasting prevents harm to the gut, and dry heat does polymerise and partly degrade urushiol. But burning Toxicodendron material volatilises urushiol onto the smoke particles, and inhaled urushiol is the worst exposure there is: burning poison ivy is a well-documented cause of severe facial and periorbital dermatitis, of pharyngeal and tracheobronchial involvement, and of respiratory distress requiring admission, and firefighters are specifically warned about it. A practitioner roasting dried lacquer in an enclosed room until it smokes is generating exactly that exposure for themselves and for everyone in the room. Whatever the roasting does for the patient's gut, the preparer bears the risk.
狀如蜂房, 孔孔隔堅若鐵石 is an accurate description of the dried residue in the bottom of a lacquer bucket — a hard, cellular, vesicular mass of polymerised sap.
譯 1.12.3 Source원문
性畏漆者, 入雞子淸和藥內用. 《正傳》
Translation영역
For one whose constitution fears lacquer, egg white is mixed into the medicine and so it is used.
Clinical note임상 주석
This is a documented attempt at desensitising or blocking a hypersensitivity reaction, and it should be read for what it tells us rather than for whether it works. The Yixue zhengchuan knows that some patients react, is not willing to withhold the drug, and offers a protective excipient — egg white, a protein that would in principle bind the catechol before it reaches tissue. There is no evidence that it does anything useful, and it certainly does not prevent a type IV reaction, which is cell-mediated and does not depend on free hapten in the lumen.
It also adds a second allergen. Egg white is one of the commonest food allergens in children, and giving it to a patient already identified as atopic enough to react to lacquer is a poor trade. The clinical conclusion is the one at the headword: a patient who reacts to lacquer should not be given lacquer, with or without egg.
1.12.1 Raw Lacquer 生漆
譯 1.12.1.1 Source원문
去長虫, 久服輕身耐老. 仙方有服法
Translation영역
It gets rid of long worms, and taken over a long time it lightens the body and makes one endure age. The immortals' recipes have a method of taking it.
Clinical note임상 주석
久服, taking it over a long time, is the single most dangerous instruction in this part of the chapter. Everything in the note at 1.12 applies to raw lacquer with greater force, because the urushiol is unpolymerised and at its highest concentration. Repeated exposure is precisely how sensitisation is produced: a patient who tolerates the first course is the patient most likely to have a severe reaction to the third. 久服輕身耐老 is a longevity claim attached to a potent sensitiser, and taken literally it describes a regimen for guaranteeing an eventual severe systemic contact dermatitis.
長虫 is Ascaris lumbricoides, roundworm, and it is worth saying what the alternative is: a single dose of albendazole or mebendazole clears it with near-complete efficacy and essentially no toxicity.
譯 1.12.1.2 Translation영역
It is gathered after the summer solstice.
譯 1.12.1.3 Translation영역
The nature of lacquer is altogether urgent, and whenever it is gathered perilla oil must be used to break it down.
Clinical note임상 주석
漆性並急 — the nature of lacquer is urgent — read together with the instruction to have perilla oil at hand while gathering, is an occupational safety note, and it is a correct one. Urushiol is lipophilic and almost insoluble in water, which is why rinsing with water alone spreads it rather than removing it; an oil or a surfactant does dissolve and lift it. Lacquer gatherers and lacquerware artisans kept oil beside them for exactly this reason, and in modern terms the first aid after a Toxicodendron exposure is the same principle: wash the skin within minutes with soap and copious water, or with a degreasing agent, remove and separately launder clothing, and wash anything the sap has touched, because urushiol stays active on tools, gloves and fabric for months and reinfects on contact.
譯 1.12.1.4 Source원문
凢驗漆, 以物蘸起, 細而不斷, 斷而急收, 又塗於乾竹上蔭之, 速乾者並佳. 《本草》
Translation영역
To test lacquer, dip something in and lift: good lacquer draws out fine without breaking, and when it does break snaps back sharply; and spread on dry bamboo and set in the shade, the kind that dries quickly is likewise good.
Clinical note임상 주석
Both tests are rheological and both are sound. Drawing a fine unbroken thread that snaps back is high molecular weight and low water content; drying fast in the shade is a high laccase activity, since lacquer cures not by evaporation but by enzymatic oxidative polymerisation, which needs humidity and not heat. That is why the drying is done 蔭之, in the shade, and why a lacquer room is kept damp — the Bogam has the craft right.
譯 1.12.1.5 Source원문
蟹黃能化漆爲水, 故解漆毒. 《入門》
Translation영역
Crab roe can turn lacquer to water, and so it resolves lacquer toxin.
Clinical note임상 주석
This is the book's own antidote for its own drug, and it is worth recording even though it does not work. 蟹黃 is the hepatopancreas and roe of the crab, and the claim that it liquefies lacquer is old and widespread in East Asian craft literature; the usual explanation offered is that it interferes with the polymerisation. There is no evidence that it affects urushiol in tissue, and a type IV hypersensitivity reaction cannot be antidoted once the T-cell response is under way.
What actually treats lacquer dermatitis. Early and thorough washing with soap and water, which only helps in the first minutes to hours. Then, for established disease: potent topical corticosteroid for localised eruptions, and a tapering course of oral prednisolone over two to three weeks for extensive involvement — a short course relapses. Cool compresses and oral antihistamines for the itch, though antihistamines do little for this itch. Antibiotics only for secondary infection. And for the systemic form after ingestion, admission, systemic steroid, fluids and monitoring of liver function. Crab roe is not part of that, and a patient who eats shellfish as an antidote while developing a systemic contact dermatitis has added an anaphylaxis risk to it.
1.13 Acanthopanax Bark 五加皮
`ᄯᅡᆺ둘훕` = `ᄯᅡᆺ`(ᄯᅡ + 관형격 ㅅ, 곧 「땅의」; `ᄯᅡ > 땅/땅의` → `땃-`) + `둘훕`(두릅). `둘훕 > 두룹 > 두릅` 은 菜部 1.55 `木頭菜` 의 향명 `둘훕` 에서 이미 가려 둔 꼴이고(ㅎ 이 약해지며 앞 음절로 흡수된다), 19세기 문헌에 `두룹` 이 보인다. 곧 `땃두릅`, 「땅에 붙어 나는 두릅」이다.
**그런데 이 향명은 지금 말로 그대로 읽으면 다른 식물에 닿는다 — 이 문에서 가장 조심해야 할 자리의 하나다.** 현대 한국어의 `땃두릅나무` 는 *Oplopanax elatus* 이고, 이 절의 `五加皮` 는 *Eleutherococcus*(= *Acanthopanax*) 속, 지금 이름 `오갈피나무`다. 둘은 같은 두릅나무과(Araliaceae)이지만 **속이 다르다.** 16세기의 `둘훕` 은 두릅나무과를 두루 가리키는 넓은 말이었고, 그 넓은 말이 뒷세상에 와서 *Oplopanax* 쪽에 붙어 굳은 것이다. 그러므로 **이 향명은 과(科)까지는 바르게 가려 주지만 속(屬)은 가려 주지 못하고, 지금 이름으로 앞질러 읽으면 틀린 식물에 닿는다.** 아래 본문의 `五葉生枝端`(잎 다섯이 가지 끝에 난다)과 `葉五出者佳` 가 가리키는 장상복엽 다섯 쪽은 *Eleutherococcus sessiliflorus* 쪽 기술이다.
譯 1.13.1 Source원문
性溫一云微寒, 味辛苦, 無毒. 補五勞七傷, 益氣添精, 堅筋骨, 强志意, 男子陰痿, 女子陰痒, 療腰脊痛ㆍ兩脚疼痺ㆍ骨節攣急ㆍ痿躄, 小兒三歲不能行, 服此便行走.
Translation영역
Its nature is warm one says slightly cold, its flavour acrid and bitter, and it is without toxicity. It supplements the five taxations and seven damages, boosts the qi and adds to the essence, strengthens sinew and bone, and strengthens the will; for yin wilting in men and genital itch in women; it treats pain in the lumbus and spine, aching impediment of both legs, hypertonicity of the bones and joints and wilting-lameness; and where a child of three cannot walk, taking this makes it walk at once.
Clinical note임상 주석
五加皮 is the root and stem bark of Eleutherococcus sessiliflorus and its relatives, it is pharmacopoeial in Korea as 오가피, and it is in ordinary use for the indications given here — lumbar and lower-limb pain, joint stiffness, weakness of the legs. The materia medica carries it with 9 ingredient rows. In itself it is a safe drug.
Two things in this entry are dangerous, and neither is the drug itself.
The first is substitution, and it has killed people. In the Chinese drug trade 五加皮 has for a long time been supplied as 香加皮, Periplocae Cortex, the root bark of Periploca sepium — a different family, Apocynaceae, which carries the cardiac glycoside periplocin. Periplocin is a digitalis-type cardioactive steroid, and poisonings from Periploca bark sold or dispensed as 五加皮 are documented in the Chinese literature with arrhythmia, heart block and deaths. The two barks look similar and the fraudulent one is aromatic, which is where 香 comes from. A practitioner sourcing 五加皮 needs to know that 南五加皮 (the genuine Eleutherococcus) and 北五加皮 or 香加皮 (Periploca) are two different drugs with the same short name, that the Chinese pharmacopoeia separated them precisely for this reason, and that the dose limits set for 香加皮 are low because it is cardiotoxic. This is the aristolochic-acid problem in another guise: a shared trade name carrying a lethal plant into a formula written for a safe one.
The second is the species question the Korean name raises — Eleutherococcus against Oplopanax elatus, set out in the gloss note above. These are also two different drugs sharing a name, in Korean rather than Chinese, and 땃두릅 bought on the strength of the sixteenth-century name is not what this entry describes.
小兒三歲不能行, 服此便行走 — a child of three who cannot walk will walk at once on taking this — is the claim in this entry that needs the plainest possible contradiction. A three-year-old who is not walking has a diagnosis, and the diagnoses are the ones that need finding early: cerebral palsy, Duchenne muscular dystrophy, spinal muscular atrophy, developmental dysplasia of the hip, hypothyroidism, rickets, a tethered cord, a global developmental delay with a genetic or metabolic cause. Several of these have treatments whose effectiveness depends on how early they start — corticosteroids and now disease-modifying therapy in Duchenne, nusinersen and gene therapy in spinal muscular atrophy, bracing or surgery in hip dysplasia, thyroxine in congenital hypothyroidism, vitamin D in rickets. A child in this situation needs paediatric assessment, creatine kinase, a hip examination and imaging, and developmental review. The time spent on a decoction is the one thing that cannot be got back.
譯 1.13.2 Source원문
生山野, 樹生子叢, 莖間有刺, 五葉生枝端如桃花, 有香氣. 三四月開白花, 結細靑子, 至六月漸黑色. 根若荊根, 皮黃黑, 肉白, 骨硬. 五月七月採莖, 十月採根, 陰乾. 《本草》
Translation영역
It grows in the mountains and the wild; the tree grows in small clumps and there are thorns between the stems. Five leaves grow at the twig's end like a peach blossom, and they are fragrant. In the third and fourth months it opens white flowers and sets fine green fruit, which by the sixth month gradually turns black. The root is like a vitex root, its skin yellow-black, the flesh white and the core hard. In the fifth and seventh months the stems are gathered and in the tenth month the root, and they are dried in the shade.
Clinical note임상 주석
五葉生枝端 — five leaflets at the tip of the twig — is the character the drug and the plant are named for, 五加, five additions, and it is the palmately compound leaf of Eleutherococcus. 莖間有刺, thorns between the stems, is the prickly stem of the genus. 根若荊根 compares the root to that of vitex, which is the next entry in the chapter.
譯 1.13.3 Source원문
上應五車星精而生, 故葉五出者佳. 延年不老, 仙經藥也. 《入門》
Translation영역
Above, it answers to the essence of the Five Chariots constellation and so is engendered, and therefore the one whose leaves come out in fives is the good kind. It lengthens the years and prevents ageing: it is a drug of the immortals' canon.
Clinical note임상 주석
The astrology is decoration on a sound selection rule. 葉五出者佳, the one with five leaflets is the good one, is a correct way to tell Eleutherococcus from the look-alikes a gatherer would meet — and it is worth noting that it would not distinguish it from Periploca, which is bought as bark with no leaves attached. The field character protects the gatherer and not the purchaser, which is why the adulteration at the headword happens in the market rather than in the hills.
1.14 Vitex Fruit 蔓荊實
**이 문의 향명 가운데 내가 풀지 못한 하나다.** 글자는 이미 현대 표기 꼴이므로 `hyangmyeong_mod` 에 그대로 적었으나, **`승법실` 은 지금 쓰이지 않는 죽은 낱말이고 현대 이름으로 가는 길을 보일 수 없다.** 이 나무의 표준 우리말 이름은 지금 `순비기나무`(*Vitex rotundifolia*)이고 `승법실 > 순비기` 를 잇는 음운 변화는 제시할 수 없다.
짜임도 못 가렸다. 끝 음절 `실` 은 표제어의 `實`(씨ㆍ열매)을 음으로 읽은 것이 거의 확실하므로 「승법의 씨」로 끊긴다고 보나, 앞의 `승법` 이 ⑴ 한자 이름 (향약 이름 자료에 `僧法實` 로 적힌 꼴이 있다)의 음인지, ⑵ 고유어를 차자로 적은 것인지, **둘 가운데 어느 쪽인지 이 자료만으로는 가릴 수 없다.** 이 문의 다른 향명은 모두 고유어 짜임(`소나모진`ㆍ`느릅나모겁질`)이거나 한자음이 또렷한 것 (`측백나모`ㆍ`황벽나모`)인데 이것은 둘 다 아니다. **모른다고 적는다 — 지어내지 않았다.** 종(種) 자체는 표제어 `蔓荊實` 과 본문의 식물 기술로 정해지므로 약을 가리는 데는 지장이 없다.
譯 1.14.1 Source원문
性微寒一云平, 味苦辛, 無毒. 主風頭痛ㆍ腦鳴ㆍ淚出, 明目, 堅齒, 利九竅, 長髭髮, 治濕痺拘攣, 去白虫ㆍ長虫.
Translation영역
Its nature is slightly cold one says balanced, its flavour bitter and acrid, and it is without toxicity. It governs wind headache, ringing in the head and running of the eyes; it brightens the eyes, firms the teeth, disinhibits the nine orifices, lengthens the moustache and hair, treats damp impediment with hypertonicity, and gets rid of white worms and long worms.
Clinical note임상 주석
蔓荊子 is pharmacopoeial and in current use, with 61 ingredient rows in this book, and the indications here are the ones it keeps: headache with a wind character, dizziness, eye complaints, and the heavy frontal head of upper-body wind-heat. It is the drug in 蔓荊子散 and a regular member of the head-and-eye formulas with 川芎, 白芷 and 菊花.
Modern reading. Vitex rotundifolia fruit carries iridoid glycosides (agnuside) and flavonoids (vitexicarpin/casticin); it is a mild drug with no significant recorded toxicity and nothing in the literature argues against ordinary use. One point of family housekeeping is worth making, because it generates confusion: the better-known medicinal Vitex is V. agnus-castus, chaste tree, which is sold in the West for premenstrual syndrome and cyclical mastalgia and which acts as a dopamine agonist to lower prolactin. That is a different species with a different action, and its interactions — with dopamine antagonists, and in theory with hormonal treatment — do not transfer to this one. Nothing is known about whether 蔓荊子 shares the prolactin effect; there is no evidence that it does.
腦鳴, ringing in the head, is tinnitus, and the thing not to miss is unilateral tinnitus with hearing loss, which needs audiometry and imaging for a vestibular schwannoma. 淚出 in an older patient with a persistently watering eye is usually nasolacrimal duct obstruction and is a surgical problem.
譯 1.14.2 Source원문
蔓生, 莖高四五尺, 對節生枝, 葉如杏葉, 至秋結實如梧子許而輕虛. 八九月採. 《本草》
Translation영역
It grows as a creeper, its stem four or five feet high, putting out branches at opposite nodes; the leaves are like apricot leaves, and by autumn it sets fruit about the size of a paulownia seed, light and hollow. It is gathered in the eighth and ninth months.
Clinical note임상 주석
蔓生 and 對節生枝 are accurate: Vitex rotundifolia is a prostrate, trailing shrub of coastal sand dunes — which is where it grows in Korea, all along the southern and western shores — with decussate opposite branching. 實如梧子許而輕虛, fruit the size of a paulownia seed and light and hollow, is exactly how the drug looks in the drawer: a small, dry, four-chambered drupe that rattles.
譯 1.14.3 Source원문
太陽經藥. 酒蒸晒, 搗碎用. 《入門》
Translation영역
It is a greater-yang channel drug. Steam it with wine, sun-dry it, pound it fine and use it.
Clinical note임상 주석
太陽經藥 places the drug at the back of the head and the nape, which is where the greater-yang channel runs, and that is the headache this entry is for. Crushing the fruit before decoction is not optional for a hard four-seeded drupe, and it is the step most often skipped.
1.15 Magnolia Flower Bud 辛夷
`붇곳` = `붇`(붓) + `곳`(꽃). 둘 다 또렷하게 지금 말로 이어진다 — `붇 > 붓`(종성 ㄷ > ㅅ), `곳 > 꽃`. 곧 **「붓 꽃」, 붓처럼 생긴 꽃**이다.
**그리고 이 향명은 책의 한자를 따로 확인해 주는 자리다.** 아래 세째 구절이 `北方地寒, 二月開花, 呼爲木筆` — 북쪽 추운 땅에서는 두 달에 피어 이를 `木筆` (나무 붓)이라 부른다 — 고 적는데, 향명 `붇곳` 이 바로 그 `木筆` 을 우리말로 옮긴 것이다. 피지 않은 꽃봉오리가 털에 싸여 붓끝처럼 뾰족한 모양을 두 이름이 따로 가리키고 있다. 이 문에서 향명과 한자가 서로를 받쳐 주는 가장 또렷한 자리다.
**다만 지금 말로 그대로 읽으면 전혀 다른 식물에 닿는다 — 반드시 적어 두어야 하는 자리다.** 현대 한국어의 `붓꽃` 은 *Iris*(붓꽃속)이고, 이 절의 `辛夷` 는 목련(*Magnolia*)의 꽃봉오리다. 두 이름이 같은 비유(붓 모양)에서 각각 따로 생겨 우연히 같은 꼴이 된 것이므로, **`붇곳` 을 `붓꽃` 으로 읽어 *Iris* 를 쓰면 과(科)도 목(目)도 다른 식물을 쓰게 된다.** 菜部 1.56 의 `白菜 ← 머휘` (배추가 아니라 *Petasites*)와 같은 꼴의 함정이고, 방향만 반대다.
譯 1.15.1 Source원문
性溫, 味辛, 無毒. 主風頭腦痛ㆍ面䵟, 通鼻塞涕出, 治面腫引齒痛, 明目, 生鬚髮, 作面脂生光澤.
Translation영역
Its nature is warm, its flavour acrid, and it is without toxicity. It governs wind pain in the head and brain and blemishes of the face, frees a blocked nose with running mucus, treats facial swelling drawing on toothache, brightens the eyes, engenders beard and hair, and made into a face cream gives the skin a sheen.
Clinical note임상 주석
通鼻塞涕出 — freeing a blocked nose with running mucus — is what this drug is for, and it is one of the few entries in the chapter whose indication and modern use coincide exactly. 辛夷 is the unopened flower bud of Magnolia biondii, M. denudata and relatives (in Korea often M. kobus), it is pharmacopoeial, and it is the chief of 辛夷清肺湯 and a standard member of 蒼耳散 and of the rhinitis and sinusitis formulas. The materia medica carries it with 6 ingredient rows in this book.
面腫引齒痛 — facial swelling that draws on toothache — is worth reading closely, because it is a good description of maxillary sinusitis referring pain to the upper molars, and the connection between the sinus and the tooth roots is anatomically real: the roots of the upper premolars and molars sit in or against the floor of the maxillary antrum. The Bogam has put nasal obstruction, facial swelling and upper toothache in one line, which is the clinical picture.
Modern reading. Safe at ordinary doses; the bud carries a volatile oil and lignans, and nothing of concern is recorded. Three clinical notes. Allergic rhinitis responds to intranasal corticosteroid better than to anything else available and the response takes a fortnight — a patient getting partial relief from a decoction may simply never have been offered the effective treatment. Unilateral nasal obstruction with blood-stained discharge in an adult is not rhinitis and needs nasendoscopy, because nasopharyngeal carcinoma presents that way and is substantially commoner in East Asian populations. And a patient using a topical decongestant spray for weeks has rhinitis medicamentosa, which gets worse with every dose.
譯 1.15.2 Source원문
正月二月生花, 似着毛小桃子, 色白帶紫. 當未拆時取之, 已開者劣.
Translation영역
In the first and second months it puts out flowers, like a small peach with hair stuck on it, white in colour with a purple cast. It is taken while it has not yet split; the ones already open are inferior.
Clinical note임상 주석
當未拆時取之, 已開者劣 — take it before it splits, the opened ones are inferior — is the whole of the quality control for this drug and it is still the rule. The pharmacopoeial article is the unopened bud, gathered in late winter before the flower breaks, and the modern Chinese pharmacopoeia says the same thing. 似着毛小桃子, like a small peach with hair stuck on, is the furry perulae that make the bud look like a brush tip — which is where both 木筆 and the Korean 붇곳 come from.
譯 1.15.3 Source원문
北方地寒, 二月開花, 呼爲木筆; 南方地煖, 正月間花, 呼爲迎春.
Translation영역
In the north where the land is cold it opens its flowers in the second month and is called wood-brush; in the south where the land is warm it opens in the first month and is called spring-greeter.
Clinical note임상 주석
This passage is a phenological observation and a good one: the same tree flowers a month earlier in the warm south than in the cold north, and it picked up a different name in each place. 木筆, wood-brush, is the shape of the bud; 迎春, spring-greeter, is the timing, because magnolia flowers on bare wood before the leaves and is one of the first trees of the year. Both names are still in use in Chinese, and 迎春花 has since attached itself to Jasminum nudiflorum, which is a different plant again — a second trap of the same kind as the Korean one in the gloss note above.
譯 1.15.4 Source원문
用時去心及外毛苞用之. 《本草》
Translation영역
When it is used, remove the heart and the outer hairy bracts, and then use it.
Clinical note임상 주석
This is a processing instruction that genuinely removes a hazard, and it is worth marking as such because most of them in this chapter do not. The bud of Magnolia is sheathed in perulae densely covered with long trichomes, and those hairs are a mechanical irritant: swallowed in a decoction they catch in the pharynx and cause throat irritation and cough, and the modern Chinese pharmacopoeia and the processing manuals give the same instruction — 去毛, remove the hairs — for the same reason. 去心, removing the heart, discards the inner floral parts.
The practical consequence is that a decoction made from unprocessed buds is unpleasant and irritating in a way the processed drug is not, and a patient complaining of throat scratchiness on a rhinitis formula may be reacting to the hairs rather than to the drug.
1.16 Mulberry Mistletoe 桑上寄生
Medicinal entry ᄲᅩᆼ나모우희겨으사리 뽕나무 위의 겨우살이 gyeousari, the mistletoe that lives on the mulberry `ᄲᅩᆼ나모우희겨으사리` = `ᄲᅩᆼ나모`(뽕나무) + `우희`(위에) + `겨으사리`(겨우살이). 넷 다 지금 말로 이어진다 — `ᄲ` 은 ㅅㅂ 어두자음군으로 지금 된소리 `ㅃ` 이고, `우희 > 위에`, `겨으사리 > 겨우살이` 다. 곧 표제어 `桑上寄生` 을 글자 하나하나 우리말로 옮긴 꼴이고, **이 문에서 향명이 뜻풀이 쪽에 가장 가까운 자리**다 (草部ㆍ木部의 향명은 대개 이름이고 水部ㆍ土部 쪽이 뜻풀이인데, 이것은 이름이면서 풀이다).
`겨우살이` 는 지금도 *Viscum album* var. *coloratum* 의 표준 우리말 이름이다. **그런데 지금 한약으로 쓰는 `桑寄生` 은 *Taxillus chinensis* 쪽이고 둘은 속이 다르다** — 우리말이 `겨우살이`(Viscum) 하나로 덮는 것을 한약 쪽에서는 `곡기생`(槲寄生, Viscum)과 `상기생`(桑寄生, Taxillus)으로 가른다. 향명은 「뽕나무에 붙은 겨우살이붙이」까지만 가려 주고 속은 가려 주지 못한다. 아래 임상 주석에 적었듯 이 가름은 성분이 다르므로 임상에서 값이 있다.
譯 1.16.1 Source원문
性平, 味苦甘, 無毒. 助筋骨, 益血脉, 充肌膚, 長鬚眉, 主腰痛, 治癕腫及金瘡, 療女子懷胎漏血, 能令胎牢固, 除産後餘疾及崩漏.
Translation영역
Its nature is balanced, its flavour bitter and sweet, and it is without toxicity. It assists sinew and bone, benefits the blood vessels, fills out the flesh and skin, lengthens the beard and eyebrows, governs lumbar pain, treats welling abscess and swelling and metal wounds, treats bleeding in a woman carrying a child, can make the foetus firm and secure, and dispels lingering illness after childbirth and flooding and spotting.
Clinical note임상 주석
能令胎牢固 — it can make the foetus firm and secure — is the indication this drug has always been used for and the one that needs the most careful modern handling. 桑寄生 is a foetus-quieting drug and it is pharmacopoeial; it is in 獨活寄生湯 for lumbar pain and in the threatened-miscarriage formulas with 杜仲 and 續斷. The materia medica carries it with 11 ingredient rows.
Modern reading of the obstetric indication. Bleeding in the first trimester occurs in a fifth of pregnancies and about half of those go on to miscarry; nothing taken by mouth changes that in a chromosomally abnormal pregnancy, which most early miscarriages are. What does change the outcome is finding the cause and excluding the dangerous ones: ectopic pregnancy, which kills by rupture and haemorrhage and presents with bleeding and pain; molar pregnancy; and cervical pathology. First-trimester bleeding is an indication for an ultrasound scan and a quantitative beta-hCG, not for a decoction, and in recurrent miscarriage with antiphospholipid syndrome the treatment that works is aspirin and low-molecular-weight heparin. For threatened preterm labour later in pregnancy the interventions that change outcomes are antenatal corticosteroids, magnesium sulphate for neuroprotection, and transfer to a unit with a neonatal intensive care cot. 崩漏 postpartum, as at 1.11.3, is an emergency.
And the species question has a toxicological edge. The Korean gyeousari, Viscum album var. coloratum, carries viscotoxins — small cytotoxic polypeptides — and mistletoe lectins, of which ML-I is a ribosome-inactivating protein of the ricin family. These are the constituents of the injectable mistletoe extracts used as a complementary cancer therapy in Europe, and they are also why raw Viscum ingestion in quantity is reported to cause gastrointestinal upset, and in the older literature bradycardia and hypotension. Taxillus, the orthodox 桑寄生, does not carry the viscotoxins. A drug bought as 겨우살이 and a drug bought as 상기생 are therefore not the same exposure, and in pregnancy that difference is not academic.
譯 1.16.2 Source원문
生老桑樹上. 葉似橘而厚軟, 莖似槐枝而肥脆. 三四月開花, 黃白色. 六七月結實, 黃色, 如小豆大. 他木上皆有寄生, 惟桑上者入藥. 三月三日採莖葉, 陰乾.
Translation영역
It grows on old mulberry trees. Its leaves are like tangerine leaves but thick and soft, and its stem is like a sophora twig but plump and brittle. In the third and fourth months it opens yellow-white flowers; in the sixth and seventh it sets fruit, yellow and the size of a small bean. There is mistletoe on all the other trees as well, but only the one on the mulberry goes into medicine. On the third day of the third month the stems and leaves are gathered and dried in the shade.
Clinical note임상 주석
他木上皆有寄生, 惟桑上者入藥 — mistletoe grows on all the other trees too, but only the one on the mulberry goes into medicine. This is the most pharmacologically intelligent sentence in the entry and the reasoning behind it is correct. A hemiparasite draws its water and dissolved solutes from the host's xylem, and mistletoes take up and concentrate host secondary metabolites along with it. The consequence is the one the Bencao is guarding against: mistletoe growing on a toxic tree is a toxic drug. The hazard is documented — mistletoe harvested from Nerium oleander has caused cardiac glycoside poisoning, and the European literature cautions against mistletoe from yew for the same reason. Restricting the drug to the mulberry host is therefore not a magical rule about the virtue of mulberry; it is a safety specification, and it is the one the name 桑寄生 encodes.
The botanical description is good. Leaves thick and soft, stem plump and brittle, yellow-white flowers in spring and a yellow pea-sized berry in summer: that is a loranth, and it fits Taxillus better than it fits Viscum album, whose berries are white and whose leaves are narrower.
譯 1.16.3 Source원문
此物極難得真. 或云, 斷其莖而視之, 其色深黃, 并實中有汁稠粘者爲真. 《本草》
Translation영역
This article is extremely hard to get genuine. Some say that if you cut the stem across and look at it, the one whose colour is a deep yellow, and whose fruit has a thick sticky juice inside, is the genuine one.
Clinical note임상 주석
極難得真 — extremely hard to get genuine — is the book admitting an adulteration problem in its own supply, and it should be read next to the host-tree rule above, because the two together describe the whole difficulty. Mulberry mistletoe is scarce, the drug is in demand, and mistletoe from other hosts is indistinguishable once it is dried and cut. The two authenticity tests offered — a deep yellow colour on the cut surface, and a thick sticky juice in the berry — are physical and checkable, and the sticky berry juice is a real character of mistletoe fruit, whose viscin is what glues the seed to the next branch and gives Viscum its name.
For a modern practitioner the equivalent statement is that 桑寄生 is one of the drugs where provenance documentation matters more than appearance, and that a cheap sample is a reason for suspicion rather than a bargain.
1.17 Mulberry Root Bark 桑根白皮
`ᄲᅩᆼ나모불휘겁질` = `ᄲᅩᆼ나모`(뽕나무) + `불휘`(뿌리) + `겁질`(껍질). 셋 다 지금 말로 이어진다 — `불휘 > 뿌리` 는 草部上의 `삽듓불휘`(삽주 뿌리)ㆍ`듁댓불휘` (죽대 뿌리)에서 열 번 넘게 확인된 꼴이고, `겁질 > 껍질` 은 이 문의 楡皮ㆍ黃蘗과 같다. 곧 표제어 `桑根白皮` 를 글자째 우리말로 옮긴 것이며 `白`(흰 속껍질)만 향명에서 빠졌다 — 본문의 `刮去上麄皮, 取其裏白` 이 그것을 메운다. `뽕나무` 는 지금도 *Morus* 속의 표준 우리말 이름이고, 이 절의 잎 일곱 가운데 마지막 `柘木` 만 뽕나무가 아니다(1.17.7 을 볼 것).
譯 1.17.1 Source원문
治肺氣喘滿ㆍ水氣浮腫, 消痰止渴, 去肺中水氣, 利水道, 治咳嗽唾血, 利大小腸, 殺腹藏虫, 又可縫金瘡.
Translation영역
It treats panting and fullness of the lung qi and puffy swelling from water qi; it disperses phlegm and checks thirst, gets rid of water qi in the lung, disinhibits the waterways, treats cough with spitting of blood, disinhibits the large and small intestines, kills worms in the abdomen and viscera, and can also be used to sew up a metal wound.
Clinical note임상 주석
This section has no 性味 at all — it opens straight on 治, with no nature, flavour or toxicity given. That is not an omission in the transcription: the Bogam simply does not supply them here, as it does not for several other items in this chapter, and no value is invented for them.
桑白皮 is pharmacopoeial and heavily used — 123 ingredient rows in this book — and it is the drug of 瀉白散, where it drains the lung with 地骨皮 from 1.4.1 above. 肺氣喘滿 with 水氣浮腫 and 去肺中水氣 is, put in modern terms, breathlessness with oedema, and the pairing is the clinical picture of congestive heart failure as well as of the lung patterns the book means. 咳嗽唾血, cough with blood, is the indication to be most careful with: haemoptysis is tuberculosis, bronchiectasis, pulmonary embolism or lung cancer until proved otherwise, and in Korea tuberculosis remains common enough to be first on that list. It needs a chest radiograph and sputum examination the same week.
又可縫金瘡 — it can also be used to sew up a metal wound — is not pharmacology but surgery, and it is a genuine technique. The fibrous inner bark of mulberry yields long, strong bast fibres, and mulberry bark thread used as suture material is recorded in Chinese surgical writing and has a parallel in Indian practice; the same fibre is what makes 한지 strong. It is the only place in this part of the chapter where a drug is being used as an instrument.
Modern reading. Mulberry root bark is a safe drug with no significant recorded toxicity; its constituents include the Diels-Alder adducts (mulberrofurans, kuwanon) and prenylated flavonoids, and it has mild antihypertensive and diuretic activity in animal studies.
譯 1.17.2 Source원문
採無時. 出土者殺人. 初採, 以銅刀刮去上麄皮, 取其裏白, 暴乾. 東行根益佳. 《本草》
Translation영역
It may be gathered at any season. The root that has come up out of the ground kills people. When it is first gathered, use a copper knife to scrape off the coarse outer bark, take the white of the inside, and dry it in the sun. A root running eastward is better still.
Clinical note임상 주석
出土者殺人 — the root that has come up out of the ground kills people. Four characters, and this is the Bogam stating a lethal toxicity for a drug it has just described without any 性味 or 毒 at all. It must not be left out.
What it means is a root that has emerged above the soil surface — an exposed, aerial root as against the buried ones. The warning is old and is repeated across the Bencao tradition, and the Bogam prints it without explanation, so no mechanism should be invented for it here. Three readings are possible and none can be settled from this text: that exposed roots were observed to be harmful; that the rule exists to stop a gatherer taking the easily visible root of some other plant; or that it is a transmitted taboo. What can be said is that it is the book's own contraindication on its own drug, and that a reader who takes 桑白皮 to be a bland lung drug — which the modern pharmacopoeia reasonably does — would not know that the compilers thought part of the plant could kill.
銅刀, a copper and not an iron knife, recurs here as at 1.10; iron blackens tannin-rich bark on contact. 取其裏白 is the step the drug is named for and the one that distinguishes it from the whole root bark. 東行根益佳 is a directional preference with nothing behind it.
譯 1.17.3 Source원문
入手太陰經, 㵼肺氣之有餘. 利水生用, 咳嗽蜜蒸或炒用. 《入門》
Translation영역
It enters the hand greater-yin channel and drains a surplus of lung qi. For disinhibiting water it is used raw; for cough it is steamed with honey or stir-fried.
Clinical note임상 주석
A clean processing rule with a clear rationale: raw for the diuretic action, honey-processed for the cough. Honey-roasting (蜜炙) moistens a draining drug and is the standard preparation of 桑白皮 for dry cough in modern practice as well, exactly as it is for 麻黃 and 甘草. This is one of the places where 修治 is being used to choose between two actions of one drug, as at 1.9 and 1.5.
1.17.1 Mulberry Leaf 葉
譯 1.17.1.1 Source원문
家桑葉煖, 無毒. 除脚氣水腫, 利大小腸, 下氣, 除風痛.
Translation영역
The leaf of the cultivated mulberry is warm and without toxicity. It dispels leg qi and water swelling, disinhibits the large and small intestines, brings qi downward, and dispels wind pain.
Clinical note임상 주석
桑葉 is pharmacopoeial, it is food, it is drunk as a tea in quantity in Korea, and it is the one drug in this group with a demonstrated and clinically relevant modern pharmacology. Mulberry leaf contains 1-deoxynojirimycin, an iminosugar that inhibits intestinal alpha-glucosidase — the same mechanism as acarbose and miglitol. The effect is real and has been shown in human postprandial glucose studies: mulberry leaf extract taken with a carbohydrate load flattens the glucose peak.
That makes the interaction worth stating. A patient on a sulfonylurea, on insulin, or already on an alpha-glucosidase inhibitor who begins drinking mulberry leaf tea or taking a standardised extract can become hypoglycaemic, and the effect is dose-related. It is also the reason mulberry leaf is sold specifically as a blood-sugar supplement, so patients take it deliberately and often do not mention it. The predictable adverse effects are the ones acarbose has: flatulence, bloating and loose stool from undigested carbohydrate reaching the colon, which is also a plausible reading of the entry's own 利大小腸, 下氣.
家桑葉, the leaf of the cultivated mulberry, is a selection rule and a sensible one: the mulberry of the silk hedgerows is a known plant, and the wild Morus and the look-alikes are not. 脚氣 is leg qi, which covers beriberi — thiamine deficiency, which is treated with thiamine and nothing else, and which in its cardiac form kills.
譯 1.17.1.2 Source원문
葉椏者名雞桑, 最佳. 夏秋再生葉爲上. 霜後採用. 《本草》
Translation영역
The one whose leaves are forked is called chicken mulberry and is the best. The leaves that grow again in summer and autumn are superior. They are gathered after the frost and used.
Clinical note임상 주석
霜後採用 — gathered after the frost — is the specification that gives this drug its standard name in Chinese practice, 冬桑葉 or 霜桑葉, and the Bogam's own formulary uses that very wording: 經霜桑葉, frost-passed mulberry leaf, appears in 紫菀湯 and in 丹參飮子. Whether the frost changes the leaf chemically is not established; what it certainly does is mark the end of the season, when the leaf has accumulated most and the silk-worms no longer need it.
葉椏者名雞桑 is the same lobed-against-entire character that sorted the paper mulberries at 1.11, and it works here for the same reason — Morus leaves are heteroblastic, deeply lobed on vigorous shoots and entire on older wood.
1.17.2 Mulberry Twig 枝
譯 1.17.2.1 Source원문
春葉未開枝, 切炒, 煮湯飮, 治一切風, 療水氣ㆍ脚氣ㆍ肺氣ㆍ咳嗽上氣, 消食, 利小便, 治臂痛, 療口乾. 卽桑枝茶也. 《本草》
Translation영역
Take the twigs in spring before the leaves have opened, cut them and stir-fry them, boil them into a decoction and drink it: it treats wind of every kind, treats water qi, leg qi, lung qi and cough with qi ascent, disperses food, disinhibits urine, treats pain in the arm, and treats dryness of the mouth. This is what is called mulberry-twig tea.
Clinical note임상 주석
卽桑枝茶也 — this is what is called mulberry-twig tea. The book names its own preparation, and that gloss is what links this bare headword 枝 to the materia medica, where 桑枝茶 is filed against 桑枝 as the prepared form.
治臂痛 is the indication 桑枝 keeps in modern practice: it is the standard channel-guiding drug for the shoulder and arm, as 牛膝 is for the leg, and it is in the upper-limb formulas for 肩臂痛. The same logic put 柳桂 in the shoulder and arm at 1.1.4 — 橫行肩臂 — and the two are used together.
Modern reading. Mulberry twig is pharmacopoeial and safe, and carries the same alpha-glucosidase-inhibiting iminosugars as the leaf, in lower concentration — so the hypoglycaemia note at 1.17.1 applies here at a lower level. Arm pain is worth a word: pain in the arm is most often a rotator-cuff disorder or a cervical radiculopathy, both of which respond to specific exercise and neither of which is helped by a tea; and left arm pain with exertion is angina.
1.17.3 Mulberry Fruit 椹
譯 1.17.3.1 Source원문
性寒, 味甘, 無毒. 主消渴, 利五藏, 久服不飢.
Translation영역
Its nature is cold, its flavour sweet, and it is without toxicity. It governs dispersion-thirst, disinhibits the five viscera, and taken over a long time keeps off hunger.
Clinical note임상 주석
This is 오디, the mulberry fruit, and it is food before it is a drug: eaten fresh in season, pressed for juice, fermented into 오디주, and dried. The materia medica carries it as 桑椹 with 黑桑椹, the blackened ripe fruit, filed against it as a variant; the Bogam uses it in 三精丸 and 參精丸, in both cases as juice pressed from a large quantity of fruit.
Modern reading. Safe, and good food. Mulberry is one of the richer common fruits in anthocyanins — cyanidin-3-glucoside predominates — and in resveratrol. 主消渴 is an interesting claim to find on a sweet fruit, and it is not absurd: as at 1.17.1, mulberry tissues carry alpha-glucosidase inhibitors, and mulberry fruit extract has been studied for postprandial glucose. The fruit also carries its own sugars, so a patient with diabetes should treat 오디 as fruit and not as a treatment.
One housekeeping note for this site's materia medica. The entry 桑椹 is at present registered with 果部 as its chapter, but the Bogam has no 桑椹 headword or leaf in the fruit chapter — this leaf, 木部 1.17.3, is the only place in the whole of the Decoctions chapters where the mulberry fruit appears. The chapter field should read 木部.
譯 1.17.3.2 Source원문
黑椹, 桑之精英盡在於此. 《本草》
Translation영역
As for the black mulberry, the whole of the finest essence of the mulberry is in it.
Clinical note임상 주석
黑椹, the black ripe fruit, is the grade the formulary actually uses: both of the Bogam's prescriptions that call for this drug specify 黑桑椹, and this site's alias table files that name against the entry. The selection rule is sound in its own terms and in modern ones too — the anthocyanins that give the fruit its colour accumulate as it ripens from red through purple to black, so the blackest fruit is the richest in them. 精英盡在於此 is the usual way of saying that one part concentrates the virtue of the whole, and here it happens to be measurable.
1.17.4 Mulberry Bark Lichen 桑花
譯 1.17.4.1 Source원문
性暖, 無毒. 主鼻洪ㆍ吐血ㆍ腸風ㆍ崩中帶下. 此桑樹皮上白蘚花也. 以刀削取, 炒乾用. 《本草》
Translation영역
Its nature is warm and it is without toxicity. It governs flooding nosebleed, spitting of blood, intestinal wind, and flooding in the centre with vaginal discharge. This is the white lichen-flower on the bark of the mulberry tree. Pare it off with a knife, dry it by stir-frying, and use it.
Clinical note임상 주석
此桑樹皮上白蘚花也 — this is the white lichen-flower on the mulberry bark — and the book's own gloss settles what the drug is: not the flower of the mulberry, which is what the name 桑花 looks like, but a lichen growing on the trunk. 蘚 is moss or lichen, and this is the second lichen in my part of this chapter: 1.2.7 above is the green lichen on pine bark, and this is the white one on mulberry bark. Reading 桑花 as the mulberry's own flower would be a straightforward mistake and the gloss is there to prevent it.
The name is also worth separating from two others in this corpus. The mulberry fungi — 桑木耳, the wood ear growing on mulberry, and 桑黃, which this site's materia medica now files in the vegetables chapter under the 木耳 section where the Bogam puts them — are not this and are not leaves of 1.17. There is no mushroom among the seven leaves of this section.
Modern reading. No modern use, no entry in the materia medica, and no ingredient row anywhere in the book's prescriptions. The usnic-acid note at 1.2.7 applies in principle to any lichen taken internally, and here it is being taken internally rather than burned, which is the worse of the two. The indications are all haemorrhagic — epistaxis, haematemesis, rectal bleeding, abnormal uterine bleeding — and as everywhere else in this chapter each of them is a symptom needing a source found.
1.17.5 Lye of Mulberry-Wood Ash 桑柴灰淋汁
譯 1.17.5.1 Source원문
性寒, 味辛, 有小毒. 煮赤小豆作粥喫, 大下水脹. 《本草》
Translation영역
Its nature is cold, its flavour acrid, and it has slight toxicity. Boil adzuki beans in it to make a gruel and eat it: it greatly brings down water distension.
Clinical note임상 주석
This is potash lye and it is a strong alkaline caustic. It must not be swallowed.
淋汁 is the leachate: water is poured through wood ash and run off, and what comes out is a solution of potassium carbonate with potassium hydroxide, at a pH that in a strong lye reaches 12 or 13. The vegetables chapter of this book carries the same material and it is dealt with there the same way. The Bogam's own 有小毒, slight toxicity, is a considerable understatement, and the entry's instruction is to boil food in it and eat the food.
What a strong alkali does when swallowed. Alkali causes liquefactive necrosis, which is worse than the coagulative necrosis of an acid because it keeps penetrating: saponification of membrane lipids and dissolution of protein carry the injury deeper into the oesophageal wall over minutes. The acute picture is drooling, odynophagia, retrosternal and abdominal pain, and stridor if the larynx is involved; the complications are oesophageal perforation and mediastinitis in the first days, and oesophageal stricture needing repeated dilatation, or oesophagectomy, in the weeks and months after. Caustic ingestion also carries a long-term oesophageal carcinoma risk of the order of a thousandfold. Management is airway assessment, nil by mouth, early endoscopy to grade the burn, and absolutely not induced vomiting, neutralisation or a nasogastric lavage, all of which re-expose the oesophagus. The commonest victims are small children who drink drain cleaner, and the lesson transfers directly: a jar of ash lye in a kitchen is a paediatric poisoning waiting to happen.
The small quantities of lye used as a cooking alkali in traditional foodways — for nixtamalisation, for pretzels, for 재래식 메주 — are heavily diluted and largely consumed in the reaction, and that is a different thing from drinking the leachate. The entry here is not describing that: 大下水脹, greatly bringing down water distension, is a drastic purgative effect, and a drastic purgative effect from a caustic is chemical injury to the gut.
And the indication is the dangerous one. 水脹, water distension, is ascites with oedema — decompensated cirrhosis, heart failure, nephrotic syndrome or malignancy, as at 1.11.2 above. A cirrhotic patient has varices; a caustic injury to the oesophagus in a patient with varices and a coagulopathy is catastrophic. Of all the drugs in my part of this chapter this is the one where the gap between the book and modern practice is widest, and it is not a gap to be narrowed by sympathetic reading.
This site's materia medica carries the lye as 桑柴灰汁, Mori Lignum Cinis Lixivium, and the Bogam uses it twice: 桑枝煎湯 pours boiling water over a hop of mulberry ash, and 金寶膏 leaches five bowls of ash with ten bowls of boiling water — 淋, the character of this headword. The dry ash itself, 桑柴灰, is the 土部 headword at that chapter's 1.14 and is a separate entry. 1.2 above uses the same lye as a reagent for refining pine resin, which is the use it is actually suited to.
1.17.6 Mulberry Wood-Borer Grub 桑蠹虫
譯 1.17.6.1 Source원문
主暴心痛ㆍ金瘡肉生不足. 老桑樹中有之. 《本草》
Translation영역
It governs sudden heart pain, and a metal wound where the flesh has not grown enough. It is found inside old mulberry trees.
Clinical note임상 주석
This leaf is an animal, not a plant. 蠹 is a wood-boring grub, and 桑蠹虫 is the larva found tunnelling in old mulberry trunks — in Korea most often the mulberry longhorn beetle, Apriona germari, whose larvae are a serious pest of mulberry and of fruit trees. The Bogam files it here, under the mulberry, because that is where you find it, which is the same organising principle that puts the two lichens at 1.2.7 and 1.17.4 and another tree altogether at 1.17.7 below: the leaves of a section are what the tree yields, not what the tree is made of.
There is no counterpart in the insects chapter. The 蟲部 of this book carries 桑螵蛸, the mantis egg-case on mulberry, and 緣桑螺, the snail that climbs the mulberry, but no wood-borer — so this grub appears once in the whole book and only here, which is why it is left unlinked and is not proposed for the materia medica.
Modern reading. No modern use. Longhorn-beetle larvae are eaten in several parts of the world and are not poisonous; the hazards of entomophagy are allergic rather than toxic — insect tropomyosin and arginine kinase cross-react with the shellfish and house-dust-mite allergens, so a patient with shellfish allergy or severe mite sensitisation can react to insect protein, and anaphylaxis to edible insects is documented.
暴心痛, sudden heart pain, is the indication to read as what it almost certainly is. Sudden severe central chest pain is an acute coronary syndrome, an aortic dissection, a pulmonary embolism or an oesophageal rupture, and the first of those is treated in a cardiac catheterisation laboratory within minutes to hours. It is the single most time-critical presentation named anywhere in my part of this chapter.
1.17.7 Cudrania Wood 柘木
`뫼ᄲᅩᆼ` = `뫼`(산) + `ᄲᅩᆼ`(뽕). 곧 **「산뽕」** 이다. `뫼` 는 중세 한국어의 「산」이고 지금은 `묏-`ㆍ`메-`ㆍ`뫼-` 꼴로 합성어에만 남았다(이 문의 酸棗仁 `묏대쵸`, 菜部ㆍ果部의 여러 자리). `ᄲᅩᆼ > 뽕` 은 1.17 과 같다.
**그리고 이 향명이 이 잎의 성격을 말해 준다 — 뽕나무의 부위가 아니라 딴 나무다.** 지금 이름은 `꾸지뽕나무`(*Maclura tricuspidata*, 옛 학명 *Cudrania tricuspidata*)이고, 뽕나무(*Morus*)와 같은 뽕나무과(Moraceae)이지만 **속이 다르다.** 16세기 이름 `뫼뽕` 이 「뽕 같으나 산에 나는 것」이라 가려 둔 것이 그 관계를 바르게 적은 것이다 — 뽕나무붙이이되 뽕나무는 아니다. `뫼뽕` 은 지금 표준어가 아니므로 `hyangmyeong_mod` 에는 글자를 옮긴 꼴만 적었고, 쓰이는 이름은 `꾸지뽕나무` 다. (참고로 현대 한국어의 `산뽕나무` 는 또 다른 것, *Morus australis* 다 — 이 자리를 지금 이름으로 앞질러 읽으면 안 되는 또 하나의 까닭이다.)
譯 1.17.7.1 Source원문
性溫, 味甘, 無毒. 主風虛耳聾ㆍ瘧疾. 煮汁堪染黃. 《本草》
Translation영역
Its nature is warm, its flavour sweet, and it is without toxicity. It governs deafness from wind vacuity, and malarial disease. Its decoction will serve to dye things yellow.
Clinical note임상 주석
柘 is not the mulberry, and the Bogam does not say that it is — it says nothing at all about the relationship, and simply files it as the last leaf of the mulberry section. The plant is Maclura tricuspidata, the Korean 꾸지뽕나무, a thorny Moraceous tree of the same family as Morus but a different genus, and the sixteenth-century Korean name 뫼뽕, mountain mulberry, records the relationship correctly: mulberry-like, not mulberry. So this leaf is a leaf by sequence and not by anatomy, and the part_of it carries should be read as "listed under" and nothing more — which is exactly what the house rules say that field means.
煮汁堪染黃 is the most reliable statement in the entry and it is why the tree was valuable. Maclura heartwood is a classic yellow dyewood — its American congener Maclura pomifera, the osage orange, and the related fustic were major commercial yellow dyes, and the pigment is the flavonoid morin. In China 柘黃 was the yellow of imperial robes. A drug entry that ends by telling you the decoction dyes cloth yellow is telling you that the active-looking colour is a dye and not a medicine.
Modern reading. 꾸지뽕 is at present one of the most heavily marketed health foods in Korea — fruit, leaf, root bark and twig are all sold, as tea, extract and powder — and the plant does carry an unusual chemistry: prenylated xanthones (cudraxanthones), flavonoids and kuwanon-type adducts. None of that has been shown to do anything in a person, and the marketing claims made for it, cancer among them, have no clinical evidence behind them. It is not known to be toxic. The two indications here deserve correcting rather than qualifying: 耳聾, deafness, has causes that are treatable only if found early — sudden sensorineural hearing loss is an emergency where corticosteroid within days improves the outcome, and in a child a conductive loss from otitis media with effusion delays speech. And 瘧疾, malaria, is a parasitic infection with a definite diagnosis by blood film or rapid antigen test and a definite cure; Plasmodium vivax is endemic in parts of the Korean peninsula, and falciparum malaria in a returning traveller kills within days if the treatment is delayed. Neither is a job for a dyewood.
1.18 Timber Bamboo Leaf 䈽竹葉
`왕댓닙` 은 `왕대` + 관형격 `ㅅ` + `닙`(잎)의 짜임이고 세 토막이 다 지금 말로 그대로 이어진다(`닙 → 잎` 은 이 편에 거듭 나오는 꼴이다). **중요한 것은 `왕대` 가 지금도 살아 있는 식물 이름이라는 점이다** — 왕대(*Phyllostachys bambusoides*)는 우리나라에서 가장 굵게 자라는 대나무이고, 본문이 䈽竹을 `體圓而質勁, 大者宜刺舩, 細者可爲笛`(몸이 둥글고 결이 굳세어 큰 것은 배를 찌르는 장대로 쓰고 가는 것은 피리를 만든다)고 적은 것과 곧바로 맞물린다. 곧 **향명이 책의 식물 기술을 독립적으로 받쳐 주는 자리**다. `䈽` 의 우리 음은 코퍼스의 음 표(`tools/hanrom.py`)에 없어 `근` 으로 적었고(이것은 내 판단이다 — 아래 `textual_note` 에 적어 둔다), 향명이 가리키는 식물은 음과 달리 또렷하다.
譯 1.18.1 Source원문
性寒, 味甘一云苦, 無毒. 止咳逆上氣, 除煩𤍠, 止消渴, 壓丹石毒, 療風痙喉痺嘔吐, 主吐血, 𤍠毒風, 惡瘍, 殺小虫.
Translation영역
Its nature is cold, its flavour sweet one says bitter, and it is without toxicity. It checks cough with counterflow and qi ascent, dispels vexation heat, checks dispersion-thirst, presses down the toxin of the elixir minerals, treats wind tetany, throat impediment and retching and vomiting, and governs blood ejection, heat-toxin wind and malign sores; and it kills small worms.
Clinical note임상 주석
This is the head of a group of eight — one headword and seven leaves — and the group mixes two different things, which is the first thing a reader needs to see. **䈽竹葉, 淡竹葉 and 苦竹葉 are the leaves of three different bamboos; 竹瀝, 竹實, 竹根, 竹茹 and 竹黃 are parts and preparations, and the book does not say which bamboo they come from.** The second passage of this section is the Bogam sorting the species out for itself, and the third is it grading them.
The leaf is a cooling drug and a mild one. The formulary of this site uses it in forty-seven prescriptions, almost always as plain 竹葉 or 靑竹葉 without a species named, and that is why the herb record it links to is the generic 竹葉 rather than a varietal.
壓丹石毒, pressing down the toxin of the elixir minerals, is worth reading as the historical record it is: the Tang and Song alchemical preparations of cinnabar, realgar, arsenolite and lead were taken internally and produced recognisable poisonings, and bamboo leaf was one of the standard cooling drugs given for the heat and thirst that followed. It is not an antidote. **Mineral poisoning is treated by stopping the exposure and, for arsenic, lead and mercury, by chelation under toxicological supervision.**
譯 1.18.2 Source원문
竹有䈽淡苦三種. 䈽竹體圓而質勁, 大者宜刺舩, 細者可爲笛. 甘竹似篁而茂, 卽淡竹也. 苦竹有白有紫. 《本草》
Translation영역
Bamboo is of three kinds, geun, dam and go. The geun bamboo is round in the body and stiff in the grain; the large ones serve for punting a boat and the slender ones can be made into flutes. The sweet bamboo resembles the hwang bamboo but grows more thickly, and this is the dam bamboo. The bitter bamboo comes in a white kind and a purple kind.
Clinical note임상 주석
**This passage is the book glossing its own headwords, and it settles a question that matters clinically.** 甘竹似篁而茂, 卽淡竹也 — the sweet bamboo is the dam bamboo. The Bogam's 淡竹葉 is therefore the leaf of a bamboo, and the Korean gloss on the next section, 소옴댓닙, 솜대 leaf, confirms it independently.
That matters because the name 淡竹葉 later attached to a quite different plant. In the modern Chinese pharmacopoeia 淡竹葉 is Lophatherum gracile, a small grass of the Poaceae which is not a bamboo at all, while bamboo leaf is sold separately as 竹葉. Anyone reading this chapter and buying 淡竹葉 today will be sent Lophatherum, which is not what this section describes. The two drugs overlap in use — both are cooling, both are given for vexation heat and scanty dark urine — so the substitution is not dangerous, but it is a substitution, and the book's own sentence is the evidence that it is one.
舩 is the transcription's form of 船, a boat; 刺舩 is punting with a pole. 篁 is a bamboo thicket and by extension the bamboo that forms it.
譯 1.18.3 Source원문
䈽竹淡竹爲上, 苦竹次之. 《入門》
Translation영역
The geun bamboo and the dam bamboo are the best; the bitter bamboo comes after them.
Clinical note임상 주석
A grading rule, and the one place in the group where the three species are ranked against each other. It is worth holding alongside the fact that three of the formulary's prescriptions call for 苦竹葉 by name — the third-ranked leaf — so the ranking was a preference and not an exclusion.
1.18.1 Sweet Bamboo Leaf 淡竹葉
`소옴댓닙` 은 `소옴`(솜) + `대` + `ㅅ` + `닙` 이다. `소옴 → 솜` 은 16세기부터 근대까지 잘 적혀 있는 축약이고, `소옴대 → 솜대` 는 **지금도 쓰이는 식물 이름**이다 (*Phyllostachys nigra* var. *henonis*). **이 향명이 이 묶음에서 가장 값진 자리다** — 한자 `淡竹葉` 만 읽으면 뒤 세상의 `淡竹葉`(*Lophatherum gracile*, 조릿대풀 — 벼과의 풀이고 대나무가 아니다)로 끌려가지만, 향명이 `솜대` 라고 못 박아 주고 어미 절의 본문도 `甘竹似篁而茂卽淡竹也` 라 하므로 **寶鑑의 淡竹葉은 대나무 잎이다.** 菜部 1.56 `白菜 / 머휘` 가 배추가 아니라 *Petasites* 였던 것과 같은 꼴의 자리이고, 여기서는 향명과 본문이 **같은 쪽으로** 가리킨다.
譯 1.18.1.1 Source원문
性寒, 味甘, 無毒. 消痰, 淸𤍠. 主中風失音不語, 壯𤍠頭痛, 止驚悸, 溫疫狂悶, 治咳逆上氣, 孕婦眩暈倒地, 小兒驚癎天吊. 《本草》
Translation영역
Its nature is cold, its flavour sweet, and it is without toxicity. It dissolves phlegm and clears heat. It governs wind stroke with loss of voice and inability to speak, vigorous heat with headache, checks fright palpitation, warm epidemic with mania and oppression, treats cough with counterflow and qi ascent, dizziness in a pregnant woman that fells her to the ground, and fright epilepsy with upward-hanging in children.
Clinical note임상 주석
The longest indication list of the three bamboo leaves, and the one that reaches into obstetrics and paediatrics. 孕婦眩暈倒地 is syncope or seizure in pregnancy; **today that presentation is eclampsia until proved otherwise, and eclampsia is an obstetric emergency treated with intravenous magnesium sulphate, blood-pressure control and delivery.** A cooling leaf decoction has no part in it. 天吊, upward-hanging, is the opisthotonic posture with the eyes rolled up that the paediatric chapters describe; in an infant it is a seizure, and the causes that have to be excluded first are meningitis, hypoglycaemia, hyponatraemia and non-accidental injury.
Where the leaf does belong is the mild end of the list — vexation heat, thirst, a hot irritable child — and there it is a food-grade drug with nothing to warn about.
**On what to buy: see the note at 1.18 above.** The modern commercial 淡竹葉 is Lophatherum gracile and not the bamboo this section names; the Korean gloss 솜대 settles what the Bogam means.
1.18.2 Bitter Bamboo Leaf 苦竹葉
`오듁` 은 한자어 `烏竹`(검은 대)의 16세기 소리다. `듁 → 죽` 은 ㄷ 구개음화 이전 표기이므로 `오죽` 으로 그대로 이어지고, **오죽은 지금도 *Phyllostachys nigra* 의 표준 우리말 이름**이다. 다만 **향명과 본문이 꼭 맞지는 않는다** — 어미 절의 본문은 `苦竹有白有紫`(苦竹에는 흰 것과 자줏빛 것이 있다)고 두 가지를 들고, 향명은 그 가운데 검은(자줏빛) 쪽 하나만 가리킨다. 그러므로 `오죽` 은 **조선에서 苦竹으로 거둔 것이 무엇이었는지**를 알려 주지만 책이 든 두 가지를 다 덮지는 못한다. 그 차이를 메우려 향명이나 본문을 손대지 않았다.
譯 1.18.2.1 Source원문
性冷, 味苦, 無毒. 治不睡, 止消渴, 解酒毒, 除煩𤍠, 發汗, 治中風失音. 《本草》
Translation영역
Its nature is cool, its flavour bitter, and it is without toxicity. It treats sleeplessness, checks dispersion-thirst, resolves the toxin of wine, dispels vexation heat, issues sweat, and treats wind stroke with loss of voice.
Clinical note임상 주석
The only one of the three leaves the book calls bitter, and the only one given 發汗, issuing sweat. Three prescriptions in this site's formulary call for 苦竹葉 by name — Bangpung-san, Tonggan-san and Cheongryang-san — and the herb-alias table already carries 苦竹葉 as a form of 竹葉, which is why this leaf links to the same record as its two siblings.
治不睡, treating sleeplessness, sits oddly beside 1.40 苦茶 below, where the same chapter praises tea for 令人少睡, making a person sleep less. The book is not contradicting itself — one is a cooling leaf decoction, the other a caffeinated infusion — but the pair is a reminder that 不睡 in this literature is a heat pattern and not a sleep complaint as a modern reader would frame it.
解酒毒 is hangover rather than acute alcohol poisoning. **Acute alcohol poisoning — unrousable, slow breathing, cold, or vomiting while unconscious — is an emergency, and nothing drunk by mouth helps it.**
1.18.3 Bamboo Sap 竹瀝
譯 1.18.3.1 Source원문
主暴中風, 𦚾中大𤍠, 止煩悶, 卒中風失音不語, 痰𤍠昏迷, 止消渴, 治破傷風及産後發𤍠, 小兒驚癎一切危急之疾.
Translation영역
It governs sudden wind stroke and great heat in the chest, checks vexation and oppression, treats sudden wind stroke with loss of voice and inability to speak, phlegm-heat with clouding and stupor, checks dispersion-thirst, and treats lockjaw from a wound, fever after childbirth, and fright epilepsy in children and every urgent and critical disease.
Clinical note임상 주석
竹瀝 is the liquid driven out of a length of green bamboo heated over a fire, collected as it runs from the cut end. It is the one preparation in this group that the formulary uses heavily — thirty prescriptions — and it is a genuine extract rather than a decoction, so the processing is doing real work.
The indication list is the most serious in the group and three of its items are emergencies.
**破傷風 is tetanus.** Lockjaw after a wound is tetanus, the case fatality is high even with modern care, and the management is wound debridement, tetanus immune globulin, metronidazole, benzodiazepines and often ventilation in intensive care. It is also almost entirely preventable by vaccination. Nothing in this section is a treatment for it.
**産後發𤍠 — fever after childbirth — is puerperal sepsis**, which remains a leading cause of maternal death worldwide and needs intravenous antibiotics within the hour and often surgical evacuation. 小兒驚癎 in an infant is a seizure and is worked up as described at 1.18.1.
卒中風失音不語 is stroke. **Stroke is time-critical: thrombolysis and thrombectomy are decided in hours**, and 一切危急之疾, every urgent and critical disease, is exactly the setting in which a herbal preparation costs the time that treatment needs. The entry is a good record of what a sixteenth-century physician reached for in a crisis and should not be read as a plan for one.
譯 1.18.3.2 Source원문
苦竹瀝療口瘡, 明目, 利九竅. 《本草》
Translation영역
The sap of the bitter bamboo treats mouth sores, brightens the eyes, and frees the nine orifices.
Clinical note임상 주석
The one place in the group where a preparation is tied to a named species: it is the bitter bamboo's sap that is given for mouth sores. 口瘡 covers aphthous ulceration, which is self-limiting, and oral candidiasis and herpetic stomatitis, which are not; a mouth ulcer that has not healed in three weeks is referred for biopsy.
譯 1.18.3.3 Source원문
竹瀝非薑汁不能行徑. 竹瀝六分, 加薑汁一分用. 《入門》
Translation영역
Without ginger juice the bamboo sap cannot travel its course. To six parts of bamboo sap add one part of ginger juice in use.
Clinical note임상 주석
This is a conveyor rule and a ratio, and it is one of the few quantitative statements in the group: six to one, sap to ginger juice. The pairing survives in the formulary — Insamjungnyeok-eum is built on it.
譯 1.18.3.4 Translation영역
The method of drawing the sap is given in the chapter on Miscellaneous Formulas.
Clinical note임상 주석
A cross-reference out of the materia medica and into the practical chapter, and the reason this section does not describe the method: the Bogam keeps its procedure in one place. The method there is the one described above — green bamboo heated so the sap runs from the cut end.
1.18.4 Bamboo Fruit 竹實
譯 1.18.4.1 Source원문
生於竹林茂盛蒙密之中, 大如雞子, 竹葉層層包裹. 味甘, 主通神明, 令心膈淸凉, 輕身益氣. 《入門》
Translation영역
It grows deep within thick and densely shaded bamboo groves, is as large as a hen's egg, and is wrapped layer upon layer in bamboo leaves. Its flavour is sweet; it governs opening the spirit brightness, makes the heart and diaphragm cool and clear, lightens the body and boosts the qi.
Clinical note임상 주석
Bamboo flowers and fruits very rarely — most species once in several decades, and then the whole stand flowers together and dies — so a bamboo fruit was a prodigy, and the two descriptions the Bogam prints do not agree with each other. This one makes it the size of a hen's egg and wrapped in leaves; the next makes it like a grain of wheat.
**This leaf is not in this site's herb table and should not be, because no prescription in the book uses it**; the 輕身益氣, lightening the body and boosting the qi, is the vocabulary of a lucky find rather than of a dispensary item. The record is still worth keeping — it is the only notice in the chapter of a bamboo's flowering.
譯 1.18.4.2 Source원문
一云狀如小麥, 堪可爲飯喫. 《本草》
Translation영역
One account has it shaped like a grain of wheat and fit to be cooked and eaten as rice.
Clinical note임상 주석
The alternative account, and the realistic one: bamboo grain is a grass caryopsis and bamboo-seed famine rice is well attested in Asia. The Bogam prints both descriptions and settles neither, and I have not settled it either.
1.18.5 Bamboo Root 竹根
譯 1.18.5.1 Source원문
煮湯服, 除煩𤍠, 止渴, 補虛, 下氣, 消毒. 又主風痓. 《本草》
Translation영역
Boiled into a decoction and taken, it dispels vexation heat, checks thirst, supplements vacuity, downbears the qi and disperses toxin. It also governs wind tetany.
Clinical note임상 주석
**The book does not say which bamboo's root this is, and I have not supplied one.** The herb table carries a record for 甘竹根, sweet bamboo root, which entered it from a single-drug remedy in the Women's chapter for a stirring and unquiet fetus; that is a named species and this headword is not, so this leaf is left unlinked rather than folded onto it. The distinction is the same one the Bogam itself insists on at 1.18 — 䈽, 淡 and 苦 are three bamboos — and pinning a species the book leaves open would put a false certainty into the data.
風痓 is again tetanus or a seizure disorder; see 1.18.3.
1.18.6 Bamboo Shavings 竹茹
譯 1.18.6.1 Source원문
主嘔噦咳逆, 止肺痿吐唾血, 鼻衂, 崩中. 卽刮靑竹皮也. 《本草》
Translation영역
It governs retching and hiccup and cough with counterflow, checks lung wilting with ejection of blood and spittle, nosebleed, and flooding from the centre. It is the scraped skin of green bamboo.
Clinical note임상 주석
卽刮靑竹皮也 is the book defining its own headword, and the definition is exactly what the drug still is: the green outer layer scraped off a bamboo culm in curls. The herb-alias table already carries 靑竹皮 as a form of this drug for that reason. Thirty prescriptions in this site's formulary use it, chiefly for nausea and vomiting in a heat pattern, and that is still its main use.
肺痿吐唾血 — wilting of the lung with blood and spittle coughed up — was in this period most often pulmonary tuberculosis. **Haemoptysis is not a symptom to treat with a cooling drug: it is investigated with chest imaging and sputum testing, and tuberculosis is curable with a supervised multi-drug regimen.** 崩中, flooding, is heavy uterine bleeding, which needs a cause found — anaemia, fibroids, coagulopathy, malignancy — before anything is given for it.
1.18.7 Bamboo Silica 竹黃
譯 1.18.7.1 Source원문
卽竹節間黃白者. 味甘, 尤制丹石藥毒發𤍠. 《本草》
Translation영역
It is the yellow-white substance between the bamboo's nodes. Its flavour is sweet, and it is especially good at controlling the heat that breaks out from the toxin of the elixir-mineral drugs.
Clinical note임상 주석
**This leaf and the headword 天竺黃 at 1.56 of this same chapter are the same substance, and the overlap should be recorded rather than resolved into two drugs.** Both are the siliceous concretion that forms inside a bamboo culm — tabasheer, largely hydrated silica with some potash and lime, pharmacopoeial name Bambusae Concretio Silicea. The two entries say so in the same words: this one places it 竹節間, between the nodes, and 1.56 places it 竹內, inside the bamboo, 塵沙結成如黃土, dust and sand congealed like yellow earth, and adds 一名竹膏, one name for it is bamboo paste. The flavour is 甘 in both.
What differs is not the substance but the trade. **1.56 天竺黃 carries the import mark 唐 and the provenance 生天竺國竹內, grown inside the bamboo of India; this leaf carries no mark and no provenance.** The book has entered the same material twice — once as a part of the bamboo a Korean physician could find at home, once as a bought-in drug under its Indic name. That is the same shape as 1.37 枳實 against 1.38 枳殼 further down this chapter, and it is the chapter's most interesting structural feature.
Because no prescription in the book calls for 竹黃 under that name, this leaf is linked to the existing 天竺黃 record rather than given one of its own; the eleven prescriptions that use the drug all call it 天竺黃.
On the use itself: 制丹石藥毒 is again the alchemical-mineral poisonings, for which see 1.18. The drug is a mineral and is inert; its modern Korean and Chinese use for childhood convulsion and phlegm-heat rests on tradition and not on evidence, and a convulsing child needs a cause found.
1.19 Evodia Fruit 吳茱萸
譯 1.19.1 Source원문
性𤍠, 味辛苦, 有小毒. 主溫中下氣, 止痛, 心腹積冷絞痛, 諸冷實不消, 中惡心腹痛, 治霍亂吐㵼轉筋, 消痰, 破癥癖, 除濕血㿏痺, 療腎氣脚氣, 胃中冷氣.
Translation영역
Its nature is hot, its flavour acrid and bitter, and it has slight toxicity. It governs warming the centre and downbearing the qi, checks pain, treats gripping pain from accumulated cold in the heart and abdomen, cold accumulations of every kind that will not disperse, and heart and abdominal pain from striking malignity; it treats sudden turmoil with vomiting and diarrhoea and cramping of the sinews, dissolves phlegm, breaks up concretions and aggregations, dispels damp-blood numb impediment, and treats kidney qi and leg qi and cold qi in the stomach.
Clinical note임상 주석
**This is the first of the three 茱萸 of this chapter, and the three are not variants of one drug — 1.19 吳茱萸 and 1.20 食茱萸 are Rutaceae, while 1.21 山茱萸 is a Cornaceae, a different family altogether.** The Bogam stands them as three separate headwords, hangs two leaves under this one and none under the third, and gives this one alone the import mark 唐 and the toxicity notice. Anyone navigating by the shared characters 茱萸 will walk from a hot, slightly toxic, strongly acrid fruit to a mild sour tonic, and the characters give no warning. The book's own descriptions do: read 1.21's 葉似楡, 花白, 子初熟未乾赤色大如枸杞子有核 against this section's 葉似椿闊厚紫色, 七八月結實似椒子 and the two plants separate at once.
吳茱萸 is the fruit of Tetradium ruticarpum (formerly Evodia rutaecarpa), and it is a real pharmacological agent: its principal alkaloids are evodiamine and rutaecarpine, both TRPV1 agonists, which is the mechanism behind the burning warmth the book describes as 性𤍠. Rutaecarpine is a potent inducer of CYP1A2, and that is the practical modern caution — **it accelerates the clearance of caffeine, theophylline, clozapine, olanzapine and tizanidine**, so a patient on any of those can lose drug effect on this herb. Hepatotoxicity has been reported with high-dose and prolonged use.
有小毒 is the book's own word and this chapter means it; the 湯液 passage below prints what an overdose looks like.
譯 1.19.2 Source원문
葉似椿, 闊厚紫色. 三月開花, 紅紫色. 七八月結實似椒子, 嫩時微黃, 至成熟則深紫. 九月九日採陰乾. 《本草》
Translation영역
Its leaves are like those of the chun tree, broad and thick and purple in colour. It opens its flowers in the third month, red-purple in colour. In the seventh and eighth months it sets fruit like pepper grains, faintly yellow while tender and deep purple when ripe. On the ninth day of the ninth month it is gathered and dried in the shade.
Clinical note임상 주석
結實似椒子, fruit like pepper grains, is an accurate description — the follicles of Tetradium look much like Sichuan pepper, and both are Rutaceae. The colour sequence, faintly yellow unripe and deep purple ripe, is the discriminator the next section uses in the opposite direction to separate this drug from 食茱萸.
九月九日, the double ninth, is a calendar date rather than a ripeness criterion, and shade-drying rather than sun-drying is appropriate for a volatile-oil-bearing fruit.
譯 1.19.3 Source원문
入足太陰經少陰經厥陰經. 多食則令人氣塞, 口開目瞪. 《湯液》
Translation영역
It enters the foot greater yin, lesser yin and reverting yin channels. Eaten in quantity it makes a person's qi block, the mouth fall open and the eyes stare.
Clinical note임상 주석
**This is the book's own overdose description and it must not be passed over.** 氣塞, 口開目瞪 — the breath stopped, the mouth hanging open, the eyes fixed and staring — is a recognisable picture of collapse, and it stands two passages after the formal notice 有小毒. The pairing of a toxicity grade with a described syndrome is rare in this chapter and makes this one of the better-documented cautions in the materia medica.
It is also consistent with what is known of the plant. High doses of Tetradium alkaloids are cardiotoxic and produce bradycardia and hypotension in animals; the Chinese pharmacopoeial dose is small, usually two to five grams, and the drug is not given long-term. The book gives no number here, and I have not supplied one.
譯 1.19.4 Source원문
色靑綠. 凢使湯浸去苦汁六七遍, 然後或𥂁水或黃連水炒用.
Translation영역
Its colour is blue-green. Whenever it is used, it is steeped in hot water and the bitter juice poured off six or seven times, and then it is dry-fried with either salt water or coptis water.
Clinical note임상 주석
**This is a processing instruction that does something real.** Six or seven changes of hot water, each decanted, is repeated aqueous extraction, and the alkaloids and bitter limonoids of Tetradium are partly water-soluble; the processed fruit is measurably weaker than the raw. Pharmacopoeial processing of 吳茱萸 in both Korea and China still requires a liquorice-water or salt-water treatment for exactly this reason, and the modern work on it finds reduced hepatotoxicity after processing.
So this is one of the places where the book's 修治 genuinely lowers the hazard rather than merely altering the taste — unlike many of the processing rules in this chapter. 黃連水, coptis water, adds a bitter cold drug to a hot one, which is the classical pairing that becomes Jwageum-hwan.
譯 1.19.5 Source원문
製法, 以𤍠湯同浸半日, 方炒各揀用之. 《入門》
Translation영역
The method of preparation: steep them together in hot water for half a day, then dry-fry them, and sort them out before use.
譯 1.19.6 Source원문
我國惟慶州有之, 他處無. 《俗方》
Translation영역
In our country it is found only at Gyeongju, and nowhere else.
Clinical note임상 주석
**This sentence and the 唐 mark at the head of the section belong together, and read as a pair they say what the mark means.** The drug is marked as bought in from China, and the book then records that the tree does grow in Korea — at one place only. The mark therefore tracks whether a drug had to be purchased, not whether the plant was absent; four other 唐-marked entries in the Decoctions chapters carry the same kind of notice, and every one of them is a statement of scarcity (零陵香 only on Cheju and hard to get, 欵冬花 formerly here and now gone, 蝎 only as escapees from Chinese imports, and 枳殼 at 1.38 below only on Cheju). It is the single most useful thing the import marks tell us about the sixteenth-century Korean drug trade.
1.19.1 Evodia Root Bark 根白皮
譯 1.19.1.1 Source원문
治喉痺咳逆, 止泄注, 療白癬, 殺三虫.
Translation영역
It treats throat impediment and cough with counterflow, checks pouring diarrhoea, treats white ringworm, and kills the three worms.
Clinical note임상 주석
No prescription in the book uses this bark under this name or under 吳茱萸根白皮, so it is not in the herb table and should not be added to it. 白癬 is dermatophyte infection of the skin or scalp, which is diagnosed by scraping and microscopy or culture and treated with topical or, for the scalp and nails, oral terbinazole or griseofulvin; it does not respond to a root bark. 殺三虫 is anthelmintic use, for which stool diagnosis and albendazole or praziquantel are the answer.
譯 1.19.1.2 Source원문
根東南行者爲勝. 道家去三尸方用之. 《本草》
Translation영역
The root that runs to the south-east is the better. The Daoists use it in their formula for expelling the three corpse-spirits.
Clinical note임상 주석
東南行者爲勝, the root running south-east, is a selection rule with no botanical content, and the 去三尸方 is a Daoist internal-alchemical practice rather than a medical one — the three 尸 are the spirit-parasites of the three cinnabar fields, not helminths, despite the 殺三虫 of the passage above using a similar phrase. The Bogam prints both without comment, and the pair is a good example of why 虫 in this literature cannot be read straight across as a parasite.
1.19.2 Evodia Leaf 葉
譯 1.19.2.1 Source원문
性𤍠. 治霍亂心腹痛, 內外腎釣痛. 𥂁炒硏罯, 神驗. 《本草》
Translation영역
Its nature is hot. It treats sudden turmoil with heart and abdominal pain, and drawing pain of the inner and outer kidneys. Dry-fried with salt, ground and applied as a poultice, it works marvels.
Clinical note임상 주석
The only external application in the 茱萸 group, and the only one of the three fruits whose leaf the book carries. 內外腎釣痛 is drawing or pulling pain of the testicles and the kidney region — what the chapters elsewhere call 㿉 or 奔豚-like pain — and a hot salted poultice is a counterirritant, which is a real if unspecific way of relieving it.
**A testicle that becomes acutely and severely painful is torsion until proved otherwise, and torsion has a window of about six hours before the testis is lost.** It is a surgical emergency. A poultice is the wrong response and the delay is the harm.
The leaf is not in the herb table and no prescription uses it.
1.20 Food Cornel 食茱萸
`수유나모여름` 은 `수유나모`(수유나무) + `여름` 이다. **`여름` 은 계절이 아니라 열매다** — 이 편에 거듭 나오는 옛 낱말이고(果部의 `ᄆᆡ화여ᄅᆞᆷ`, 이 문의 `회화나모여름`ㆍ`괴좃나모여름`ㆍ`측ᄇᆡᆨ나모여름`ㆍ`닥나모여름`), 소리로만 읽으면 뜻이 뒤집히는 자리다. `나모 → 나무` 는 또렷하므로 `수유나무 열매` 로 이었다. **다만 `수유나무` 가 어느 나무인지는 이 낱말만으로 가려지지 않는다** — `수유` 라는 이름을 쓰는 나무가 우리 식물명에 여럿 있고(쉬나무ㆍ머귀나무), 집안의 `herbs.yaml` 은 이 약재의 라틴명을 *Zanthoxylum ailanthoides*(머귀나무) 계열로 적어 두었다. 향명은 **한자 `食` 과 짝지어 「먹는 수유」라는 책의 가름을 되풀이할 뿐**이므로 종을 여기서 못 박지 않았다. 책이 1.19 와 이 절을 가르는 근거는 향명이 아니라 아래 둘째 구절의 **낱알 크기ㆍ빛깔ㆍ껍질** 기준이다.
譯 1.20.1 Source원문
主冷痺腰脚軟弱, 起陽, 殺牙齒虫痛及腸中三虫惡虫毒, 療腸風痔疾, 去虛冷, 療水氣.
Translation영역
It governs cold numb impediment with weakness of the lower back and legs, raises the yang, kills toothworm pain and the three worms and malign worm toxin in the intestines, treats intestinal wind and piles, dispels vacuity cold, and treats water qi.
Clinical note임상 주석
This is the second of the chapter's three 茱萸 and the only one with a Korean name. The herb table identifies it as Zanthoxylum ailanthoides, which is Rutaceae like 1.19 and unrelated to 1.21.
牙齒虫痛, toothworm pain, is dental caries and pulpitis; the worm is the pre-modern explanation for the cavity. **Toothache from caries is treated by a dentist — the pulp does not heal, and an untreated dental abscess can spread to the floor of the mouth and the mediastinum.** 腸風痔疾 is rectal bleeding with piles, and that is the one indication here where a modern reader has to be careful in the other direction: **rectal bleeding assumed to be haemorrhoidal is how colorectal cancer gets missed**, and new rectal bleeding over about forty, or with weight loss or a change in bowel habit, is investigated by colonoscopy.
Only three prescriptions in the formulary use this drug, against eighty-seven for 吳茱萸 — which is the measure of what 少爲劣爾, slightly inferior, meant in practice.
譯 1.20.2 Source원문
在處有之. 功用與吳茱萸同, 少爲劣爾. 顆粒大, 經久色黃黑, 乃是食茱萸. 顆粒緊小, 經久色靑綠, 卽是吳茱萸也. 《本草》
Translation영역
It is found everywhere. Its power and use are the same as evodia's, only slightly inferior. Large grains that turn yellow-black with keeping are food cornel; tight small grains that stay blue-green with keeping are evodia.
Clinical note임상 주석
**This is the passage that does the work the shared characters cannot, and it is the book discriminating two drugs by inspection.** Three criteria: grain size, the colour it goes with keeping, and — in the passage below — whether the skin is thin and the follicle gapes. Set against 1.19's own description of the fruit ripening 深紫, deep purple, and the pair becomes usable: the dried article that stays green is 吳茱萸, the one that darkens to yellow-black is 食茱萸.
在處有之, found everywhere, stands against 1.19's 我國惟慶州有之, found only at Gyeongju, and against the 唐 mark on 1.19. The commoner fruit is the one with the Korean name and the weaker action; the scarcer and imported one is the stronger drug. That is the ordinary shape of the import marks in this chapter.
譯 1.20.3 Source원문
又云皮薄開口者, 食茱萸也. 《本草》
Translation영역
Another account says that the kind with thin skin and an open mouth is food cornel.
1.20.1 Food Cornel Bark 樹皮
譯 1.20.1.1 Translation영역
It kills the toothworm and checks pain.
Clinical note임상 주석
The shortest entry in my portion and the narrowest: one use, dental pain. Zanthoxylum barks and fruits contain hydroxy-α-sanshool, which produces the numbing tingle that gives this genus its culinary point and is a plausible local anaesthetic effect on an exposed pulp. That is a counterirritant, not a cure; see the caution at 1.20. The bark is not in the herb table and no prescription uses it.
1.21 Cornus Fruit 山茱萸
譯 1.21.1 Source원문
性微溫, 味酸澁, 無毒. 强陰益精, 補腎氣, 興陽道, 堅長陰莖, 添精髓, 煖腰膝, 助水藏, 止小便利, 老人尿不節, 除頭風鼻塞耳聾.
Translation영역
Its nature is slightly warm, its flavour sour and astringent, and it is without toxicity. It strengthens the yin and boosts the essence, supplements the kidney qi, stirs the yang path, makes the stem firm and long, adds to essence and marrow, warms the lower back and knees, aids the water viscus, checks frequent urination and the old man's incontinence of urine, and dispels head wind, nasal congestion and deafness.
Clinical note임상 주석
**This is the third of the chapter's 茱萸 and the one that shares nothing but the characters with the other two.** 山茱萸 is the fruit of Cornus officinalis, Cornaceae — not a Rutaceae, not aromatic, not hot, and explicitly 無毒 where 1.19 is 有小毒. It is also the only one of the three that is a mainstay of present-day practice: sixty-four prescriptions in this site's formulary use it, and it is a constituent of Yukmijihwang-won and the whole Rehmannia family, where it is an astringent kidney supplement. It is in the Korean Pharmacopoeia and may be used.
The indications the book gives are the ones it is still prescribed for, and two of them are worth translating out of the classical idiom. 老人尿不節 is urinary incontinence in an older person; it is common, it is treatable, and it has causes that must be sorted — overactive bladder, stress incontinence, prostatic obstruction with overflow, infection, diabetes — before anything is given. **In an older man, urinary frequency and poor stream need a prostate assessment, because benign hyperplasia and carcinoma present the same way.** 耳聾, deafness: sudden sensorineural hearing loss is an emergency that is treated with corticosteroids within days, and gradual loss is audiology and hearing aids.
堅長陰莖 and 興陽道 are erectile function. There is no evidence that this fruit affects it; and **erectile dysfunction is a cardiovascular marker** — new erectile dysfunction in a middle-aged man warrants assessment of blood pressure, lipids and glucose, because it often precedes coronary disease by some years. That is the most useful thing a modern clinician can take from this passage.
譯 1.21.2 Source원문
在處有之. 葉似楡, 花白, 子初熟未乾, 赤色大如枸杞子, 有核亦可啖. 旣乾, 皮甚薄, 毎一斤去核取肉皮四兩爲正.
Translation영역
It is found everywhere. Its leaves are like the elm's, its flowers white; the fruit when first ripe and not yet dried is red and as large as a goji berry, and it has a stone, and may also be eaten. Once dried the skin is very thin, and the standard is that for every catty, with the stone removed, the flesh-and-skin should come to four nyang.
Clinical note임상 주석
**Read this description against 1.19's and the family difference becomes visible without the book having to state it**: elm-like leaves, white flowers, a red goji-sized drupe with a single stone. That is Cornus, and it is nothing like the thick purple leaves, red-purple flowers and pepper-like follicles of 1.19. The Bogam separates the three 茱萸 botanically and never says that it is doing so — which is why the characters are the trap and the descriptions are the key.
The yield figure is exact and useful: four nyang of flesh from a catty of whole fruit, a quarter by weight, the rest being stone. It is the kind of dispensary arithmetic that shows the drug was handled in quantity.
譯 1.21.3 Source원문
肉壯元氣, 秘精. 核能滑精, 故去之. 九月十月採實陰乾. 《本草》
Translation영역
The flesh fortifies the original qi and secures the essence. The stone can make the essence slip away, and so it is removed. In the ninth and tenth months the fruit is gathered and dried in the shade.
Clinical note임상 주석
**This is a processing rule with a stated reason, and the practice survives unchanged** — pharmacopoeial 山茱萸 is the pitted flesh, and destoning is required in both the Korean and the Chinese monographs. The book's reason is pharmacological in its own terms: the flesh secures, the stone loosens, so the stone would undo the drug. Whether or not that is the mechanism, the rule gives a consistent article, and removing a hard indigestible stone from a decoction ingredient is good practice on its own.
譯 1.21.4 Source원문
酒浸去核, 慢火焙乾用. 一名石棗. 《入門》
Translation영역
Steep in wine, remove the stone, and dry it over a slow fire for use. One name for it is stone jujube.
Clinical note임상 주석
一名石棗, stone jujube, is a second name for the same drug and not a separate one; the herb table has a record 石茱萸 which is a different thing again and is not this. The wine-steeping is a warming adjunct and is still an optional processing for this drug.
1.22 Eucommia Bark 杜仲
譯 1.22.1 Source원문
性平溫, 味辛甘, 無毒. 治腎勞腰脊攣痛, 脚中痠疼, 堅筋骨, 除陰下濕痒, 小便餘瀝, 益精氣, 能治腎冷𦟡腰痛.
Translation영역
Its nature is balanced and warm, its flavour acrid and sweet, and it is without toxicity. It treats kidney taxation with cramping pain of the lower back and spine and aching in the legs, firms the sinews and bones, dispels damp itching below the yin, and dribbling after urination; it boosts the essential qi and can treat cold kidney and lumbago with a sense of dragging weight.
Clinical note임상 주석
**杜仲 is in the Korean Pharmacopoeia and may be used.** It is the bark of Eucommia ulmoides, a Chinese endemic — which is why the 唐 mark stands here and why the book gives no Korean source. It is one of the most used drugs in the chapter: seventy-six prescriptions in this site's formulary call for it, almost always for low back pain and weak knees in a kidney-vacuity pattern, which is still its indication.
The pharmacology that has been looked at is antihypertensive: Eucommia bark extracts lower blood pressure in animals and in small human studies, chiefly through vasorelaxation, and the lignan pinoresinol diglucoside is the usual marker compound. That is not a reason to use it for hypertension, but it is a reason to know it is in a patient's decoction if they are on antihypertensives, because the effects are in the same direction.
小便餘瀝, dribbling after urination, is again a prostatic symptom in a man; see 1.21.
譯 1.22.2 Source원문
狀如厚朴, 折之內有白絲相連者佳. 削去上皮, 橫理切, 令絲斷. 《本草》
Translation영역
It is shaped like magnolia bark, and the good kind, when snapped, has white threads joining the two parts within. Pare away the outer bark and cut across the grain so that the threads are severed.
Clinical note임상 주석
**The white threads are a genuine identity test and they are still used.** Eucommia bark contains gutta-percha, a trans-polyisoprene latex, and the fine white elastic strands that bridge a clean break are the pharmacognostic character of this drug — the Korean and Chinese monographs both describe them. The book's own comparison, 狀如厚朴, like 厚朴 (which is 1.39 of this chapter), is the mistake the test prevents.
譯 1.22.3 Source원문
削去麄皮, 切, 酥蜜炒, 或薑汁炒, 以絲斷爲度. 一名思仙木, 又名石思仙. 《丹心》
Translation영역
Pare away the coarse bark, cut it, and dry-fry it with butter and honey, or with ginger juice, taking the severing of the threads as the measure of doneness. One name for it is the immortal-longing wood, another the stone immortal-longing.
Clinical note임상 주석
以絲斷爲度, taking the severing of the threads as the measure, is an endpoint for the frying that is checked by inspection rather than by time — a sound piece of practical instruction, since the gutta-percha softens and breaks as the bark is heated through. Salt-frying is the commoner modern processing; butter-and-honey and ginger-juice frying are both recorded here.
1.23 Prinsepia Stone 蕤核
譯 1.23.1 Source원문
性微寒, 味甘溫, 無毒. 主明目, 目赤痛傷, 淚出, 目腫, 眥爛. 《本草》
Translation영역
Its nature is slightly cold, its flavour sweet and warm, and it is without toxicity. It governs brightening the eyes, and redness, pain and injury of the eye, running of tears, swelling of the eye, and ulceration of the canthus.
Clinical note임상 주석
An eye drug and nothing else — every indication in the section is ophthalmic, which is unusual in this chapter. The headword names the stone as gathered; the passage below says to shell it and use the kernel, which is the drug the formulary knows as 蕤仁, and that is the existing herb record this section links to. Eight prescriptions use it, every one of them an eye preparation or an ointment.
性微寒, 味甘溫 prints a cold nature beside a warm flavour, which is an odd pairing of the same kind as 果部's 性平寒. The transcription carries no collation line here and I print it as it stands without choosing.
**The clinical caution here is about what is being treated, not about the drug.** 目赤痛傷 with 淚出 covers conjunctivitis, which is usually self-limiting, but also keratitis, uveitis and acute angle-closure glaucoma, which are not. **A red painful eye with reduced vision, a hazy cornea or a fixed pupil is an emergency and needs an ophthalmologist the same day** — angle-closure glaucoma blinds in hours. And a kernel paste applied to an injured eye risks introducing infection into a breached cornea; 目赤痛傷, an injured eye, is precisely the case where nothing non-sterile should go in.
譯 1.23.2 Source원문
去殼取仁, 湯泡去皮尖, 硏膏用, 紙壓去油用之. 《入門》
Translation영역
Remove the shell and take the kernel, scald it to take off the skin and tip, grind it to a paste for use, and press it in paper to remove the oil before using it.
Clinical note임상 주석
**This is the book defining its own headword by instruction rather than by gloss, and it is why this section links to the kernel and not to the stone.** The same shape as 果部's 桃核仁 against 桃仁: the headword is what is gathered, the drug is what is inside.
湯泡去皮尖, scalding to take off the skin and tip, is the processing the fruit chapter requires of the amygdalin-bearing kernels of peach and apricot, where it genuinely lowers the cyanide yield because the skin and tip carry the most and heat destroys the enzyme. Prinsepia is Rosaceae, the same family, and its seed can be expected to carry cyanogenic glycoside on the same pattern, so the processing is likely doing the same work here — but I have not found that measured for this species and record it as an inference rather than a fact. 紙壓去油, pressing out the oil in paper, is defatting, which keeps the paste from going rancid.
1.24 Clove 丁香
譯 1.24.1 Source원문
性溫, 味辛, 無毒. 溫脾胃, 止霍亂, 及腎氣奔豚氣, 冷氣腹痛陰痛, 壯陽, 煖腰膝, 療反胃, 殺酒毒, 消風毒諸腫, 除齒疳𧏾, 能發諸香.
Translation영역
Its nature is warm, its flavour acrid, and it is without toxicity. It warms the spleen and stomach, checks sudden turmoil, treats kidney qi and running-piglet qi, cold-qi abdominal pain and pain in the yin, invigorates the yang, warms the lower back and knees, treats stomach reflux, kills the toxin of wine, disperses swellings from wind toxin, dispels gum erosion with sores, and can bring out all other fragrances.
Clinical note임상 주석
**Clove, the dried flower bud of Syzygium aromaticum, and the first of the seven aromatics in my portion that came to Korea along the spice routes.** The 唐 mark says it was bought in from China; the plant is Moluccan, so what the mark records here is the last leg of a trade that ran from the Banda Sea through Southeast Asia and China to Korea. Seven sections of my twenty-three are aromatics of this kind — clove, agarwood, frankincense, Korean mint, sandalwood, storax and borneol — and the single character 唐 on each is the Bogam's notation for that whole commerce.
Clove is heavily used: a hundred prescriptions in this site's formulary. It is also a food, and the pharmacology is eugenol, which is about three-quarters of clove oil. **Eugenol is a real local anaesthetic and antiseptic, which is why 除齒疳𧏾, dispelling gum erosion and sores, is the one indication here that works** — clove oil is still a recognised temporary dressing for a dry socket and for dental pain, and eugenol-zinc oxide cements are standard dental materials.
The warning that belongs with it is about dose and route. **Undiluted clove oil taken by mouth is hepatotoxic; ingestions of as little as five to ten millilitres in a small child have caused fulminant hepatic failure, and a case series of paediatric clove-oil poisoning is the reason it is kept out of reach.** Clove oil on a tooth is a different exposure from clove oil swallowed. The whole bud in a decoction, which is what this section is about, is a food-level exposure and is not the concern.
奔豚氣, running-piglet qi, is a disease name and not an animal; the same characters appear in 1.24's 湯液 passage below and in the 吳茱萸-containing formula Osuyu-san.
譯 1.24.2 Source원문
有雌雄. 雄顆小, 雌顆大. 若欲使雄, 須去丁盖, 免發背癕也.
Translation영역
There are male and female. The male grain is small, the female large. If the male is to be used, the little nail-head cap must be removed, to avoid an abscess breaking out on the back.
Clinical note임상 주석
**This is the book stating a toxicity of its own and giving a processing step to avoid it**, and it should not be passed over even though the mechanism is not ours: remove the 丁盖, the nail-head cap, or an abscess will break out on the back. The cap is the calyx tube and hypanthium of the bud; what is left after removing it is the stalk. There is no modern counterpart to 發背癕 as a consequence of eating a clove calyx, and I record the instruction as the book gives it without endorsing the reason.
The male-and-female sorting by grain size reappears in the next passage as 母丁香, mother clove, and in the leaf 雞舌香 below, where the book turns sceptical about the whole scheme.
譯 1.24.3 Source원문
丁香中有麄大如山茱萸者, 俗呼爲母丁香, 氣味尤佳. 《本草》
Translation영역
Among cloves there are coarse large ones like cornus fruit, commonly called mother clove, and their aroma and flavour are better still.
Clinical note임상 주석
麄大如山茱萸者, coarse and large like cornus fruit, is the Bogam comparing one of its own headwords with another two sections back — a reminder that 山茱萸 is a red drupe about a centimetre long. 母丁香 is the clove fruit rather than the bud, and it is a separate article in the modern Chinese materia medica; the book treats it as a grade of the same drug.
譯 1.24.4 Source원문
形似釘. 入手太陰足陽明少陰經, 與五味子蓬朮同用, 治奔豚之氣. 《湯液》
Translation영역
It is shaped like a nail. It enters the hand greater yin and the foot yang brightness and lesser yin channels, and used together with schisandra and zedoary it treats running-piglet qi.
Clinical note임상 주석
形似釘, shaped like a nail, is the etymology of the name: 丁 is a nail, and the English clove is from Latin clavus, the same image arrived at independently. 奔豚 is the classical name for a sensation of something rushing up from the lower abdomen to the chest and throat; the modern description that matches it most closely is panic attack, and panic disorder responds to cognitive behavioural therapy and to SSRIs.
1.24.1 Cock's-Tongue Aromatic 雞舌香
譯 1.24.1.1 Source원문
療口臭. 漢侍中應邵年老口臭, 帝賜雞舌香含之.
Translation영역
It treats foul breath. The Han Palace Attendant Ying Shao was old and his breath was foul, and the emperor gave him cock's-tongue aromatic to hold in his mouth.
Clinical note임상 주석
One of the few anecdotes in my portion, and the origin of a standing Chinese expression for serving at court. 口臭, halitosis, is in nine cases out of ten of oral origin — periodontal disease, tongue coating, dry mouth, caries — and is treated by dental and periodontal care rather than by masking; persistent foul breath with no dental cause is investigated for sinus disease, reflux and, rarely, hepatic or renal failure.
譯 1.24.1.2 Source원문
今人於丁香中大如棗核者, 呼爲雞舌香, 堅頑枯燥, 了無香氣. 或云雞舌香出崑崙交廣, 採百花釀之以成香, 故口含此香, 欲使氣芬芳耳. 《本草》
Translation영역
People now call those cloves that are as large as a jujube stone cock's-tongue aromatic; they are hard and stubborn, withered and dry, and have no fragrance at all. Some say that cock's-tongue aromatic comes from Kunlun and from Jiao and Guang, and that a hundred flowers are gathered and fermented to make the scent, and that this is why the scent is held in the mouth — simply to make the breath sweet.
Clinical note임상 주석
**This is the most sceptical passage in my portion and the kind of thing that makes the Bogam worth reading closely: the book records a famous use and then says the article now sold under that name is worthless.** 堅頑枯燥, 了無香氣 — hard, stubborn, withered, dry, and with no fragrance at all — is a market complaint about adulteration, written into the materia medica beside the anecdote that created the demand. The second half is a second complaint: that what is sold is not a single drug at all but a fermented flower compound.
No prescription in the book uses 雞舌香, so it is not in the herb table and should not be added. Historically it is usually identified with 母丁香, the clove fruit of the passage above, and the modern consensus is that the Han-period 雞舌香 was indeed clove; what the Bogam is describing is a later degraded trade in the name.
1.25 Agarwood 沉香
譯 1.25.1 Source원문
性𤍠, 味辛一云苦, 無毒. 主風水毒腫, 去惡氣, 止心腹痛, 益精壯陽, 治冷風麻痺, 霍亂吐㵼轉筋.
Translation영역
Its nature is hot, its flavour acrid one says bitter, and it is without toxicity. It governs wind-water toxic swelling, dispels malign qi, checks heart and abdominal pain, boosts the essence and invigorates the yang, and treats cold-wind numbness and insensibility, and sudden turmoil with vomiting and diarrhoea and cramping of the sinews.
Clinical note임상 주석
**Agarwood is the resin-infiltrated heartwood of Aquilaria species, formed only where the living tree has been wounded and infected by fungus — which is why it is the most expensive wood in the world and why the genus is now in serious trouble.** Every Aquilaria species is listed on CITES Appendix II, and several are assessed as Critically Endangered; wild-harvested agarwood is taken by felling trees to find the rare infected ones. **A practitioner buying this drug should be satisfied it comes from a cultivated, inoculated plantation source with CITES documentation.** That is a conservation caution rather than a safety one, and it is the main thing to say about this entry today.
The drug itself is used in a hundred and two prescriptions in this site's formulary, which makes it one of the heaviest users of an imported material in the whole book. It is not toxic at the doses used and is largely a carminative and qi-moving aromatic; its chemistry is sesquiterpenes and chromones.
譯 1.25.2 Source원문
生嶺南交廣. 土人見香木, 必以刀斫成坎, 經年得雨水所漬, 遂結香. 其堅黑中實無空心而沉水者爲沉香, 浮水者爲煎香. 煎香中形如雞骨者爲雞骨香, 形如馬蹄者爲馬蹄香. 雖沉水而有空心則是雞骨也. 燔之極淸烈. 《本草》
Translation영역
It grows in Lingnan and in Jiao and Guang. When the local people see an incense tree they always cut pits into it with a knife, and after a year the rainwater has soaked in and the resin forms. The kind that is hard and black, solid through and without a hollow core, and that sinks in water, is sinking aromatic; the kind that floats is simmering aromatic. Among the simmering aromatics, the kind shaped like a chicken bone is chicken-bone aromatic and the kind shaped like a horse's hoof is horse-hoof aromatic. Even one that sinks in water, if it has a hollow core, is a chicken-bone. Burnt, it is intensely clear and pungent.
Clinical note임상 주석
**This is a remarkably accurate account of agarwood formation and grading, and the wounding it describes is exactly the method used in modern plantations.** Cutting the trunk and letting the wound become infected is how the resin is induced; commercial inoculation today uses drilled holes and a fungal or chemical inducer, and the principle is the same. The water test is also real and still used in the trade: resin content high enough to make the wood sink in water is the top grade, and the name 沉香, sinking aromatic, is that test.
The grades named here — 煎香, 雞骨香, 馬蹄香 — are a commercial vocabulary rather than separate drugs, and none of them is a headword in this chapter.
譯 1.25.3 Source원문
沉香能養諸氣, 上而至天, 下而至泉, 用爲使. 《湯液》
Translation영역
Agarwood can nourish the qi of every kind, reaching upward to heaven and downward to the springs; it is used as an envoy.
譯 1.25.4 Source원문
入湯磨刺服, 入丸散另硏極細用. 《入門》
Translation영역
For a decoction it is ground and taken; for pills and powders it is ground separately and extremely fine before use.
Clinical note임상 주석
另硏, grinding separately, is the standing instruction for aromatics in this chapter and is a practical one: these resins and resinous woods cake and are lost if milled with the bulk drugs. The reason it matters here is cost — agarwood is dosed in fractions of a gram.
1.26 Frankincense 乳香
譯 1.26.1 Source원문
性𤍠一云溫, 味辛, 微毒. 主風水毒腫, 去惡氣, 止心腹痛疰氣, 療耳聾, 中風口噤, 婦人血氣, 治諸瘡令內消, 止大腸泄澼.
Translation영역
Its nature is hot one says warm, its flavour acrid, and it is slightly toxic. It governs wind-water toxic swelling, dispels malign qi, checks heart and abdominal pain and fixation qi, treats deafness, wind stroke with the jaw clenched shut, and women's blood and qi disorders; it treats sores of every kind, causing them to disperse inwardly, and checks diarrhoea and intestinal flux from the large intestine.
Clinical note임상 주석
**Frankincense, the gum-resin of Boswellia species from Arabia and the Horn of Africa, and the longest trade route of any drug in my portion.** The next passage says so: 生南海波斯國, from the southern seas and the land of Persia. The 唐 mark means it reached Korea through China, and the entry therefore records the eastern end of the Incense Road.
It is in a hundred and sixty-three prescriptions in this site's formulary — the most used of all my aromatics — and almost always for pain and for sores, which is still its use. The pharmacology that has been examined is the boswellic acids, which inhibit 5-lipoxygenase and have been trialled with modest positive results in osteoarthritis, asthma and ulcerative colitis.
**The practical modern caution is allergic contact dermatitis.** Frankincense and myrrh are balsams, and the balsams are among the commonest causes of allergic contact sensitisation; fragrance mix and balsam of Peru are standard patch-test allergens for this reason. Any resin applied topically in an ointment, which is what most of this drug's prescriptions do, can sensitise, and a worsening itchy eruption at the site of a herbal plaster is more often contact allergy than the condition failing to respond.
微毒, slightly toxic, is the book's own grade and is the only one of the five resins and aromatics in my portion to carry one.
譯 1.26.2 Source원문
生南海波斯國松樹脂也. 紫赤如櫻桃者爲上, 盖薰陸之類也. 今人不復分別, 通謂乳香爲薰陸香耳.
Translation영역
It is the resin of a pine-like tree from the southern seas and the land of Persia. The kind that is purple-red like a cherry is the best, and it is of the frankincense sort. People now no longer distinguish them, and call frankincense simply by the name hunryuk.
Clinical note임상 주석
松樹脂, the resin of a pine-like tree, is wrong — Boswellia is Burseraceae and not a conifer — but the error is informative: the article arrived as lumps of resin with no plant attached, and a resin was assumed to come from a resinous tree of the kind the writer knew. The passage then records a name collapsing: 薰陸 and 乳香 were once distinguished and by this date were not.
That matters for one reason. **Frankincense and myrrh are commonly confused and commonly adulterated with each other and with rosin**, and the book's own complaint that the names have merged is the earliest form of the same problem. 沒藥, myrrh, is a separate headword later in this chapter.
譯 1.26.3 Source원문
形如乳頭, 以粉紅透明者爲上. 《本草》
Translation영역
It is shaped like a nipple, and the kind that is pinkish and translucent is the best.
Clinical note임상 주석
形如乳頭 is the etymology of the Chinese name — 乳 is milk or breast — and the tear-shaped droplets are what the grade name still describes. Pink translucency is a genuine quality mark for Boswellia sacra and B. carterii.
譯 1.26.4 Source원문
入藥微炒殺毒, 得不粘. 或搗碎紙包席下眠一宿, 另硏用. 《入門》
Translation영역
For putting into medicine it is lightly dry-fried to kill the toxin and so that it does not stick. Or it is pounded up, wrapped in paper and slept on under the mat for a night, and then ground separately for use.
Clinical note임상 주석
微炒殺毒, light frying to kill the toxin, answers the 微毒 of the first passage — the book states a toxicity and then gives a processing step for it, which is the pattern to look for in this chapter. Gentle heating does drive off some of the volatile fraction, and it also, as the text says, stops the resin sticking to the mortar, which is the practical reason. The trick of pounding the resin and sleeping on it wrapped in paper under the sleeping mat is a way of warming it to a workable consistency with body heat, and it is one of the more vivid procedures in the chapter.
譯 1.26.5 Source원문
又云以竹葉包熨斗火熨, 乃硏細用. 《直指》
Translation영역
Another account says to wrap it in bamboo leaves and press it with a heated flat-iron, and then grind it fine for use.
Clinical note임상 주석
The bamboo leaf is 1.18 of this chapter, used here as a wrapper — the same role the lotus leaf has in the fruit chapter. Pressing with a hot iron is the same principle as the mat method, applied faster.
1.26.1 Sweetgum Resin 白膠香
譯 1.26.1.1 Source원문
性平, 味辛苦, 無毒. 主癮疹風痒, 齒痛.
Translation영역
Its nature is balanced, its flavour acrid and bitter, and it is without toxicity. It governs hidden rash with wind itch, and toothache.
Clinical note임상 주석
**This leaf is a character trap and the trap has to be named.** 白膠香 is the resin of the sweetgum, Liquidambar, a tree — and 白膠 without the 香 is, in the Animals chapter, a name for 鹿角膠, the gelatin boiled from deer antler. The book says so itself there: 一名鹿角膠. The two drugs have nothing in common beyond two characters, one being a plant exudate used on skin and the other an animal gelatin used as a blood supplement, and the herb-alias table carries 白膠 as a form of 鹿角膠 for that reason.
I measured it: **`formulas.yaml` contains seventeen occurrences of the string 白膠, and all seventeen are 白膠香** — not one bare 白膠 exists anywhere in the prescriptions, and both ingredient records that use the resin are correctly linked to the sweetgum. So the trap has not fired. It remains live for any future tool that matches the shorter string first, and the 獸部 worker's measurement of this is confirmed exactly.
癮疹風痒 is urticaria, which is treated with non-sedating antihistamines and, when it persists beyond six weeks, investigated as chronic spontaneous urticaria. **Urticaria with swelling of the lips, tongue or throat, or with breathlessness, is angioedema or anaphylaxis and needs adrenaline, not an ointment.**
譯 1.26.1.2 Source원문
卽楓香脂也. 外科要藥也. 《本草》
Translation영역
It is the sweetgum resin. It is an essential drug of external medicine.
Clinical note임상 주석
**卽楓香脂也 is the book settling the identification in four characters, and it is the sentence that disposes of the 白膠 confusion above**: 楓 is Liquidambar, the sweetgum, and 楓香脂 is the modern pharmacopoeial name for this resin. 楓葉, the sweetgum leaf, is a separate record in this site's herb table. The chapter later carries 1.41 䄅皮 as well, which is a different tree again — ash bark, 秦皮 — so the Korean name 무프렛겁질 on that entry should not be read across to this resin.
外科要藥, an essential drug of external medicine, is an accurate summary of how the twelve prescriptions that use it actually use it: plasters, ointments and sore powders. Like frankincense, it is a balsam and a contact sensitiser; Liquidambar styrax is closely related to the storax of 1.31 below, and storax is one of the components of balsam of Peru, the standard patch-test allergen.
1.27 Korean Mint 藿香
譯 1.27.1 Source원문
性微溫, 味辛, 無毒. 療風水毒腫, 去惡氣, 止霍亂, 治脾胃吐逆, 爲最要之藥. 《本草》
Translation영역
Its nature is slightly warm, its flavour acrid, and it is without toxicity. It treats wind-water toxic swelling, dispels malign qi, checks sudden turmoil, and treats spleen-and-stomach vomiting and counterflow, for which it is the most essential of drugs.
Clinical note임상 주석
爲最要之藥, the most essential of drugs, is as strong a recommendation as this chapter gives anything, and it is given for one thing: vomiting. Eighty-four prescriptions in this site's formulary use it, chiefly in the Gwakhyangjeonggi-san family for gastroenteritis with vomiting and diarrhoea.
There is an identity question behind the name that practitioners should know about. The Korean drug 藿香 is Agastache rugosa, Korean mint or 배초향, a Lamiaceae; the Chinese market drug sold as 廣藿香 is Pogostemon cablin, patchouli, a different genus with a quite different smell, and plain 藿香 in Chinese sources may mean either. This site's herb table identifies the drug as Agastache, following Korean practice. The 唐 mark here says the Bogam's supply came through China, which does not settle which plant arrived.
Neither plant is toxic and both are food-grade aromatics; this is a drug that may be used.
霍亂 as the book uses it is acute vomiting and diarrhoea of any cause and not specifically the Vibrio cholerae disease that took the name later. **Profuse watery diarrhoea with rapid dehydration, whatever its cause, is treated by oral or intravenous rehydration, and that is what saves life in it** — a carminative treats the nausea and not the fluid loss.
譯 1.27.2 Source원문
入手足太陰經, 止咽吐, 發散風寒爲上. 《湯液》
Translation영역
It enters the hand and foot greater yin channels; it checks retching and vomiting, and for dispersing wind-cold outward it is the best.
Clinical note임상 주석
One of the two collation lines in my portion that recover meaning rather than a graph. The other is at 1.18.3. It is worth noting how cheaply they could have been lost: the characters differ by one stroke-group and the transcription's reading is not nonsense on its face, only idiomatically wrong.
譯 1.27.3 Source원문
苓藿虛燥, 古人乃以合熏香也. 《本草》
Translation영역
Poria and Korean mint are hollow and dry, and so the ancients compounded them into incense.
Clinical note임상 주석
苓 here is 茯苓, which is 1.6 of this chapter. The sentence explains an incense use rather than a medical one, and the Bogam prints it without apology, as it does the lotus flower's 入香甚妙 in the fruit chapter: these plants are in the materia medica partly because they smell good.
譯 1.27.4 Source원문
入藥水洗去土梗, 用葉. 《入門》
Translation영역
For putting into medicine it is washed in water to remove earth and stalk, and the leaf is used.
Clinical note임상 주석
用葉, use the leaf, is a part specification that matters: the stalk is bulk with little volatile oil, and the Korean and Chinese monographs both set a leaf-content minimum for this drug. Washing off the soil is the only reason water touches an aromatic here — prolonged soaking would cost the oil that is the drug.
1.28 White Sandalwood 白檀香
譯 1.28.1 Source원문
性溫, 味辛, 無毒. 消𤍠腫, 治腎氣腹痛, 又主心腹痛, 霍亂, 中惡鬼氣, 殺虫. 《本草》
Translation영역
Its nature is warm, its flavour acrid, and it is without toxicity. It disperses hot swellings, treats kidney qi with abdominal pain, and also governs heart and abdominal pain, sudden turmoil, and being struck by malign ghostly qi; and it kills worms.
Clinical note임상 주석
**Sandalwood is the heartwood of Santalum album, an Indian tree, and like agarwood at 1.25 it is a conservation problem.** Santalum album is assessed as Vulnerable, Indian sandalwood is state-owned and its harvest regulated, and most commercial oil now comes from Australian plantations of S. album and S. spicatum. A practitioner buying this drug should know where it came from.
This site's herb table carries three separate records for this material — 白檀香, 白檀 and 檀香 — which between them account for twenty-two ingredient entries, and some prescriptions whose text reads 白檀香 are linked to the 白檀 record. That is a pre-existing split in the table rather than anything in this chapter; I link the headword to the record whose characters match it exactly and note the split for the overseer.
Sandalwood is not toxic at the doses used and the drug may be used; the main pharmacological constituents are α- and β-santalol.
譯 1.28.2 Source원문
樹如檀, 有黃白紫三種. 入手太陰經足少陰經, 通行陽明經, 引胃氣上升. 抑論諸香動火耗氣, 非冷氣不舒者不可輕服. 腦麝芳竄尤甚, 宜戒之. 《入門》
Translation영역
The tree is like the sandal tree, and there are three kinds, yellow, white and purple. It enters the hand greater yin and foot lesser yin channels, moves freely through the yang brightness channel, and draws the stomach qi upward. But to consider the matter: the aromatics all stir fire and consume qi, and anyone who is not suffering from cold qi that will not spread should not take them lightly. Borneol and musk are the most piercingly fragrant of all, and they should be especially guarded against.
Clinical note임상 주석
**This is the single most valuable passage in my portion, because it is the chapter turning on its own class of drugs.** 諸香動火耗氣 — the aromatics all stir fire and consume qi — and then the rule: 非冷氣不舒者不可輕服, do not take them lightly unless there is cold qi that will not spread. Seven of my twenty-three sections are aromatics and this is the one that says they are not harmless. And it names the two worst: 腦麝, borneol and musk, 芳竄尤甚, the most piercingly penetrating of all. 腦 is 龍腦, which is 1.35 below.
That the warning is printed under sandalwood rather than under borneol is characteristic of how the Bogam works: the general caution sits where the quotation it came from put it, and a reader of 1.35 alone would never see it. It is also a caution that modern pharmacology partly bears out — borneol is a blood-brain-barrier permeabiliser and is used in Chinese practice precisely to drive other drugs into the central nervous system, which is a real reason not to take it casually.
三種, three kinds, yellow white and purple, sorts this entry against 1.29 紫檀香 below, which is the purple one given its own headword.
譯 1.28.3 Source원문
能調氣而淸香, 引芳香之物上行至極高之分, 最宜橙橘之屬, 佐以薑棗葛根豆蔲縮砂益智, 通行陽明之經. 《湯液》
Translation영역
It can regulate the qi and is clear in its fragrance, and it draws the aromatic substances upward to the very highest divisions; it suits the orange and tangerine sort best, assisted by ginger, jujube, pueraria, cardamom, amomum and alpinia, and it moves freely through the yang brightness channel.
Clinical note임상 주석
A compounding rule rather than an indication, and the drugs it names are a good cross-section of the warm aromatics of the fruit, herb and grain chapters. 豆蔲 is the transcription's form of 豆蔻.
1.29 Red Sandalwood 紫檀香
譯 1.29.1 Source원문
性溫, 味辛, 無毒. 主惡毒風毒, 霍亂, 心腹痛, 中惡鬼氣. 一名紫真檀. 《本草》
Translation영역
Its nature is warm, its flavour acrid, and it is without toxicity. It governs malign toxin and wind toxin, sudden turmoil, heart and abdominal pain, and being struck by malign ghostly qi. One name for it is purple true sandal.
Clinical note임상 주석
The purple one of the three sandalwoods the previous section names, given its own headword. 紫檀 is Pterocarpus santalinus, red sanders, which is Fabaceae and not a Santalum at all — a different family from 1.28 despite the shared 檀. It is not aromatic in the way white sandalwood is; its use is as a dye and a hard timber as much as a drug, and only two prescriptions in this site's formulary call for it.
Pterocarpus santalinus is endemic to a small area of Andhra Pradesh, is assessed as Endangered, and is on CITES Appendix II with a long history of illegal logging. The same conservation caution applies as at 1.25 and 1.28.
譯 1.29.2 Translation영역
In our country there is much of it in Gangwon Province.
Clinical note임상 주석
我國江原道多有之 is the only claim of an abundant Korean source for any of the sandalwoods, and it cannot be right for Pterocarpus santalinus, which does not grow outside southern India. What grew in Gangwon and was gathered as 紫檀 was some local hardwood with red heartwood — Pterocarpus-like in colour and nothing else. That is the ordinary mechanism by which a trade name attaches to a substitute, and it is why the 俗方 notices in this chapter are worth keeping: they record what was actually in the Korean dispensary, which is not always what the headword names.
1.30 Rosewood Heartwood 降真香
譯 1.30.1 Source원문
性溫平, 無毒. 主天行時氣, 宅舎怪異, 燒之辟邪惡之氣.
Translation영역
Its nature is warm and balanced, and it is without toxicity. It governs epidemic seasonal qi and strange happenings in a dwelling; burnt, it wards off evil and malign qi.
Clinical note임상 주석
降真香 is the resinous heartwood of Dalbergia odorifera and related rosewoods, from Hainan and mainland Southeast Asia — an import, which is what the 唐 mark says. Only two prescriptions in this site's formulary use it, both of them fumigants.
**Both of this section's two passages are about burning it rather than taking it, and this is the one entry in my portion with no internal medical use at all.** 天行時氣 is epidemic disease and 宅舎怪異 is a haunted house; the remedy for both is smoke. That is worth saying plainly: fumigation against epidemic disease was the standing public-health measure of the period and it did not work, because the diseases in question — smallpox, measles, typhus, dysentery — spread by routes that incense does not touch. **Smoke itself is a respiratory irritant and indoor combustion of plant material is a recognised cause of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, particularly in women and children in poorly ventilated rooms.**
Dalbergia is another CITES genus: the whole genus is listed on Appendix II, driven by the rosewood timber trade, and D. odorifera is assessed as Vulnerable.
譯 1.30.2 Source원문
燒之引鶴降, 盤旋於上. 醮星辰度籙, 燒之功第一. 《本草》
Translation영역
Burnt, it draws cranes down to wheel and circle overhead. For the sacrifices to the stars and the conferring of Daoist registers, it is the first of all things to burn.
Clinical note임상 주석
This is Daoist liturgy, not medicine, and the Bogam prints it as it stands. 降真 in the name means drawing down the perfected ones, and the cranes are their mounts; the drug is named for the ritual. I translate it straight and record it as what it is — the clearest instance in my portion of the materia medica carrying material that is religious rather than therapeutic.
1.31 Storax 蘇合香
譯 1.31.1 Source원문
性溫, 味甘, 無毒. 主辟惡, 殺鬼精物, 溫瘧, 蠱毒, 去三虫, 令人無夢魘.
Translation영역
Its nature is warm, its flavour sweet, and it is without toxicity. It governs warding off malignity, kills ghosts and spirit-beings, treats warm malaria and gu toxin, dispels the three worms, and keeps a person from nightmares.
Clinical note임상 주석
**Storax is the balsam of Liquidambar orientalis, from Asia Minor, and it is the same genus as the sweetgum resin at 1.26.1 above** — 白膠香 is the resin of the Chinese Liquidambar formosana, and this is the Levantine one, which travelled further and arrived through China with the 唐 mark. Six prescriptions in this site's formulary use it, and one of them, Sohaphyang-won, is named after it and is still made; the prescriptions call for it as 蘇合油, storax oil, the liquid form.
**Storax is a balsam and the practical caution is contact allergy.** Storax is one of the constituents of balsam of Peru, which is a standard patch-test allergen and one of the commonest causes of allergic contact dermatitis to a plant product; the same applies to the frankincense at 1.26 and the sweetgum at 1.26.1. A patient whose herbal plaster site becomes increasingly itchy and eczematous is more likely sensitised than unresponsive.
溫瘧 is malaria. **Malaria is diagnosed by blood film or rapid antigen test and treated with artemisinin-based combination therapy; falciparum malaria kills within days and is a medical emergency.** The fact that the artemisinins came out of this same materia medica tradition — from 青蒿, which is in the Herbs chapter — is a reason to take the tradition's claims seriously enough to test them, and not a reason to accept this one.
譯 1.31.2 Source원문
中天竺出蘇合, 是諸香汁煎之, 非自然一物也. 今人用如膏油者, 極芬烈耳. 《本草》
Translation영역
Central India produces storax; it is made by simmering the juices of various aromatics together, and is not a single natural substance. What people now use, resembling an ointment or an oil, is extremely fragrant and pungent.
Clinical note임상 주석
**This is the book saying its own drug is a compound and not a single substance, and that is the second time in my portion it has made that complaint** — the other is 雞舌香 at 1.24.1, where the article is said to be a hundred flowers fermented together. 非自然一物也, not a single natural thing, is a sharp observation to find in a materia medica, and it was wrong in this case: storax is a genuine single-species balsam. But the suspicion was reasonable, because an imported processed resin arrived with no plant and no provenance, and the adulteration the book suspected was common.
The attribution to 中天竺, central India, is also wrong — Liquidambar orientalis is Anatolian — and it shows how little of the route survived the journey. It is the same kind of error as 1.26's 松樹脂.
1.32 Cherokee Rose Fruit 金櫻子
譯 1.32.1 Source원문
性平溫, 味酸澁, 無毒. 療脾泄下利, 止小便利, 澁精氣, 止遺精泄精.
Translation영역
Its nature is balanced and warm, its flavour sour and astringent, and it is without toxicity. It treats spleen diarrhoea with downward flux, checks frequent urination, astringes the essential qi, and checks seminal emission and seminal leakage.
Clinical note임상 주석
金櫻子 is the hip of Rosa laevigata, the Cherokee rose, and the drug is a plain astringent — every indication in the section is something leaking that is to be held in. It is lightly used: three prescriptions in this site's formulary.
The drug is a rose hip, is not toxic, and may be used. 遺精, seminal emission, is not a disease in modern terms; nocturnal emission is normal. 小便利, frequent urination, needs its causes excluded — diabetes above all, and in an older man prostatic obstruction.
譯 1.32.2 Source원문
其子有刺, 黃赤色, 形如小石榴. 九月十月半黃熟時採, 紅熟則却失本性. 《本草》
Translation영역
Its fruit is prickly, yellow-red in colour, and shaped like a small pomegranate. It is gathered in the ninth and tenth months when half ripe and yellow; once it has ripened red it loses its proper nature.
Clinical note임상 주석
**半黃熟時採, gathering it half ripe, is a real pharmacognostic rule of the same kind the chapter applies to 枳實 at 1.37 below**: the astringency of a rose hip is its tannin, and tannin falls as the fruit ripens and the sugars rise. A fully red hip is a food and a half-yellow one is a drug. The book states the rule and gives the reason in its own terms — 却失本性, it loses its proper nature.
譯 1.32.3 Source원문
叢生於籬落山野間, 類薔薇, 有刺, 經霜方紅熟. 《日用》
Translation영역
It grows in clumps along hedges and in the hills and fields, resembles the rambling rose, is prickly, and ripens red only after the frost.
Clinical note임상 주석
類薔薇, resembling the rambling rose, is correct — Rosa laevigata is a rose, and 營實, the hip of Rosa multiflora, is a headword in the upper half of the Herbs chapter, where its Korean gloss 찔레 confirms the book's own 野薔薇. The two drugs are close relatives used for different things.
1.33 Areca Nut 檳榔
譯 1.33.1 Source원문
性溫一云寒, 味辛, 無毒. 除一切風, 下一切氣, 通關節, 利九竅, 消穀逐水, 除痰癖, 下水腫, 破癥結, 宣利五藏六府壅滯氣.
Translation영역
Its nature is warm one says cold, its flavour acrid, and it is without toxicity. It dispels wind of every kind and downbears qi of every kind, frees the joints, opens the nine orifices, disperses grain and drives out water, dispels phlegm aggregation, brings down water swelling, breaks up concretions and binds, and diffuses and frees congested and stagnant qi in the five viscera and six bowels.
Clinical note임상 주석
**This is the areca nut, the seed of Areca catechu, and it has to be labelled plainly: areca nut is a Group 1 human carcinogen in the IARC classification, carcinogenic to humans, with or without tobacco.** The cancers are of the oral cavity, the pharynx and the oesophagus, and the mechanism is understood: the areca alkaloids, principally arecoline, are nitrosated in the mouth to areca-derived nitrosamines, which are genotoxic, and the nut also causes oral submucous fibrosis, a premalignant condition in which the mouth progressively stiffens until it cannot be opened. **Betel quid chewing is the exposure route, and the World Health Organization counts areca nut the fourth most widely used psychoactive substance in the world after caffeine, alcohol and nicotine** — arecoline is a muscarinic agonist and is the reason it is chewed. Some six hundred million people use it.
**The exposure in this chapter is not the same exposure, and the difference has to be stated as carefully as the hazard.** Betel quid is chewed — the nut held against the buccal mucosa for long periods, usually with slaked lime which raises the pH and the nitrosation, often daily for decades. What this section describes is a nut decocted or powdered and swallowed as part of a prescription, in courses, and the formulary's hundred and sixty-nine prescriptions dose it in grams. The carcinogenicity of areca nut is established for chewing; it has not been established for short-course oral medicinal use, and the two should not be conflated in either direction. What can be said is that there is no safe level established for any route, that the alkaloids are absorbed whichever way they enter, and that the risk is cumulative with duration. **A practitioner who uses this drug should know what it is, should not use it long-term, and should ask any patient from South or Southeast Asia, Taiwan or the Pacific whether they chew betel — because screening their mouth matters more than anything in this entry.** Oral submucous fibrosis and early oral cancer are visible on examination.
What the book uses it for is real. **檳榔 is a genuine anthelmintic** — arecoline paralyses tapeworms, and areca was in Western veterinary and human pharmacopoeias as a taeniacide into the twentieth century. It is also a cholinergic agonist, which is the pharmacology behind 下一切氣 and 消穀, and that same action is the toxicity: overdose gives salivation, sweating, bradycardia, bronchospasm and vomiting. **Tapeworm infection today is treated with a single dose of praziquantel or niclosamide, which is safe, and neurocysticercosis — the dangerous form of Taenia solium infection — needs albendazole with corticosteroids and antiepileptic cover and must not be treated blind.**
無毒, without toxicity, is the book's grade and is the most consequential error of grading in my portion.
譯 1.33.2 Source원문
生嶺南, 人啖之以當果實. 云南方地溫, 不食此無以禦瘴癘. 其實春生至夏乃熟, 然其肉極易爛, 先以灰汁煮熟, 因火焙乾, 始堪停久.
Translation영역
It grows in Lingnan, where people chew it in place of fruit. They say that the land in the south is warm and that without eating this there is no way to withstand the miasmal pestilences. The fruit forms in spring and ripens by summer, but its flesh rots very easily, so it is first boiled in lye and then dried over a fire, and only then will it keep.
Clinical note임상 주석
**人啖之以當果實 — the people chew it in place of fruit — is the Bogam recording the chewing habit itself, which is the exposure that causes the cancers.** And 先以灰汁煮熟, boiling it first in lye, records the other half of it: 灰汁 is wood-ash lye, an alkali, and alkali is exactly what raises the pH in the mouth and drives the nitrosation of arecoline to the carcinogenic nitrosamines. Slaked lime in a betel quid does the same thing. The book gives the alkali treatment as a preservation step, which it is, and has no way of knowing what else it does.
So this passage, read with the note above, is a sixteenth-century description of both components of a Group 1 carcinogenic exposure. It is a good example of why these entries should be translated straight: the information is in the text, and it is only visible if the text is printed.
禦瘴癘, withstanding the miasmal pestilences, is malaria and the other fevers of the wet tropics; see 1.31.
譯 1.33.3 Source원문
小而味甘名山檳榔, 大而味澁名猪檳榔, 最小者名蒳子, 土人呼爲檳榔孫.
Translation영역
The small sweet-tasting kind is called hill areca, the large astringent kind pig areca, and the very smallest is called napja, which the local people call the areca's grandchild.
譯 1.33.4 Source원문
尖長而有紫文者名曰檳, 圓而矮者名曰榔. 今不復細分, 但取如雞心狀, 存坐正穩, 心不空, 破之作錦文者爲佳.
Translation영역
The pointed long kind with purple markings is called bin and the round squat kind rang. Nowadays no fine distinction is made; one simply takes those shaped like a chicken's heart, sitting square and steady, not hollow in the centre, and showing a brocade pattern when broken, as the good kind.
Clinical note임상 주석
破之作錦文者爲佳, the brocade pattern on the cut surface, is an accurate and still-used identity character of areca seed: the ruminant endosperm gives a marbled red-brown and white pattern on section. 存坐正穩, sitting square and steady, and 心不空, not hollow in the middle, are soundness tests. This is the chapter's grading vocabulary at its most developed, and the passage also records the grades collapsing — 今不復細分, no fine distinction is made nowadays — which is the same note of decline struck at 1.24.1 and 1.26.
譯 1.33.5 Source원문
取尖長者, 取其快銳速效之意. 《本草》
Translation영역
Taking the pointed long ones is done for the sense of their being quick and sharp and fast in effect.
Clinical note임상 주석
快銳速效之意, the sense of being quick and sharp, is sympathetic reasoning from shape to action and not a pharmacognostic rule — unlike the brocade pattern above, which is. The Bogam prints both kinds of reasoning side by side and does not distinguish them; a modern reader has to.
譯 1.33.6 Source원문
向陽者爲檳榔, 向陰者爲大腹子. 性沉有若鐵石之重. 白者味辛多散氣, 赤者味苦澁殺虫. 《入門》
Translation영역
Those facing the sun are areca nut and those facing the shade are big-belly seed. Their nature is sinking, with a weight like iron or stone. The white kind is acrid in flavour and mostly disperses qi; the red kind is bitter and astringent and kills worms.
Clinical note임상 주석
**向陽者爲檳榔, 向陰者爲大腹子 is the book sorting its headword from its leaf, and the leaf below sorts them differently** — 1.33.1 says it is shape, round and flat against pointed. The Bogam prints both criteria without reconciling them, and that is its own inconsistency rather than a textual problem. In practice 大腹子 in the prescriptions is the seed and 大腹皮 is the husk: the formulary's five ingredient entries reading 大腹子 are all linked to the areca-seed record, and the herb-alias table says so explicitly.
白者 … 赤者 distinguishes unripe pale and ripe red nuts, and gives the red one the anthelmintic action, which is consistent — ripe areca has the higher alkaloid content.
譯 1.33.7 Source원문
刀刮去底, 細切. 急治則生用, 經火則無力. 緩治則畧炒, 或醋煮過. 《入門》
Translation영역
Scrape off the base with a knife and cut it fine. For urgent treatment it is used raw, since passing it through fire takes away its strength; for slow treatment it is lightly dry-fried, or boiled through with vinegar.
Clinical note임상 주석
經火則無力, fire takes away its strength, is correct and is the one place in my portion where a processing instruction turns on a volatility that modern chemistry confirms: arecoline is heat-labile and partly lost on roasting, so raw areca is the stronger article. The book has the pharmacology right and uses it to match the processing to the urgency of the case.
1.33.1 Areca Husk 大腹皮
譯 1.33.1.1 Source원문
性微溫, 無毒. 下一切氣, 止霍亂, 通大小腸, 治痰隔醋心, 建脾開胃, 泄浮腫脹滿.
Translation영역
Its nature is slightly warm and it is without toxicity. It downbears qi of every kind, checks sudden turmoil, frees the large and small intestines, treats phlegm blockage and sour heart, fortifies the spleen and opens the stomach, and drains puffy swelling and distension.
Clinical note임상 주석
**This is the fibrous husk of the areca fruit, not the seed, and the distinction matters for the carcinogenicity.** The alkaloids of Areca catechu — arecoline above all — are concentrated in the seed, which is what is chewed and what the IARC evaluation is about; the pericarp carries far less. So the husk is a much lower-alkaloid article than 1.33, and the book's own pharmacology reflects that: the husk gets the mild carminative and diuretic indications and none of the worm-killing. **That is not a clearance** — it is the same plant and the material is not alkaloid-free — but a reader should not carry the whole of 1.33's warning onto this leaf unchanged. Thirty-one prescriptions in this site's formulary use it, including Antae-san, a pregnancy formula, and in pregnancy the right position is the cautious one.
醋心, sour heart, is heartburn, and 痰隔 is a sense of obstruction behind the sternum. **Heartburn that is new over fifty, or comes with difficulty swallowing, food sticking, vomiting or weight loss, is investigated by endoscopy, because that is how oesophageal cancer presents** — and oesophageal cancer is one of the three cancers areca nut causes, which makes this the one place in the chapter where the drug and the alarm symptom meet.
譯 1.33.1.2 Source원문
大腹所出與檳榔相似, 但莖葉根幹小異, 并皮收之. 《本草》
Translation영역
Where big-belly comes from is much the same as areca, only the stem, leaf, root and trunk differ a little, and it is gathered together with its skin.
Clinical note임상 주석
莖葉根幹小異, the stem leaf root and trunk differing a little, is the book trying to make two drugs from one palm into two plants. They are not: 檳榔 and 大腹 are the seed and the husk of the same fruit of Areca catechu. The confusion is old and the Bogam inherits it.
譯 1.33.1.3 Source원문
腹大而平者名大腹, 尖者名檳榔. 《入門》
Translation영역
The ones whose belly is large and flat are called big-belly, and the pointed ones areca.
Clinical note임상 주석
The second of the two incompatible sorting criteria; see the note at 1.33's 入門 passage. This one is shape, that one was sun and shade.
譯 1.33.1.4 Source원문
鴆鳥多栖此樹上. 凢用皮, 先以酒洗, 仍以黑豆汁洗, 焙乾方可用. 《本草》
Translation영역
The jim bird roosts much in this tree. Whenever the husk is used, it is first washed with wine and then washed with black soybean liquor, and dried over a fire before it can be used.
Clinical note임상 주석
**The washing is here because of the bird, and the reasoning is worth following because it is the book guarding against a contamination it believes in.** The 鴆 is the legendary venomous bird of Chinese tradition whose feathers were said to poison wine; the husk is washed twice because the bird is thought to roost in the palm and taint it. The bird is not real, and the washing therefore removes nothing. But the structure of the instruction — a named source of contamination and a decontamination step for it — is the same structure as the genuinely effective processing at 1.19 and 1.39, and keeping them distinguishable is part of what a clinical annotation is for. Black soybean liquor, 黑豆汁, is a standard detoxifying wash in this literature and appears in the same role elsewhere.
1.34 Gardenia Fruit 梔子
`지지` 는 고유어가 아니라 한자어 `梔子` 의 16세기 소리다. `梔` 의 당시 음이 `지` 였고 (훈몽자회 계열 자서가 그렇게 적는다) 뒤에 유기음화를 거쳐 `치` 가 되었으며, `子` 는 `지 → 자` 로 바뀌었다. 곧 두 음절이 다 바뀌어 `치자` 가 된 자리다. 소리만 따라 `지지` 를 그대로 둘 수 없고 뜻이 이어진 낱말이 `치자` 이므로 `hyangmyeong_mod` 에 그것을 적었다 — 집안의 약재 id 자체가 `chija` 이고 `herb-aliases.yaml` 도 `山梔`ㆍ `山梔子`ㆍ`梔子仁` 을 그 짝으로 적어 두었으므로, 이 이음은 표가 이미 전제하고 있는 것이다. 두 음절이 함께 바뀌었다는 점만 여기 적어 둔다 — 果部 `년밤 → 연밥` 처럼 소리만 옮긴 꼴(`지지`)이 지금 말에 없는 자리다.
譯 1.34.1 Source원문
性寒, 味苦, 無毒. 主胷心大小腸大𤍠, 胃中𤍠氣, 心中煩悶, 去𤍠毒風, 利五淋, 通小便, 除五種黃病, 止消渴, 治口乾, 目赤腫痛, 面赤, 酒皰齄鼻, 白癩赤癩, 瘡瘍, 殺䗪虫毒.
Translation영역
Its nature is cold, its flavour bitter, and it is without toxicity. It governs great heat in the chest and heart and the large and small intestine, hot qi in the stomach, and vexation and oppression within the heart; it dispels heat-toxin wind, frees the five stranguries, opens urination, dispels the five kinds of yellow disease, checks dispersion-thirst, treats dry mouth, red swollen painful eyes, a red face, wine-blossom pustules and brandy nose, white and red leprous eruptions, and sores and ulcers; and it kills the toxin of the jeok worm.
Clinical note임상 주석
**Gardenia is in the Korean Pharmacopoeia, is a permitted food colouring, and may be used.** It is the fruit of Gardenia jasminoides; its iridoid glycoside geniposide is both the active marker and, hydrolysed to genipin, the blue and yellow pigment that makes it one of East Asia's oldest dyes. It is the most used drug in the whole of my portion — two hundred and thirty-six prescriptions in this site's formulary — and its place there is exactly what this passage describes: a bitter cold drug for heat and irritability with scanty dark urine.
One pharmacological point is worth knowing because it is current. **Geniposide and genipin are hepatotoxic at high doses in animals, and gardenia-containing preparations have been associated with hepatotoxicity in case reports.** The doses involved are far above dispensary doses and the drug has a long food history, but it is not a reason to be casual with large or prolonged amounts.
除五種黃病, dispelling the five kinds of yellow disease, is jaundice, and this is one of the places where the book is pointing at something real: gardenia is a constituent of the classical jaundice formula Injinho-tang, and geniposide is choleretic. **But jaundice is a sign and not a disease. New jaundice needs its cause established — viral hepatitis, alcohol, drug injury, gallstones, biliary or pancreatic obstruction, haemolysis — and painless jaundice with weight loss is pancreatic or biliary cancer until proved otherwise.** 五淋, the five stranguries, is painful or obstructed urination; urinary infection is treated with antibiotics, and visible blood in the urine is referred for urological investigation.
酒皰齄鼻 is rosacea with rhinophyma, which is treatable — topical ivermectin or metronidazole, oral doxycycline, and laser for the telangiectasia. 白癩赤癩 in this literature covers leprosy and also the chronic scaling dermatoses; **leprosy is curable with multidrug therapy and is notifiable.**
譯 1.34.2 Source원문
葉似李而厚硬, 二三月開白花, 花皆六出, 甚芬香. 夏秋結實, 生靑熟黃, 中仁深紅. 九月採實暴乾.
Translation영역
Its leaves are like the plum's but thicker and harder; in the second and third months it opens white flowers, all of them six-petalled and very fragrant. In summer and autumn it sets fruit, green when unripe and yellow when ripe, with deep red kernels within. In the ninth month the fruit is gathered and dried in the sun.
Clinical note임상 주석
An accurate botanical description, and 中仁深紅, the deep red kernels within, is the dye: the pigment sits in the pulp and seeds and is what the fruit was grown for as much as what it was prescribed for. 花皆六出, all six-petalled, is right for the wild single-flowered form.
譯 1.34.3 Source원문
入藥用山梔子. 方書所謂越桃, 皮薄而圓小, 刻房七稜至九稜者爲佳. 《本草》
Translation영역
For putting into medicine the hill gardenia is used. It is what the formula books call the Yue peach; the kind with thin skin, round and small, with seven to nine ridges cut into the capsule, is the best.
Clinical note임상 주석
**This is the book specifying which gardenia is the drug, and the specification survives: 山梔子 — the small wild-type fruit with pronounced longitudinal ridges — is the pharmacopoeial article, while the large double-flowered garden cultivar is not.** The ridge count is a varietal character and a usable one. 越桃 is an old synonym. The herb-alias table carries 山梔, 山梔子 and 梔子仁 as forms of this drug, which is why this headword links cleanly.
譯 1.34.4 Source원문
小而七稜者佳, 長大者亦可用, 但無力耳. 《丹心》
Translation영역
The small seven-ridged kind is good; the long large kind may also be used, but it simply has no strength.
Clinical note임상 주석
A softening of the rule above: the large fruit is permitted but weak. 但無力耳 is the book grading potency by morphology, and in this case it is probably right — the small wild fruit has the higher geniposide content per unit weight.
譯 1.34.5 Source원문
入手太陰經, 治心煩懊憹不得眠, 能㵼肺中之火. 《湯液》
Translation영역
It enters the hand greater yin channel, treats heart vexation and anguished restlessness with inability to sleep, and can drain the fire in the lung.
Clinical note임상 주석
懊憹 is the word the Shanghan tradition uses for an agitated, anguished restlessness that will not let a patient settle, and gardenia is its classical drug — Chija-tang is built on it. The one thing to say about it clinically is that an agitated patient who cannot sleep needs a cause sought: delirium, which is common, dangerous and reversible, presents this way in an acutely ill or elderly person, and so do thyrotoxicosis, alcohol withdrawal and drug effects.
譯 1.34.6 Source원문
用仁去心𦚾𤍠, 用皮去肌表𤍠. 尋常生用, 虛火童便炒七次, 至黑色止血, 炒如墨凉肺胃, 酒泡用. 《入門》
Translation영역
The kernel is used to dispel heat in the heart and chest, the skin to dispel heat in the flesh and surface. Ordinarily it is used raw; for vacuity fire it is dry-fried seven times with a child's urine; fried to black it checks bleeding; fried until it is like ink it cools the lung and stomach; and it is steeped in wine for use.
Clinical note임상 주석
A full processing repertoire, with the part split — kernel for the interior, peel for the exterior — and three degrees of charring for three purposes. Frying to carbon does genuinely change a drug: charred plant material is astringent and adsorbent, which is some basis for 止血.
**童便, a child's urine, is a processing liquor that should not be used.** It appears in several places in this book and the position is the same in all of them: urine is not sterile, it is a biological fluid from a third party, and using it in a preparation that will be swallowed is a route for faecal and urinary pathogens with nothing gained. The book's reasoning is that a child's urine is a cool yin substance that suits vacuity fire; the modern answer is that there is no preparation for which there is not a better liquor.
1.35 Borneol 龍腦香
譯 1.35.1 Source원문
性微寒一云溫平, 味辛苦, 無毒. 主內外障眼, 明目, 鎭心, 去目赤膚瞖, 心腹邪氣, 風濕積聚, 去三虫, 治五痔.
Translation영역
Its nature is slightly cold one says warm and balanced, its flavour acrid and bitter, and it is without toxicity. It governs inner and outer screens of the eye, brightens the eyes, settles the heart, dispels redness and filmy opacity of the eye, evil qi in the heart and abdomen, and wind-damp accumulations and gatherings; it dispels the three worms and treats the five kinds of piles.
Clinical note임상 주석
**Borneol, and the leaf beneath it is camphor, and together they are the most dangerous pair in my portion for a child.** The warnings belong mostly to the leaf and are set out there in full; what belongs here is the identification and the book's own caution.
龍腦 is d-borneol, crystallised from the wood of Dryobalanops aromatica, the Borneo camphor tree — which is what the next passages describe. It is a bicyclic terpene alcohol, closely related to camphor, and it is in a hundred and twelve prescriptions in this site's formulary, most of them eye preparations, orifice-opening pills and topical applications. The herb table also carries a separate record 冰片, which is the same substance under its commoner modern name and is unused in the prescriptions; that duplication is pre-existing and I note it without proposing a change.
**The book's own warning on this drug is not printed here but at 1.28 白檀香, and a reader of this section alone will never see it:** 諸香動火耗氣, 非冷氣不舒者不可輕服. 腦麝芳竄尤甚, 宜戒之 — the aromatics all stir fire and consume qi, and are not to be taken lightly; borneol and musk are the most piercing of all and should be especially guarded against. 腦 there is this drug. It is the chapter warning against the aromatic class from under another headword, and it is the strongest caution in my portion.
That caution has a modern counterpart. **Borneol is a blood-brain-barrier permeabiliser** and is used deliberately in Chinese practice to carry other drugs into the central nervous system; it is in the orifice-opening emergency formulas for that reason. A substance that opens the blood-brain barrier is not a casual addition to anything.
內外障眼 is cataract and corneal opacity. **Cataract is cured by surgery and by nothing else**; a filmy opacity with pain and redness is keratitis or uveitis and needs an ophthalmologist, as at 1.23.
譯 1.35.2 Source원문
出嶺南, 狀若梅花瓣者甚佳. 其淸香爲百藥之先, 然非常服之藥. 獨行則勢弱, 佐使則有功, 於茶亦相宜. 合糯米炭相思子貯之則不耗. 《本草》
Translation영역
It comes from Lingnan, and the kind shaped like plum-blossom petals is the very best. Its clear fragrance makes it the first of the hundred drugs, but it is not a drug for constant use. Alone its force is weak; as assistant and envoy it has power; and it also goes well with tea. Stored together with glutinous-rice charcoal and love-pea seeds it does not waste away.
Clinical note임상 주석
**然非常服之藥 — not a drug for constant use — is the book's own restriction on this substance, printed in the middle of a passage of praise, and it should be read with the 不可輕服 of 1.28.** Between them the Bogam says twice that borneol is not for regular taking.
狀若梅花瓣, shaped like plum-blossom petals, describes the flaky crystal habit of natural borneol accurately. 獨行則勢弱, 佐使則有功 is a statement about compounding, and it is the right one for a volatile terpene used in fractions of a gram. The storage note is practical: borneol sublimes at room temperature, and packing it with charcoal and seeds slows the loss.
相思子 is the love-pea, Abrus precatorius, named again in the sixth passage below. **It must be said that Abrus precatorius seed contains abrin, a ribosome-inactivating toxin of the same class as ricin and more potent, and that a single chewed seed has killed.** Here it is used only as packing material and not taken, so nothing in this section is an exposure; but the seed is beautiful, red and black, is still strung into jewellery and rosaries, and children swallow them. Intact swallowed seeds usually pass because the coat is impermeable; a chewed or crushed one is a medical emergency.
譯 1.35.3 Source원문
卽婆律國杉木脂也. 腦乃流出香液也. 形似松脂, 作杉木氣, 明淨, 狀若梅花瓣者佳. 入藥另硏用. 《入門》
Translation영역
It is the resin of the fir tree of the country of Baryul. The brain is the fragrant liquid that flows out. It is shaped like pine resin, smells of fir wood, is bright and clear, and the kind shaped like plum-blossom petals is good. For putting into medicine it is ground separately.
Clinical note임상 주석
婆律國 is Baros in Sumatra, the port the camphor trade was named for — European apothecaries' camphora baros — so this passage names the actual source of the drug, which is unusual in my portion: 1.31's attribution of storax to India and 1.26's of frankincense to a pine are both wrong, and this one is right. 杉木, a fir, is loose for Dryobalanops, which is Dipterocarpaceae, but the resin and the smell are described correctly.
譯 1.35.4 Source원문
龍腦屬火. 世人誤以爲寒, 而不知其性散, 甚似乎寒耳. 人欲死者呑之, 氣卽散盡, 盖芳之甚而散之速也. 《丹心》
Translation영역
Borneol belongs to fire. People of the world wrongly take it for cold, not knowing that its nature is dispersing, which merely resembles cold. If a person at the point of death swallows it, the qi scatters away at once, for its fragrance is extreme and its dispersion swift.
Clinical note임상 주석
**This passage contradicts the first passage of its own section — which prints 性微寒, slightly cold — and says that reading is a popular error.** The Bogam sets the two side by side and does not resolve them, and the sochu in the first passage records a third reading, 一云溫平. Three answers to one question, printed without a decision; the chapter does this elsewhere and it is better evidence of how the book was made than any harmonised text would be.
人欲死者呑之, 氣卽散盡 is the strongest statement of harm anywhere in my portion: given to a dying person it scatters the qi away entirely. Whatever is made of the physiology, the practical instruction is clear and is the same as the 不可輕服 of 1.28 — this is not a drug for the frail. It also fits what borneol does: a highly volatile terpene that crosses into the central nervous system is not what a failing patient needs.
譯 1.35.5 Translation영역
Borneol enters the kidney and treats the bones.
譯 1.35.6 Source원문
相思子出嶺南, 樹高丈餘, 子赤黑間者佳. 《本草》
Translation영역
The love-pea comes from Lingnan; the tree is over a fathom high, and the seeds that are red and black mixed are the good ones.
Clinical note임상 주석
子赤黑間者佳, the seeds red and black together, is an exact description of Abrus precatorius: a glossy scarlet seed with a black patch over the hilum. It is also the description of one of the most toxic plant seeds in common circulation. **See the warning at the second passage above: the seed contains abrin and a single chewed seed can be lethal.** The Bogam names it here only as the packing that keeps borneol from subliming away, which is a safe use, and gives it no headword of its own in this chapter.
譯 1.35.7 Source원문
今以黑大豆燈心草同貯, 亦不耗. 《俗方》
Translation영역
Nowadays it is stored together with black soybeans and juncus pith, and this too keeps it from wasting away.
Clinical note임상 주석
A Korean substitution for the love-pea packing, and a sensible one: black soybean and juncus pith are both bulky dry absorbents and neither is poisonous. It is the kind of local adaptation the 俗方 notices are valuable for — and in this instance the Korean practice is safer than the one it replaced.
1.35.1 Camphor 樟腦
譯 1.35.1.1 Source원문
乃樟木屑液造成. 治疥癬癩瘡, 作𤍠付之. 入香料. 一名昭腦. 《入門》
Translation영역
It is made from the liquid of camphor-wood shavings. It treats scabies, ringworm and leprous sores, and is heated and applied. It goes into perfumery. One name for it is somyeong brain.
Clinical note임상 주석
**This is camphor, and it is the one substance in my portion that has killed children in the ordinary course of domestic life.**
Camphor is a bicyclic terpene ketone distilled from Cinnamomum camphora, and it is the active ingredient of the chest and nose rubs that are in most households. **Ingested camphor is a convulsant. The lethal dose in a child is small — of the order of a gram, which is a teaspoon of camphorated oil — and death has followed ingestion of amounts that fit in a child's mouth. Seizures begin within minutes to an hour, often with no prodrome, and are followed by coma and respiratory arrest. There is no antidote; treatment is airway support and benzodiazepines, and gastric decontamination is unsafe once seizures have begun.** The United States Food and Drug Administration limits camphor in over-the-counter products to eleven per cent for this reason and banned camphorated oil, and poison-centre series continue to report paediatric ingestions from mothballs, rubs and devotional camphor tablets.
**The second hazard is topical and is specific to infants.** Camphor is absorbed through skin, and more readily through the thin skin and large surface-to-weight ratio of a baby. **Camphor or menthol preparations applied to the nostrils, the philtrum or the upper lip of an infant can provoke laryngospasm and apnoea** — the reflex is well described, the exposure is almost always a well-meaning parent treating a blocked nose, and the preparations should not be used under two years of age and not on or near the nose at any age in a small child. **This is the same warning that belongs on 薄荷, peppermint, at 1.33 of the Vegetables chapter, and for the same reason: menthol and camphor share the reflex.** The two entries should be read together.
What the book uses it for is topical and dermatological — 疥癬癩瘡, scabies, ringworm and leprous sores — applied warm. Camphor is a mild antipruritic and counterirritant and does relieve itch, which is not the same as treating any of those three. **Scabies is cured by topical permethrin or oral ivermectin with simultaneous treatment of all household contacts; ringworm by an antifungal; leprosy by multidrug therapy.** The formulary's six prescriptions containing camphor include Osuyu-san, a scabies ointment that also contains calomel, and that one must not be prepared.
作𤍠付之, heated and applied, increases absorption, which is the wrong direction for a substance whose problem is systemic toxicity.
The leaf sits under 龍腦香 because the two are chemically and commercially close — borneol oxidises to camphor and the names were traded on each other — and the Bogam's placement is sound. 一名昭腦 records one of those traded names.
1.36 Elm Fruit Paste 蕪荑
`느릅나모ᄡᅵ` 는 `느릅나모`(느릅나무) + `ᄡᅵ`(씨)다. `나모 → 나무` 와 `ᄡᅵ → 씨` (ㅅ계 합용병서의 경음화)가 다 또렷하므로 `느릅나무 씨` 로 그대로 이어진다. **이 향명이 책의 제 풀이를 독립적으로 받쳐 준다** — 둘째 구절이 `此山楡仁也`(이것은 山楡의 씨알이다)라 적고, 향명이 `느릅나무 씨` 라 하여 같은 것을 가리킨다. 곧 한자와 향명과 책의 자기 풀이 셋이 한 곳을 가리키는, 이 묶음에서 가장 깨끗한 자리다. 이 문의 1.8 `楡皮` 향명이 `느릅나모겁질`(느릅나무 껍질)이므로 같은 나무의 두 부위가 향명 두 자리에서 확인된다.
譯 1.36.1 Source원문
性平, 味辛, 無毒. 治腸風痔瘻, 惡瘡疥癬, 殺三虫及寸白虫.
Translation영역
Its nature is balanced, its flavour acrid, and it is without toxicity. It treats intestinal wind with piles and fistula, malign sores, scabies and ringworm, and kills the three worms and the inch-white worm.
Clinical note임상 주석
**寸白虫, the inch-white worm, is the tapeworm, and naming it is unusually specific for this literature** — the segments of Taenia passed in the stool are white and about an inch long, which is exactly what the name describes. Twenty-three prescriptions in this site's formulary use this drug and most of them are anthelmintic, alongside the areca of 1.33.
**Tapeworm is diagnosed on stool examination and cured by a single dose of praziquantel or niclosamide. The reason it matters to make the diagnosis rather than treat empirically is Taenia solium: its larval form causes neurocysticercosis, the commonest cause of acquired epilepsy in much of the world, and treating that blind with an anthelmintic can precipitate seizures and raised intracranial pressure.** It needs imaging, albendazole with corticosteroids, and anticonvulsant cover.
痔瘻, piles with fistula, is an anal fistula, which does not heal without surgery.
譯 1.36.2 Source원문
此山楡仁也. 氣膻者良. 三月採實陰乾. 《本草》
Translation영역
This is the kernel of the hill elm. The kind with a rank smell is good. In the third month the fruit is gathered and dried in the shade.
Clinical note임상 주석
**此山楡仁也 is the book glossing its own headword, and the Korean name confirms it independently** — see the gloss note above. 蕦荑 as an article is the fermented paste of Ulmus macrocarpa samaras, which is why the herb table's name for it is Elm Fruit Paste and why the pharmacopoeial Latin carries praeparatus.
氣膻者良, the rank-smelling kind is good, is the quality mark, and it is the fermentation: the characteristic smell is the product of the controlled rot that makes the paste, so a sample without it has not been properly prepared. It is one of the chapter's better organoleptic tests, because it tests the processing rather than the species.
1.37 Immature Bitter Orange 枳實
`ᄐᆡᆼᄌᆞ여름` 은 `ᄐᆡᆼᄌᆞ`(탱자) + `여름`(열매)이다. `ᄐᆡᆼ → 탱`ㆍ`ᄌᆞ → 자` 는 또렷하고 `여름 → 열매` 는 1.20 에 적어 둔 옛 뜻이므로 `탱자 열매` 로 이어진다. **이 향명이 이 묶음에서 가장 많은 것을 말해 주는 자리다** — `탱자` 는 지금도 *Poncirus trifoliata*(구기자나무과가 아니라 운향과의 탱자나무)의 표준 우리말 이름이고 우리나라 남부에서 자란다. 곧 **조선에서 枳實로 거둔 것이 무엇이었는지**를 알려 준다. 집안의 `herbs.yaml` 은 이 약재의 라틴명을 *Citrus aurantium* 계열(Aurantii Fructus Immaturus)로 적어 두었으므로 **향명과 표가 서로 다른 식물을 가리킨다** — 그 어긋남은 내가 지어낸 것이 아니라 재어서 드러난 것이고, 아래 `note` 에 적어 두었다. 책이 둘을 같다고도 다르다고도 말하지 않으므로 표를 고치자고 권하지 않는다.
譯 1.37.1 Source원문
性寒一云微寒, 味苦酸一云苦辛, 無毒. 主皮膚苦痒, 除痰癖, 消脹滿, 心下痞痛, 消宿食.
Translation영역
Its nature is cold one says slightly cold, its flavour bitter and sour one says bitter and acrid, and it is without toxicity. It governs tormenting itch of the skin, dispels phlegm aggregation, disperses distension and fullness and glomus pain below the heart, and disperses lodged food.
Clinical note임상 주석
**1.37 枳實 and 1.38 枳殼 are the unripe and the ripe fruit of the same tree, the book stands them as two headwords, and it marks only one of them 唐. That asymmetry is the most interesting thing in my portion after the misplaced import mark at 1.29, and it needs stating carefully, because the obvious reading is more than the text supports.**
What the text supports. This section has a Korean vernacular name, 탱자 열매, and no import mark. 1.38 has the import mark and no Korean name. The two share an identical opening — 性寒一云微寒, 味苦酸一云苦辛, 無毒, character for character — so the book is plainly treating them as one drug at two stages, and 1.38 says so: 枳卽橘屬, 枳belongs to the orange kind. 1.38's own 俗方 notice then says 我國惟濟州有之, 名倭橘 — in our country it is found only on Cheju, where it is called the Japanese orange.
**So the reading that 枳實 was gathered in Korea and 枳殼 bought in is consistent with everything in the two sections, and nothing in them states it.** What the import mark records, here as at 1.19 and across the fruit chapter, is whether a drug normally had to be purchased — not whether the plant was absent, since 1.38 records a Korean population of one island. A scarce Cheju source and a 唐 mark sit together perfectly well.
The one thing the Korean name does settle is harder and more useful. **탱자 is Poncirus trifoliata, the hardy orange, which is not Citrus aurantium**; it is the cold-tolerant relative that grows in southern Korea where bitter orange will not, and it has been the Korean substitute for 枳實 into modern times. This site's herb table gives the Latin as Aurantii Fructus Immaturus, that is Citrus aurantium. The gloss and the table therefore point at two different plants, and I have not reconciled them, because the Bogam does not: it never says that its 枳實 and its 枳殼 come from different species. What it does say, in the fourth passage below, is 此是別種, 非關變也 — these are separate species, and no transformation is involved — which shows that the book knew the 枳 complex held more than one plant. **A practitioner should know that Korean-sourced 枳實 may be Poncirus and Chinese-sourced may be Citrus, that the two differ in flavonoid and synephrine content, and that the substitution is old enough to be invisible in the name.**
On use: 枳實 is in the Korean Pharmacopoeia and may be used; a hundred and sixty prescriptions in this site's formulary call for it. The caution that attaches to Citrus aurantium material is p-synephrine, a β-adrenergic agonist which is the active principle of the bitter-orange weight-loss supplements and has been associated with hypertension, tachyarrhythmia and, in case reports with high-dose extracts taken with caffeine, myocardial infarction and stroke. Dispensary doses of the whole dried fruit are a different exposure from a concentrated extract; still, **this is a drug to be careful with in a patient with hypertension, arrhythmia or coronary disease, or on a stimulant.**
譯 1.37.2 Source원문
木如橘而小, 葉如棖多刺. 春生白花, 至秋結實. 七八月採暴乾.
Translation영역
The tree is like the tangerine but smaller, and the leaves are like the chaenomeles, with many thorns. In spring it puts out white flowers and by autumn it sets fruit. In the seventh and eighth months it is gathered and dried in the sun.
Clinical note임상 주석
多刺, many thorns, is worth noticing in the light of the gloss: Poncirus trifoliata is formidably thorny — it is grown as a hedge for that reason, which is how it came to be planted in Korea — while Citrus aurantium is only sparsely spined. The description leans toward the Korean plant.
譯 1.37.3 Source원문
以飜肚如盆口唇狀, 須陳久者爲勝.
Translation영역
The kind whose belly is turned out like the lip of a basin's mouth, and that has been kept a long time, is the better.
Clinical note임상 주석
飜肚如盆口唇, the everted belly like a basin's lip, is the appearance of a halved and dried unripe fruit whose rind curls back as it dries, and the same phrase recurs at 1.38 — where the transcription writes 翻 for 飜, a variant the corpus's table folds. 須陳久者爲勝, the long-kept being better, is one of the several drugs in this book that are required to be aged.
譯 1.37.4 Source원문
古云橘渡淮爲枳, 又云江南爲橘, 江北爲枳. 今江南俱有橘枳, 江北有枳無橘, 此是別種, 非關變也. 《本草》
Translation영역
The ancients said that the tangerine crossing the Huai becomes the ji, and also that south of the Yangtze it is the tangerine and north of it the ji. But nowadays the south has both tangerine and ji, and the north has ji and no tangerine; these are separate species, and no transformation is involved.
Clinical note임상 주석
**This is the best piece of botanical reasoning in my portion.** The old doctrine that a tangerine transplanted across the Huai River turns into a 枳 is a proverb of such standing that it had become a figure of speech for the corrupting effect of environment; the Bogam quotes it and then refutes it with a distribution argument — if the change were real, the south would have only tangerines and the north only 枳, and it does not: the south has both. Therefore 此是別種, these are separate species, 非關變也, no transformation is involved.
That is an argument from biogeography to taxonomy, made in the early seventeenth century, and it reaches the right answer: Citrus and Poncirus are different genera, and the cold-hardy one grows north of the warm-loving one because it is cold-hardy. It is also the sentence that shows the book was alive to exactly the question the Korean gloss on this section raises.
譯 1.37.5 Source원문
枳實㵼痰, 有衝墻倒壁之功. 水浸去瓤, 麩炒用. 《入門》
Translation영역
Immature bitter orange drains phlegm with the force of charging a wall and toppling a rampart. Steep in water, remove the pith, and dry-fry with bran for use.
Clinical note임상 주석
衝墻倒壁, charging a wall and toppling a rampart, is the chapter's most vivid metaphor for a drug's strength and it is a warning as much as a recommendation: this is a strongly downbearing, qi-breaking drug, and the tradition accordingly cautions against it in the weak and in pregnancy. Bran-frying moderates it, which is the point of the processing.
譯 1.37.6 Source원문
枳實不去瓤, 其效更速. 《丹心》
Translation영역
If the pith of the immature bitter orange is not removed, its effect is swifter still.
Clinical note임상 주석
A direct contradiction of the passage above, printed immediately after it: 入門 says remove the pith, 丹心 says leaving it in works faster. The Bogam prints both and chooses neither, which is its habit in this chapter — see 1.35's three answers on the nature of borneol and 1.33.1's two sorting rules.
1.37.1 Bitter Orange Stem Bark 莖皮
譯 1.37.1.1 Source원문
療水脹暴風, 骨節攣急. 《本草》
Translation영역
It treats water distension and sudden wind, and cramping tension of the bones and joints.
Clinical note임상 주석
No prescription in the book uses this bark, so it is not in the herb table. 水脹, water distension, is oedema or ascites, and **new ascites or new generalised oedema needs a cause found — heart failure, cirrhosis, nephrotic syndrome, malignancy — because the treatment is the cause's and not the swelling's.**
1.37.2 Bitter Orange Root Bark 根皮
譯 1.37.2.1 Translation영역
It governs the five kinds of piles and blood passed with the stool.
Clinical note임상 주석
Not in the herb table and not used in any prescription. **大便下血, blood with the stool, is the symptom on which this chapter is most likely to mislead a modern reader, and the position is the same as at 1.20: rectal bleeding attributed to piles is how colorectal cancer is missed.** New rectal bleeding over about forty, or with altered bowel habit, weight loss or anaemia, is referred for colonoscopy. Piles are common and so is cancer, and the one does not exclude the other.
1.38 Bitter Orange 枳殼
譯 1.38.1 Source원문
性寒一云微寒, 味苦酸一云苦辛, 無毒. 主肺氣咳嗽, 散𦚾中痰滯, 利大小腸, 消脹滿, 除關格壅塞, 消痰逐水, 破癥癖結氣, 除風痒麻痺, 去腸風痔腫.
Translation영역
Its nature is cold one says slightly cold, its flavour bitter and sour one says bitter and acrid, and it is without toxicity. It governs lung qi with cough, disperses phlegm stagnation in the chest, frees the large and small intestines, disperses distension and fullness, dispels blockage and congestion of the passages, dissolves phlegm and drives out water, breaks up concretions, aggregations and bound qi, dispels wind itch and numbness, and removes intestinal wind with piles and swelling.
Clinical note임상 주석
**The opening of this section is character for character identical to 1.37's — nature, both alternative readings, flavour, both alternative readings, and toxicity — which is the clearest possible statement that the book takes the two to be one drug at two stages.** What differs is the territory: 1.37 works below the diaphragm on food and glomus, this one above it on cough and chest phlegm, and the 湯液 passage below makes that division explicit.
枳殼 is in the Korean Pharmacopoeia and may be used. It is the most used drug in my portion after gardenia — two hundred and sixty-seven prescriptions in this site's formulary. The synephrine caution at 1.37 applies here too and applies rather more, since the ripe fruit is the article from which the bitter-orange supplements are made.
For the reading of the import mark on this section against its absence on 1.37, see the long note at 1.37.
譯 1.38.2 Source원문
七八月採實暴乾. 以肉厚翻肚如盆口狀, 陳久者爲上. 《本草》
Translation영역
In the seventh and eighth months the fruit is gathered and dried in the sun. The best is thick-fleshed, with the belly turned out like the mouth of a basin, and long kept.
Clinical note임상 주석
The same grading phrase as 1.37's third passage, with 翻 where that section writes 飜; the corpus's variant table folds the two and the reading is the same. The gathering months are also the same, seventh and eighth — which is a small puzzle, since the two drugs are supposed to be the unripe and the ripe fruit of one tree. The book does not explain it and I have not supplied an explanation.
譯 1.38.3 Source원문
殼主高而實主下. 殼高主皮膚𦚾膈之病, 實低主心胃之病. 其主治大同小異. 《湯液》
Translation영역
The husk governs what is high and the fruit what is low. The husk being high governs diseases of the skin and of the chest and diaphragm, the fruit being low governs diseases of the heart and stomach. Their governing and treating are much the same with small differences.
Clinical note임상 주석
**This is the book's own account of why it keeps two headwords for one fruit, and it is a pharmacological distinction rather than a botanical one: high and low, surface and interior.** 其主治大同小異, much the same with small differences, is as frank a summary as could be asked for. It is still how the two are taught and prescribed.
譯 1.38.4 Source원문
枳卽橘屬. 水浸去瓤, 麩炒用. 《入門》
Translation영역
The ji belongs to the orange kind. Steep in water, remove the pith, and dry-fry with bran for use.
Clinical note임상 주석
枳卽橘屬 is the book placing its own drug, and it is right as far as it goes: Poncirus and Citrus are both Rutaceae and closely allied, and Poncirus is used as citrus rootstock for exactly that reason. It is the sentence that makes the 枳實/枳殼 pair one drug in the book's eyes.
譯 1.38.5 Source원문
我國惟濟州有之, 名倭橘. 《俗方》
Translation영역
In our country it is found only on Cheju, where it is called the Japanese orange.
Clinical note임상 주석
**The sentence that complicates the easy reading of the import marks, and the reason the long note at 1.37 is hedged.** The drug is marked 唐, bought in from China, and the book then records a Korean population — one island, under a name that says the tree was thought to have come from Japan. 倭橘 is also a record of a second trade route: Cheju lay on the sea lane to Kyushu, and a citrus arriving that way would naturally be called the Japanese orange whatever its origin.
This is the fifth of the five entries in the Decoctions chapters that carry both the 唐 mark and a notice of Korean provenance, and like the other four it is a statement of scarcity. The other four are 吳茱萸 at 1.19 above, 零陵香, 欵冬花 and 蝎.
1.39 Magnolia Bark 厚朴
譯 1.39.1 Source원문
性溫, 味苦一云辛, 無毒. 主積年冷氣, 腹中脹滿雷鳴, 宿食不消, 大溫胃氣, 止霍亂吐㵼轉筋, 消痰下氣, 厚腸胃, 治泄痢嘔逆, 去三虫, 泄五藏一切氣.
Translation영역
Its nature is warm, its flavour bitter one says acrid, and it is without toxicity. It governs cold qi of years' standing, distension and fullness of the abdomen with rumbling, and lodged food that will not disperse; it greatly warms the stomach qi, checks sudden turmoil with vomiting and diarrhoea and cramping of the sinews, dissolves phlegm and downbears qi, thickens the intestines and stomach, treats diarrhoea and dysentery and retching counterflow, dispels the three worms, and drains qi of every kind from the five viscera.
Clinical note임상 주석
**厚朴 is in the Korean Pharmacopoeia and may be used.** It is the stem or root bark of Magnolia officinalis and its relatives, a Chinese tree — hence the import mark — and it is the second most used drug in my portion by prescription count: two hundred and forty in this site's formulary, in the whole Pyeongwi-san and Banha-hubak-tang family for distension, nausea and a full obstructed abdomen, which is exactly what this passage describes.
The pharmacology is well characterised: the neolignans **magnolol and honokiol**, which are anxiolytic and sedative in animals through positive allosteric modulation at GABA-A, antibacterial against oral anaerobes, and anti-inflammatory. Magnolia bark extracts are sold as sleep and anxiety supplements on that basis. The sedative action is the practically relevant one: **it is additive with alcohol, benzodiazepines, Z-drugs, opioids and sedating antihistamines**, and a patient on any of those should know the decoction may add to the drowsiness.
**The caution that has been carried in the tradition and should be carried here is pregnancy: 厚朴 is classed as contraindicated in pregnancy in Korean and Chinese practice**, on the grounds that it is a strongly downbearing, qi-moving and 破氣 drug of the same class as 1.37 枳實. The evidence is traditional rather than experimental, and honokiol has shown embryotoxicity in some animal work; the sensible position is the traditional one. Magnolol and honokiol are also reported to inhibit platelet aggregation, which matters for a patient on an anticoagulant or antiplatelet or facing surgery.
腹中脹滿雷鳴 with 宿食不消 is abdominal distension with borborygmi and a sense of undigested food. **Distension with vomiting and absent or tinkling bowel sounds is bowel obstruction, which is a surgical emergency**, and that is the presentation this entry most resembles.
譯 1.39.2 Source원문
以肉厚色紫而潤者爲好, 薄而白者不堪用. 削去上甲錯皮, 以薑汁炙用, 或剉薑汁炒用. 不以薑製則戟人喉舌. 《本草》
Translation영역
The good kind is thick-fleshed, purple in colour and moist; the thin white kind will not do. Pare away the scaly outer bark and roast it with ginger juice, or cut it up and dry-fry it with ginger juice. If it is not prepared with ginger it stabs a person's throat and tongue.
Clinical note임상 주석
**不以薑製則戟人喉舌 — unprepared, it stabs the throat and tongue — is the book stating an adverse effect and giving the processing that prevents it, and this is one of the clearest instances in my portion of a 修治 that does real work.** Raw magnolia bark is acridly irritant to mucosa, and ginger-juice processing is required by both the Korean and the Chinese monographs for this drug, with the same reason given. The section is formally 無毒, without toxicity, yet carries this notice; the two are not in conflict, since what the book is describing is local irritation rather than systemic poisoning, but it is worth noting that the toxicity grades in this chapter do not capture everything the text says about harm.
色紫而潤者爲好 is a usable quality mark: the purple-brown, oily inner bark of an older trunk is the high-magnolol article, and the thin pale bark of a young branch is not.
One more thing belongs on this entry. ***Magnolia officinalis* is assessed as Endangered in the wild**, harvested by stripping the bark from mature trees, and most of the supply is now plantation-grown; as with agarwood and the two sandalwoods above, a practitioner should know the source.
1.40 Tea 苦茶
`쟉셜차` 는 고유어가 아니라 한자어 `雀舌茶`(참새 혀 차)의 16세기 소리다. `쟉 → 작`ㆍ`셜 → 설` 은 ㅑ/ㅕ 계열 단모음화이므로 `작설차` 로 그대로 이어지고, **작설차는 지금도 어린 햇차를 가리키는 우리말 이름이다.** 이 자리의 값은 **책이 향명을 제 본문에서 풀어 준다**는 데 있다 — 둘째 구절이 `古人謂其芽爲雀舌麥顆` (옛사람이 그 싹을 雀舌ㆍ麥顆라 불렀다)고 적으므로, 향명 `쟉셜차` 와 본문 `雀舌` 이 같은 자리에서 맞물린다. 향명이 책의 말을 되풀이하는 자리이고, 그만큼 읽기가 확실하다. 약재 고리는 표제어 `苦茶` 가 이미 `herb-aliases.yaml` 에 `sechacha` 의 별칭으로 올라 있고(「탕액편 목부의 표제어. 本草가 차를 세운 이름」 이라 적혀 있다) 그 짝을 그대로 썼다.
譯 1.40.1 Source원문
性微寒一云冷, 味甘苦, 無毒. 下氣, 消宿食, 淸頭目, 利小便, 止消渴, 令人少睡, 又解炙炒毒.
Translation영역
Its nature is slightly cold one says cool, its flavour sweet and bitter, and it is without toxicity. It downbears qi, disperses lodged food, clears the head and eyes, promotes urination, checks dispersion-thirst, makes a person sleep less, and also resolves the toxin of roasted and fried food.
Clinical note임상 주석
**This is tea, Camellia sinensis, and the book has the pharmacology right in two places.** 令人少睡, making a person sleep less, is caffeine, and 利小便, promoting urination, is caffeine's mild diuresis; 淸頭目, clearing the head and eyes, is the alerting effect. For a 1613 materia medica to list the three principal effects of caffeine without the concept is a good showing, and the 入門 passage below adds a fourth that is also right.
Two modern notes belong on tea because they are the ones that actually come up in a clinic.
**Tea inhibits the absorption of non-haem iron.** The polyphenols chelate iron in the gut lumen, and the effect is large — a cup of tea with a meal can cut non-haem iron absorption by half or more. **A patient being treated for iron-deficiency anaemia should take their iron away from tea**, ideally with vitamin C and on an empty stomach, and a heavy tea drinker with unexplained anaemia has one contributing cause ready to hand. It also matters for infants and in pregnancy.
**The interactions worth knowing are caffeine's.** Caffeine is cleared by CYP1A2, so it accumulates in patients on fluvoxamine, ciprofloxacin and oral contraceptives, and it is cleared faster in smokers — and faster, as it happens, in anyone taking the 吳茱萸 of 1.19 above, whose rutaecarpine is a CYP1A2 inducer. In the other direction caffeine raises clozapine and theophylline levels. Caffeine also worsens anxiety, insomnia, reflux and palpitations, and in pregnancy intake is usually kept under two hundred milligrams a day. Green tea *extracts*, as distinct from the drink, have caused acute liver injury including cases needing transplantation; the drink has not.
解炙炒毒, resolving the toxin of roasted and fried food, is the claim the last passage of the section tells a story about, and it is not as foolish as it sounds — see the note there.
譯 1.40.2 Source원문
樹小似梔子, 冬生葉. 早採爲茶, 晩採爲茗. 其名有五, 一曰茶, 二曰檟, 三曰蔎, 四曰茗, 五曰荈. 古人謂其芽爲雀舌麥顆, 言其至嫩. 卽臘茶是也. 採嫩芽搗作餠, 並得火良.
Translation영역
The tree is small, like the gardenia, and puts out its leaves in winter. Picked early it is cha, picked late it is myeong. It has five names: first cha, second ga, third seol, fourth myeong, fifth cheon. The ancients called its bud the sparrow's tongue and the barley grain, meaning that it is of the very tenderest; and this is what is called the twelfth-month tea. The tender buds are gathered and pounded into cakes, and both are the better for fire.
Clinical note임상 주석
**古人謂其芽爲雀舌 is the book glossing this section's own Korean name**, 쟉셜차, sparrow-tongue tea, two lines after printing it — see the gloss note above. It is the cleanest case in my portion of the vernacular name and the Chinese text confirming each other.
樹小似梔子 compares the tea bush to the gardenia, which is 1.34 of this chapter six sections back, and the comparison is a fair one: both are small evergreen shrubs with thick glossy leaves. 早採爲茶, 晩採爲茗 is the plucking-time distinction that still organises the tea grades — the earliest and tenderest buds are the finest, which is what 雀舌 names. 搗作餠, pounded into cakes, is compressed tea, the form in which tea travelled, and 並得火良, both the better for fire, is the roasting that fixes the leaf.
譯 1.40.3 Source원문
茗或曰荈, 葉老者也. 《本草》
Translation영역
Myeong, or as some say cheon, is the one with old leaves.
譯 1.40.4 Source원문
入手足厥陰經. 飮之宜𤍠, 冷則聚痰. 久服去人脂, 令人瘦. 《入門》
Translation영역
It enters the hand and foot reverting yin channels. It should be drunk hot, for cold it gathers phlegm. Taken over a long time it strips a person's fat and makes them thin.
Clinical note임상 주석
**久服去人脂, 令人瘦 — long use strips the fat and makes a person thin — is the fourth of this section's correct pharmacological observations**, and the one that has been looked at hardest. Tea catechins, principally epigallocatechin gallate, with caffeine, produce a small increase in fat oxidation and energy expenditure; the meta-analyses of green tea for weight loss find effects that are statistically detectable and clinically trivial, on the order of a kilogram or two. So the book is pointing at something real and overstating it, which is the usual shape of a true claim in this chapter.
It is worth saying what does not follow. **Green tea extracts in supplement doses are a recognised cause of idiosyncratic acute liver injury**, with cases of acute liver failure and transplantation; the European Food Safety Authority has reviewed the dose relationship, and the hazard belongs to concentrated extracts and not to the drink. A patient who wants to lose weight should not be sent to a green-tea extract.
譯 1.40.5 Source원문
蒙山茶性溫, 治病最好. 宜興茶, 陸安茶, 東白山茶, 神華山茶, 龍井茶, 閩臘茶, 蜀苦茶, 寳慶茶, 廬山雲霧茶, 俱以味佳得名.
Translation영역
Mengshan tea is warm in nature and best of all for treating disease. Yixing tea, Lu'an tea, Dongbaishan tea, Shenhuashan tea, Longjing tea, Fujian twelfth-month tea, Shu bitter tea, Baoqing tea and Lushan Cloud-and-Mist tea all have their names from the excellence of their flavour.
Clinical note임상 주석
A list of nine named Chinese teas by place of origin, and a reminder that tea reached the Bogam as an imported luxury with a connoisseurship already attached — though this section, unlike the seven aromatics in my portion, carries no 唐 mark, and tea was grown in southern Korea by this date. 龍井, Longjing or Dragon Well, is still one of the most famous green teas in China. 寳 is the transcription's form of 寶.
譯 1.40.6 Source원문
一人好食燒鵝不輟, 醫者謂其必生內癕, 後卒不病. 訪知此人毎夜必啜凉茶一椀, 此其解毒. 《食物》
Translation영역
A certain man was fond of roast goose and never left off eating it, and a physician said he would certainly develop an internal abscess; but in the end he never fell ill. On enquiry it was found that every night the man drank a bowl of cool tea without fail, and this was what resolved the toxin.
Clinical note임상 주석
**The last passage of my portion, and the one that most rewards a modern reading, because the claim it makes is in the right direction.** 解炙炒毒, resolving the toxin of roasted and fried food, is the first passage's claim and this is its case report: a man who ate roast goose daily and should have come to harm did not, and the tea is credited.
Roasting and grilling meat generates heterocyclic aromatic amines and polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, which are mutagens, and processed and high-temperature-cooked meat is associated with colorectal cancer; the IARC classifies processed meat as Group 1 and red meat as Group 2A. Tea polyphenols inhibit the formation of some of those compounds and induce phase II detoxification enzymes, and a quantity of experimental work supports a protective effect. **Whether drinking tea with roast meat reduces human cancer risk is not established**, and the epidemiology is mixed; what can be said is that the book has paired a genuine dietary hazard with a plausible mitigation, by observation, four centuries before the chemistry.
It is also, read as what it is, a nice piece of clinical scepticism: a physician made a confident prognosis, it failed, and somebody went and asked the patient what he had actually been doing. 訪知, it was found on enquiry, is the best two characters in the section.
1.41 Ash Bark 䄅皮
`무프렛겁질` 은 `무프레`(물푸레) + 관형격 `ㅅ` + `겁질`(껍질)이다. `무프레 → 물푸레` 는 ㄹ 탈락 표기의 되돌림이고 `겁질 → 껍질` 은 이 편에 열 번 넘게 나오는 꼴이므로 `물푸레나무 껍질` 로 또렷하게 이어진다. **이 향명이 이 절의 약재 고리를 정하고, 동시에 이름 덫 하나를 풀어 준다.** 전사본의 표제어 `䄅皮` 의 `䄅` 는 `秦` 의 이체자이므로(`bg.VAR` 가 `䄅`→`秦` 으로 접는다) 이 절은 `秦皮` 이고 표의 `jinpi-ash 秦皮`(Ash Bark, *Fraxini Cortex*)에 이어진다. 그런데 표에는 `jinpi 陳皮`(귤껍질, 果部)도 있고 **우리 소리로는 둘이 똑같이 「진피」** 다. 한자만 보고 고르면 갈라지지 않는 자리인데, 향명이 「물푸레 껍질」이라고 못 박으므로 **물푸레(*Fraxinus*)로 확정된다** — 귤껍질이 아니다. 별칭표가 이미 `䄅皮 → jinpi-ash` 를 「전사본 이체자」로 적어 두었고, 향명이 그 판단을 독립으로 뒷받침한다. 같은 `䄅` 가 1.42.3 `䄅椒`(秦椒)에도 쓰이는데 그쪽은 산초나무이므로, **한 이체자가 전혀 다른 두 나무의 이름에 걸린다.**
譯 1.41.1 Source원문
性寒, 味苦, 無毒. 主肝中久𤍠, 兩目赤腫疼痛, 風淚不止, 除目中靑瞖白膜, 洗眼益精明目, 療𤍠痢, 婦人帶下, 小兒癎𤍠.
Translation영역
Its nature is cold, its flavour bitter, and it is without toxicity. It governs long-standing heat in the liver, redness, swelling and pain of both eyes, and wind-tearing that will not stop; it removes blue screens and white membranes within the eye, and washing the eyes with it boosts the essence and brightens the vision. It treats heat dysentery, vaginal discharge in women, and fright-heat in children.
Clinical note임상 주석
秦皮 is the bark of Fraxinus rhynchophylla and allied ashes (Fraxini Cortex), and it is a current drug: it stands in the Korean and Chinese pharmacopoeias, and it is one of the four herbs of 白頭翁湯, the standing formula for heat dysentery. **It can be used.** The indications given here are exactly the two the drug is still used for — the eye and the hot dysentery — and the formulary of this site carries it in three prescriptions, 白頭翁湯 among them.
On the eye claims the modern obligation is plain. 靑瞖白膜, blue screen and white membrane, covers corneal opacity, pterygium and cataract; none of these resolves with a decoction or a wash, and cataract and pterygium are surgical. Washing the eye with any home-prepared decoction is a route to bacterial and fungal keratitis, which blinds. 風淚不止, unremitting tearing, is usually nasolacrimal obstruction or dry eye with reflex tearing, and both are diagnosable in a clinic.
譯 1.41.2 Source원문
處處有之. 樹似檀, 葉細, 皮有白點而不麄錯. 皮有白點, 故俗呼爲白樳木. 二月八月採皮陰乾.
Translation영역
It is found everywhere. The tree resembles the sandalwood tree; the leaves are fine; the bark has white spots and is not coarse or cracked. Because the bark has white spots it is commonly called the white sim-tree. In the second and eighth months the bark is gathered and dried in the shade.
Clinical note임상 주석
皮有白點 is a real field mark: the grey-green bark of young Fraxinus is speckled with pale lenticels, and the smoothness the text insists on (不麄錯) separates young bark from the fissured bark of an old trunk. The drug is taken from young stems, which is what the description is pointing at.
譯 1.41.3 Source원문
取皮水漬便碧色, 書紙看靑色者真也. 《本草》
Translation영역
Take the bark and steep it in water and it at once turns a blue-green; write on paper with it and the one that shows blue is the genuine article.
Clinical note임상 주석
**This is one of the few identity tests in the whole chapter that is straightforwardly chemistry, and it still works.** Ash bark is rich in the coumarin glucosides aesculin (= esculin) and fraxin; in water, and especially in faintly alkaline water, their solutions show a strong blue fluorescence, so a soak looks blue-green and a brush-stroke on paper dries blue. The test is not folklore but the same reaction the pharmacopoeial identity check for Fraxini Cortex uses, now read under ultraviolet light rather than against paper. Where a 1613 text prints an assay that a modern monograph still runs, the note should say so.
1.42 Sichuan Pepper 蜀椒
`쵸피나모여름` 은 `쵸피`(초피) + `나모`(나무) + `여름`(열매)이다. `여름 → 열매` 는 이 편에 열 번 넘게 나오는 꼴이고 `나모 → 나무` 도 그렇다. `초피나무` 는 지금도 *Zanthoxylum piperitum* 의 우리말 이름이므로 향명이 종까지 집어 준다 — 1.42.3 의 `분디여름`(분디 = *Zanthoxylum schinifolium*)과 **다른 종**이라는 것을 향명 둘이 서로 갈라 준다. 본문의 `出四川謂之蜀椒川椒, 出關陝謂之䄅椒` 는 산지로 가르는데, 향명은 **나무로** 가른다.
譯 1.42.1 Source원문
性𤍠, 味辛, 有毒一云小毒. 溫中, 主皮膚死肌, 寒濕痺痛, 除六府寒冷, 鬼疰蠱毒, 殺虫魚毒, 除齒痛, 壯陽, 止陰汗, 煖腰膝, 縮小便, 下氣.
Translation영역
Its nature is hot, its flavour acrid, and it is toxic one says slightly toxic. It warms the centre and governs dead flesh of the skin and cold-damp numb impediment with pain; it eliminates cold in the six bowels, demon-influx and go-toxin, kills the toxin of insects and fish, removes toothache, invigorates the yang, checks sweating of the genitals, warms the lower back and knees, reduces urination, and makes the qi descend.
Clinical note임상 주석
蜀椒 is the pericarp of Zanthoxylum piperitum (초피) and its relatives — the Sichuan pepper of the kitchen, and a food before it is a drug. **It can be used, and it is used daily in Korea as 초피/제피 in kimchi and in freshwater fish dishes.** The drug carries hydroxy-α-sanshool, the alkylamide that produces the tingling, buzzing numbness, together with limonene, geraniol and linalool. The tingling is a genuine action on mechanoreceptors and on KCNK channels, and it is the reason 除齒痛, removing toothache, is in this list: chewing the pericarp numbs the gum. It is palliative and not a treatment; dental pain means caries, pulpitis or an abscess, and an abscess spreading to the floor of the mouth or the neck is an emergency.
The book's own grading of the toxicity is worth keeping as it stands: 有毒 in the main line with a gloss 一云小毒, slightly toxic. At culinary doses there is no toxicity to speak of. The section's real warning comes two passages below and is about which fruits are taken, not how much.
譯 1.42.2 Source원문
在處有之. 樹高四五尺, 似茱萸而小, 有鍼刺, 葉堅而滑. 四月結子, 無花, 但生於葉間, 如小豆顆而圓, 皮紫赤色. 八月採實陰乾. 一名川椒, 一名巴椒, 一名漢椒.
Translation영역
It is found everywhere. The tree is four or five feet high, like the evodia but smaller, with needle-like thorns, and the leaves are firm and glossy. In the fourth month it sets seed; it has no flower, and the seed simply appears among the leaves, round like a small bean, with a purple-red skin. In the eighth month the fruit is gathered and dried in the shade. One name for it is cheoncho, one pacho, and one hancho.
Clinical note임상 주석
無花, it has no flower, is wrong — Zanthoxylum flowers, but the flowers are minute, greenish and apetalous, so they pass unnoticed, and a gatherer who comes in the fourth month and finds only green fruit will conclude what the book concludes. The thorns, the glossy pinnate leaves and the comparison with 茱萸 (1.19 吳茱萸, also Rutaceae) are all accurate.
**一名川椒 matters for the drug table rather than for the plant.** This corpus's herb table carries both `chokcho 蜀椒` and `cheoncho 川椒` as separate entries with the same Latin name, and the prescriptions use 川椒 (eighty-nine) far more than 蜀椒 (two) — but the Bogam says here in its own words that they are one name for one thing, and the 入門 passage at 1.42.3 repeats it. The two entries are the same drug under two names, and the split is an artefact of how the table grew out of the prescriptions.
譯 1.42.3 Source원문
蜀椒皮肉厚, 腹裏白, 氣味濃烈. 凢使須去目及閉口者勿用, 合口者殺人. 微火熬之令汗出, 乃有勢力, 舂之取紅末用. 《本草》
Translation영역
Sichuan pepper has thick skin-flesh, is white inside the belly, and its qi and flavour are thick and fierce. Whenever it is used the seeds must be removed, and the ones whose mouths are shut are not to be used — the closed-mouthed ones kill people. Parch it over a low fire until it sweats, and only then has it force; pound it and take the red powder for use.
Clinical note임상 주석
**閉口者殺人 — the closed-mouthed ones kill people — is the book warning about its own drug in its own words, and it is kept here exactly as printed.** The same formula of words appears over the fruit and vegetable chapters wherever a fruit is gathered unripe or unopened, and it is treated the same way here: printed, not softened. What it refers to is real and is a matter of ripeness. The useful drug is the dehisced follicle, which has split along its suture and dropped its black seed; a capsule that has not opened is an unripe or aborted fruit, and the unripe pericarp of Zanthoxylum carries much more of the irritant alkylamide and of the volatile oil per weight. Eaten in quantity it gives burning of the mouth and throat, vomiting and watery diarrhoea. Nothing in the literature supports a lethal dose for a spice at culinary quantities, so the force of the warning is best read as the tradition's way of excluding unripe fruit from the drug — but the book's word is 殺人 and it is not the translator's business to reduce it.
**去目, remove the seeds, sets up the sharpest self-contradiction in this part of the chapter.** This passage orders the seed thrown away as not part of the drug; the very next entry, 1.42.1 椒目, is that discarded seed standing as a drug of its own with its own nature, flavour, toxicity gloss and indications, and the prescriptions use it under that name in seven places. The Bogam prints both without noticing, and the contradiction is the book's, not the transcription's.
微火熬之令汗出 — parch over a low fire until it sweats — is the classical processing, and the sweat is the volatile oil coming to the surface. 乃有勢力, only then has it force, is the opposite of what the chemistry says: heating drives off the terpenes that carry the aroma. The processing in fact converts a raw spice into a drier, less aromatic, more purely pungent material, and the tradition reads the change as potentiation.
譯 1.42.4 Source원문
酒拌濕蒸, 入瓮陰乾, 勿見風. 《入門》
Translation영역
Mix it with wine, steam it damp, put it into a jar and dry it in the shade, not letting it meet the wind.
1.42.1 Sichuan Pepper Seed 椒目
`쳔쵸ᄡᅵ` 는 한자어 `川椒` 의 우리 소리 + `ᄡᅵ`(씨)다. `쳔 → 천` 은 단모음화이고 `ᄡᅵ → 씨` 는 어두 자음군의 된소리화이므로 `천초 씨` 로 그대로 이어진다. **이 향명이 이 잎의 약재 고리를 정한다** — 절 이름은 `椒目`(「椒의 눈」, 곧 씨)이고 어미는 `蜀椒` 인데, 향명이 「川椒의 씨」라고 적으므로 표의 `cheoncho 川椒` 쪽에 이었다(별칭표가 이미 `椒目 → cheoncho` 를 「천초의 씨」로 적어 두었다). 그래서 이 잎은 **어미와 다른 id** 를 가리킨다 — 어미 절이 `chokcho 蜀椒` 이고 이 잎이 `cheoncho 川椒` 인데, 책 스스로 그 둘을 `一名川椒` 로 같다고 하므로 모순이 아니라 표의 겹침이 드러난 자리다.
譯 1.42.1.1 Source원문
性寒, 味苦, 無毒一云小毒. 治十二種水氣, 能行水利小便, 治水蠱. 《本草》
Translation영역
Its nature is cold, its flavour bitter, and it is without toxicity one says slightly toxic. It treats the twelve kinds of water qi, is able to move water and promote urination, and treats water-go.
Clinical note임상 주석
**The seed the parent entry orders thrown away is here a cold, bitter diuretic — and the parent is hot and acrid.** Nothing in the plant changes between the two entries; what changes is which part is in the hand. The split is not fanciful: the pericarp carries the sanshool alkylamides and the volatile oil, and the seed is largely fixed oil and does not have them, so the two parts do behave differently in the mouth. Whether the seed is a diuretic is another matter, and I know of no evidence that it is.
水蠱 and 十二種水氣 are the classical names for gross oedema and ascites. These are presentations, not diagnoses: in a modern clinic they are heart failure, cirrhosis with portal hypertension, nephrotic syndrome or a malignant effusion, and each is managed differently and urgently. Using a traditional water-expelling drug here without establishing which of them it is risks exactly the harm the next passage boasts about — speed.
譯 1.42.1.2 Source원문
此藥只行滲道, 不行穀道, 所以下水最速.
Translation영역
This drug moves only along the seeping pathway and not along the grain pathway, and that is why it brings water down most quickly.
Clinical note임상 주석
行滲道不行穀道 is the tradition distinguishing a diuretic from a purgative, and the distinction is sound and clinically important: it is the line between losing water as urine and losing it as stool. 下水最速, bringing water down most quickly, is offered here as a merit. In a patient with ascites or oedema it is the opposite of a merit — rapid fluid removal without monitoring produces hypovolaemia, acute kidney injury, hypokalaemia and, in cirrhosis, hepatorenal syndrome and encephalopathy. Modern practice limits the rate of removal deliberately.
譯 1.42.1.3 Translation영역
Lightly parch it before use.
1.42.2 Sichuan Pepper Leaf 椒葉
譯 1.42.2.1 Source원문
性𤍠. 治奔豚伏梁氣及內外腎釣痛, 并霍亂轉筋, 蒸熨之. 《本草》
Translation영역
Its nature is hot. It treats running-piglet and hidden-beam qi and drawing pain of the inner and outer kidney, and also sudden turmoil with cramping sinews: steam it and apply it as a hot compress.
Clinical note임상 주석
This leaf has a nature and no flavour and no toxicity statement — one of the many entries in the Decoctions chapters where the book records only what it has, and the field is left as the book left it.
The use is entirely external: 蒸熨, steamed and applied hot. A hot compress of aromatic leaves over a cramping abdomen is a counter-irritant and a source of warmth, and both do something for muscle cramp; the Zanthoxylum alkylamides are absorbed through skin and produce local tingling, which is the mechanism such a compress would have. 霍亂轉筋 — the vomiting and diarrhoea with cramping that the old texts call sudden turmoil — is a presentation of acute gastroenteritis and in its severe form of cholera, where the cramps are a sign of sodium and potassium loss. The treatment is oral or intravenous rehydration, and a compress is not a substitute for it. 奔豚 and 伏梁 are classical qi-patterns, not entities with modern counterparts.
1.42.3 Qin Pepper 䄅椒
`분디여름` 은 `분디` + `여름`(열매)이다. `분디` 는 지금도 *Zanthoxylum schinifolium*(산초나무)의 우리말 이름으로 살아 있으므로 `분디나무 열매` 로 이어진다. 어미 1.42 의 향명 `쵸피나모여름`(초피나무 = *Z. piperitum*)과 **종이 다르다**는 것을 두 향명이 갈라 준다 — 책이 산지로만 가른 것(四川 對 關陝)을 향명이 나무로 가른 셈이다. 본문의 `又云ᄂᆞᆫ되` 는 향명이 아니라 본문 안에 든 **둘째 이름**이므로 `hanja` 칸에 전사본대로 실었다(菜部 烏芋의 `又云가ᄎᆞ라기`ㆍ芥菜의 `又云게ᄌᆞ` 와 같은 꼴이다). 그 둘째 이름이 지금 말의 어느 낱말로 이어지는지는 가리지 못했다.
譯 1.42.3.1 Source원문
又云ᄂᆞᆫ되性溫, 味辛一云苦, 有毒. 主大風㿏痺, 堅齒髮, 明目, 療腹中冷痛, 止痢.
Translation영역
ᄂᆞᆫ되, it is also called. Its nature is warm, its flavour acrid one says bitter, and it is toxic. It governs great wind with numb impediment, firms the teeth and the hair, brightens the eyes, treats cold pain within the abdomen, and checks dysentery.
Clinical note임상 주석
大風 in the old materia medica is leprosy — Hansen's disease — and it recurs through this part of the chapter (compare 癘風 at 1.59.2). It is a curable bacterial infection, treated with multidrug therapy of rifampicin, dapsone and clofazimine under WHO regimens, and the modern obligation in a note like this is to say that plainly: nothing in this entry treats it, and delay in diagnosis is what causes the nerve damage and the deformity.
譯 1.42.3.2 Source원문
䄅地所出者, 故言䄅椒. 樹葉及莖子都似蜀椒, 但味短實細, 色黃黑. 八九月採. 《本草》
Translation영역
It is what comes out of the land of Qin, and so it is called Qin pepper. Its tree, leaves, stem and seed are all like the Sichuan pepper, only the flavour is short and the fruit fine, and the colour yellow-black. It is gathered in the eighth and ninth months.
Clinical note임상 주석
味短實細, a short flavour and a fine fruit, is a fair description of the difference between Zanthoxylum schinifolium (분디, 산초) and Z. piperitum (초피): the schinifolium fruit is smaller and markedly less pungent, and in Korea it is the one pressed for 산초기름 rather than used as the strong seasoning. The Korean names in the two entries separate the two species cleanly where the Chinese separates only the provinces.
譯 1.42.3.3 Source원문
出四川謂之蜀椒ㆍ川椒, 出關陝謂之䄅椒. 《入門》
Translation영역
What comes out of Sichuan is called chokcho or cheoncho; what comes out of Guanzhong and Shaanxi is called jincho.
Clinical note임상 주석
**This is the book settling, in one line, that 蜀椒 and 川椒 are one name for one drug, and that 秦椒 is the same kind from a different province.** For the Chinese that is a statement about provenance; for the plants it is not quite right, since the two Korean glosses show the tradition handling two different Zanthoxylum species under the provincial names. 秦椒 does not stand in this corpus's herb table and is used in no prescription under that name, so the entry is recorded here with 性味, indications and source and no drug link — which is the correct state for it, not a gap.
1.43 Trumpet Creeper Flower 紫葳
`금등화` 는 고유어가 아니라 한자어 `金藤花`(금빛 덩굴 꽃)의 우리 소리이고 글자가 그대로 지금 말로 이어진다. 다만 **지금 쓰이는 이름은 `능소화`**(凌霄花)이고, 그것은 이 절이 제 입으로 적어 둔 `一名凌霄花` 그대로다 — 곧 향명은 옛 이름 쪽이고 책의 `一名` 이 오늘의 이름 쪽이다. 두 이름이 같은 식물(*Campsis grandiflora*)을 가리키므로 종에는 흔들림이 없다.
譯 1.43.1 Source원문
性微寒, 味酸一云甘, 無毒. 主婦人産乳餘疾, 崩中, 癥瘕, 血閉, 産後奔血不定, 及崩中帶下. 能養血安胎, 治酒㾴𤍠毒風刺, 利大小便.
Translation영역
Its nature is slightly cold, its flavour sour one says sweet, and it is without toxicity. It governs the lingering disorders of childbirth and nursing in women, flooding, concretions and conglomerations, blocked menses, uncontrolled rushing of blood after delivery, and flooding with vaginal discharge. It is able to nourish the blood and quiet the fetus; it treats wine-blotches, heat toxin and wind-pricking, and promotes urination and defecation.
Clinical note임상 주석
紫葳 is the flower of Campsis grandiflora, the trumpet creeper, and it is a current drug — 능소화, Campsis Flos. **It can be used**, and this site's formulary carries it in three prescriptions, two of them named for it (凌霄花散).
**But 能養血安胎 — it nourishes the blood and quiets the fetus — stands against everything else in this same sentence, and against the whole later tradition.** The rest of the line is a blood-breaking drug: 崩中, 癥瘕, 血閉, 産後奔血, and the 丹心 passage below calls it the chief drug for pain in the blood. A drug that opens blocked menses and breaks concretions is not a fetus-quieting drug, and from the Ming onward 凌霄花 is listed with 孕婦忌服, contraindicated in pregnancy; current Chinese materia medica and the Chinese Pharmacopoeia repeat that contraindication. The Bogam prints the two claims side by side in one sentence without noticing. **Anyone reading this entry should take the contraindication, not the 安胎.** Postpartum haemorrhage, which 産後奔血不定 describes, is an obstetric emergency managed with uterotonics, tranexamic acid and surgical control; it is not a place for a flower.
譯 1.43.2 Source원문
一名凌霄花. 在處有之. 初作藤蔓生, 依大木, 歲久延引至巓而有花. 其花黃赤色, 夏中乃盛, 採花乾用. 《本草》
Translation영역
One name for it is neungsohwa. It is found everywhere. At first it grows as a climbing vine, leaning on a large tree, and after many years it draws itself up to the crown and then bears flowers. The flowers are yellow-red, and they are at their height in midsummer; the flowers are gathered and dried for use.
Clinical note임상 주석
The description is accurate to the plant: Campsis grandiflora is a woody liana that climbs by aerial rootlets, flowers only on mature growth high up, and bears orange-red trumpets in midsummer. 一名凌霄花 is the book glossing its own headword, and in this case the gloss has become the standard name — the alias table already carries 凌霄花 against this entry.
One practical caution that has nothing to do with the pharmacology: the flowers and the sap of Campsis are a known contact irritant, and handling the fresh flowers can give a dermatitis, with the old Korean belief that the flower's dew blinds the eyes probably standing on the same fact. Gatherers should not rub their eyes.
譯 1.43.3 Source원문
凌霄花, 治血中痛之要藥也, 且補陰甚捷. 《丹心》
Translation영역
Trumpet creeper flower is the essential drug for pain within the blood, and it also supplements the yin with great speed.
1.43.1 Trumpet Creeper Stem and Leaf 莖葉
譯 1.43.1.1 Source원문
主痿蹶, 益氣, 健脚力. 《本草》
Translation영역
It governs wilting and stumbling, boosts the qi, and strengthens the power of the legs.
Clinical note임상 주석
痿蹶, wilting and stumbling, is the classical name for the weak, wasting limb — 痿證 — and it covers everything from a peripheral neuropathy to a myopathy to a motor neurone disease to the residue of a stroke. None of these is a place for a vine stem, and the first obligation is diagnostic: a progressively weak leg needs examination, nerve conduction studies or imaging, not a tonic. There is no modern use of Campsis stem and leaf; the registered drug is the flower.
1.43.2 Trumpet Creeper Root 根
譯 1.43.2.1 Source원문
治𤍠風身痒, 風疹, 及瘀血帶下. 《本草》
Translation영역
It treats heat-wind with itching of the body, wind papules, and static blood with vaginal discharge.
Clinical note임상 주석
𤍠風身痒 and 風疹 are urticaria and the itching eruptions, and they are the one indication in this group that has a plain modern answer: antihistamines, and for chronic urticaria a stepped protocol up to omalizumab. Acute urticaria with lip or tongue swelling, wheeze or faintness is anaphylaxis and needs adrenaline. The root of Campsis has no registered use and no entry in this corpus's herb table, and it is used in no prescription; recording the name, the indications and the source is the whole of what this leaf is for.
1.44 Poplar Resin 胡桐淚
譯 1.44.1 Source원문
性大寒, 味醎苦, 無毒. 主大毒𤍠, 心腹煩滿, 止風𤍠牙疼, 療牛馬急黃.
Translation영역
Its nature is greatly cold, its flavour salty and bitter, and it is without toxicity. It governs great toxic heat and vexing fullness of the heart and abdomen, checks wind-heat toothache, and treats sudden jaundice in cattle and horses.
Clinical note임상 주석
**This section carries the import mark 唐 — one of nine in my part of this chapter, out of thirty-five items.** 胡桐淚 came through China from the Western Regions, which is what the second passage says in so many words, and the mark is Heo Jun's record that it could not be had from Korean ground.
The drug is the saline exudate and incrustation gathered at the base of Populus euphratica and allied desert poplars, where the tree's alkaline sap crystallises in the sand. Its composition is not a plant resin at all in the ordinary sense but a mixture of sodium and calcium salts — carbonate and sulphate predominating — with organic matter from the wood. That is why the flavour is 醎, salty, which no true resin is, and it is why the identity test two passages below works.
療牛馬急黃, treating sudden jaundice in cattle and horses, is one of the few veterinary indications in the chapter and worth keeping as such.
譯 1.44.2 Source원문
形似黃礬而堅實, 有挾爛木者, 是西域胡桐樹脂也. 味苦醎, 苦入水便消.
Translation영역
In form it resembles yellow alum but is hard and solid, and some pieces have rotten wood embedded in them; it is the resin of the hodong tree of the Western Regions. Its flavour is bitter and salty, and the bitter kind dissolves as soon as it goes into water.
Clinical note임상 주석
似黃礬 — like yellow alum — and 入水便消, dissolving at once in water, are both the behaviour of a salt rather than of a tree resin: resins do not dissolve in water. The embedded rotten wood is the honest part of the description, since the material is scraped from the base of the trunk and from the soil around it.
譯 1.44.3 Source원문
治口齒爲最要之藥, 又爲金銀銲藥, 能軟一切物. 《本草》
Translation영역
For treating the mouth and teeth it is the most essential of drugs; it also serves as a solder-flux for gold and silver, and it can soften any substance.
Clinical note임상 주석
**又爲金銀銲藥 — a flux for soldering gold and silver — is the sentence that identifies the material and also the sentence that should stop a practitioner using it in the mouth.** An alkaline carbonate flux that dissolves the oxide off hot metal is a caustic; applied to gum and oral mucosa it does what caustics do, and the tradition's own 能軟一切物, it softens anything, is a description of corrosion. Borax (蓬砂) was used for the same soldering purpose and the two materials have been confused and substituted for each other in trade, which compounds the problem.
The modern position is straightforward: the conditions this is aimed at — 口齒, the diseases of mouth and teeth, including gingivitis, periodontitis, oral ulceration and dental abscess — are managed by a dentist with scaling, debridement, drainage and where indicated antibiotics, and putting an alkaline salt on inflamed gum adds a chemical burn to the original disease. **Do not use this in the mouth.**
譯 1.44.4 Source원문
投少許於醋中便沸者, 是真也. 《本草》
Translation영역
Drop a little of it into vinegar and the one that at once effervesces is the genuine article.
Clinical note임상 주석
**A second genuine chemical assay, printed four hundred years before the chemistry that explains it.** Vinegar is dilute acetic acid; a carbonate dropped into it liberates carbon dioxide and fizzes. The test therefore detects carbonate, which is exactly the principal component of the real material, and a sample that does not fizz is either not this substance or has been replaced with alum or another sulphate. Compare the ash-bark test at 1.41, which detects a coumarin by its fluorescence; this chapter contains two identity tests that would pass in a laboratory, and both are in my part of it.
譯 1.44.5 Source원문
瘰癧結核, 非此不能除. 《湯液》
Translation영역
Scrofulous lumps and bound nodes cannot be removed without it.
Clinical note임상 주석
瘰癧, the chain of nodes in the neck, is in the great majority of historical cases tuberculous lymphadenitis — scrofula — and in the rest lymphoma, metastatic carcinoma or a reactive node. **A persistent, firm, painless neck node is an indication for diagnosis, not for a dissolving drug**: tuberculous adenitis is cured by six months of standard antituberculous chemotherapy, and lymphoma is curable in many of its forms and fatal if treated as a lump. The vehemence of 非此不能除 is a measure of how intractable the condition was, not of the drug. 松蘿 at 1.51 and the 海藻 formulas are aimed at the same target with the same confidence.
1.45 Pine-Soot Ink 松烟墨
이 향명은 **이름이 아니라 뜻풀이**다(水部ㆍ土部 꼴이고, 이름 꼴이 대세인 木部에서는 드문 자리다). `숑연`(松烟)은 한자어의 우리 소리이고, `ᄆᆡᆼᄀᆞᆫ` 은 `ᄆᆡᆼᄀᆞ다` (만들다)의 관형형이므로 `만든` 으로 이어지며, `먹` 은 그대로다 — `송연으로 만든 먹`. 향명이 뜻풀이인 것은 이 품목이 **식물이 아니라 사람이 만든 물건**이기 때문이다. 우리말에 그것을 가리키는 한 낱말이 없으니 전사자가 만드는 법을 적었다.
譯 1.45.1 Source원문
性溫, 味辛, 無毒. 主産後血暈, 崩中, 卒下血, 療金瘡, 止血生肌.
Translation영역
Its nature is warm, its flavour acrid, and it is without toxicity. It governs blood dizziness after childbirth, flooding and sudden descent of blood; it treats metal wounds, checks bleeding and engenders flesh.
Clinical note임상 주석
**This is not a plant, and it is one of only a handful of manufactured articles in the whole materia medica — an inkstick, which is pine soot bound with animal glue and pressed into a cake.** The chapter files it among the trees because the soot comes from burning pine, and the next passage says so. The reason it was a drug lies in the material and not in the manufacture, so the material is what this note is about.
Pine soot is carbon black with a heavy load of condensed organic matter. The hemostatic use is physical and it is real in the crude sense that any fine carbon powder packed into a bleeding surface promotes clotting mechanically and absorbs exudate — the same property that makes activated charcoal a dressing. **But soot from incomplete combustion carries polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, benzo[a]pyrene foremost among them, and soot is not a hypothetical carcinogen but one of the first ever identified**: chimney sweeps' scrotal carcinoma was described by Percivall Pott in 1775, and soot is classified by IARC as carcinogenic to humans, Group 1, with occupational exposure to soot the exposure concerned. Carbon black itself is Group 2B. Packing soot into an open wound, or taking it by mouth as the following passage directs, puts that mixture into the body.
産後血暈 is postpartum collapse from haemorrhage, and 崩中 and 卒下血 are heavy uterine bleeding. These are emergencies treated with uterotonics, tranexamic acid, transfusion and surgical control. A metal wound (金瘡) that is bleeding needs pressure, exploration and, if it broke the skin, tetanus prophylaxis. Nothing here is an argument for the ink.
譯 1.45.2 Source원문
墨, 松之烟也. 入藥須松烟墨方可, 久遠者佳. 《本草》
Translation영역
Ink is the smoke of pine. For putting into medicine it must be pine-soot ink and nothing else, and the old-aged kind is best.
Clinical note임상 주석
墨松之烟也 is the book explaining its own headword, and the explanation is the reason the entry stands in the tree chapter rather than among the earths. 久遠者佳, the long-kept kind is best, is the ink-maker's own standard — an aged stick has lost its free moisture and its glue has set — and it has nothing to do with the medicine.
Two near-neighbours in this corpus's herb table should be read with this entry. `heuktan 黑炭`, charcoal, is the same element in a different form and without the combustion products, and `gyeongmuk 京墨` carries the identical English gloss, Pine-Soot Ink, while being registered under the earth chapter — 京墨 is not a headword anywhere in the Decoctions chapters and grew into the table out of the prescriptions. The two ink entries are very probably one drug.
譯 1.45.3 Source원문
湯藥磨刺服, 丸散則火煆細硏用. 他墨光潤且香者勿用. 《入門》
Translation영역
For a decoction, grind it, pierce it and take it; for pills and powders, calcine it in fire, grind it fine and use it. Other inks, the glossy and fragrant kinds, are not to be used.
Clinical note임상 주석
**他墨光潤且香者勿用 — do not use the glossy, fragrant inks — is the book excluding the adulterated article, and it happens to exclude the more dangerous one.** The glossy fragrant inksticks are the lamp-black inks made from burning oil rather than pine, perfumed with musk, camphor and borneol and loaded with additives to take a sheen; oil soot is finer and richer in polycyclic aromatics than pine soot, and the perfumes are themselves drugs. The restriction is a genuine quality specification.
火煆, calcining in fire, is the one processing step here that does something to the hazard: heating carbon black to red heat in a closed vessel drives off and destroys a large part of the adsorbed polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons, which is why calcined carbons are used medicinally and raw soot is not. It does not make the article a medicine, and the decoction route in the first clause of this passage has no such step at all.
1.46 Polyporus 猪苓
譯 1.46.1 Source원문
性平, 味甘苦, 無毒. 主腫脹腹滿, 利水道, 治淋, 療痎瘧.
Translation영역
Its nature is balanced, its flavour sweet and bitter, and it is without toxicity. It governs swelling, distension and abdominal fullness, promotes the water passages, treats dribbling urination, and treats intermittent malarial fever.
Clinical note임상 주석
**猪苓 is a fungus, not a plant** — the sclerotium of Polyporus umbellatus (Polyporus) — and it is a current pharmacopoeial drug in Korea and China. **It can be used**, and this corpus's formulary carries it in seventy-two prescriptions, 五苓散 and 猪苓湯 among them; it is one of the ordinary working diuretics of the tradition and there is nothing in the modern record against it at usual doses.
痎瘧, the recurring tertian fever, is malaria, and this is the one indication in the entry that has to be answered flatly: malaria is diagnosed on a blood film or a rapid antigen test and treated with artemisinin combination therapy, and Plasmodium falciparum malaria kills within days if it is not treated. 淋, dribbling and painful urination, is a urinary tract infection or a stone until proven otherwise; fever with flank pain is pyelonephritis.
譯 1.46.2 Source원문
一名朱苓. 是楓樹苓, 其皮至黑, 作塊似猪屎, 故以名之. 肉白而實者佳. 二月八月採陰乾. 《本草》
Translation영역
One name for it is juryeong. It is the ryeong of the maple tree; its skin is extremely black and it forms lumps like pig dung, which is how it got its name. The kind whose flesh is white and solid is good. In the second and eighth months it is gathered and dried in the shade.
Clinical note임상 주석
The description is good mycology for its date. Polyporus umbellatus forms an irregular, blackish, knobbly underground sclerotium on hardwood roots, white and firm within, and 肉白而實者佳 is a sound grading mark — a grey, soft or hollow sclerotium is old or decayed. 是楓樹苓, the ryeong of the maple, is roughly right as to habitat, since the fungus associates with the roots of broadleaved trees; and the comparison to 茯苓, the other great sclerotium drug of this chapter (1.6), which forms on pine, is the reason the two stand under the same character.
譯 1.46.3 Source원문
入足太陽ㆍ少陰經, 除濕. 比諸淡滲藥太燥, 亡津液. 無濕病勿服, 久服傷腎. 《湯液》
Translation영역
It enters the foot taeyang and soyin channels and eliminates damp. Compared with the other bland-seeping drugs it is too drying and it wastes the fluids. Where there is no damp disease it is not to be taken, and long taking damages the kidney.
Clinical note임상 주석
**無濕病勿服, 久服傷腎 — do not take it without damp disease, and long use damages the kidney — is the book putting its own limit on a drug it has just recommended, and the limit is the right one.** Sustained diuresis in a person who is not fluid-overloaded produces volume depletion, pre-renal acute kidney injury and electrolyte loss, and the sequence from dehydration to raised creatinine is exactly what 傷腎 describes. This caution should be carried wherever the drug is used, and it applies with more force now, since many patients are already on a thiazide or a loop diuretic and the combination compounds the loss.
譯 1.46.4 Source원문
銅刀削去黑皮, 微焙乾用. 《入門》
Translation영역
Pare away the black skin with a copper knife, and lightly roast it dry for use.
1.47 White Jujube Thorn 白𣗥
譯 1.47.1 Source원문
性寒, 味辛, 無毒. 療丈夫虛損, 陰痿精自出, 補腎氣, 益精髓. 又主心腹痛, 癕腫潰膿, 止痛決刺結.
Translation영역
Its nature is cold, its flavour acrid, and it is without toxicity. It treats vacuity detriment in a man, impotence with spontaneous emission of essence; it supplements the kidney qi and boosts the essence and marrow. It also governs pain of the heart and abdomen and welling abscess with suppuration, checks pain and breaks up pricking binds.
Clinical note임상 주석
陰痿, impotence, is the one indication here that has a plain modern answer and a reason to seek it: erectile dysfunction is an early marker of vascular disease and of diabetes, and a man presenting with it should have blood pressure, lipids, glucose and, where indicated, testosterone checked, because the artery that fails first is a warning about the coronary arteries. Phosphodiesterase-5 inhibitors are effective and safe in the absence of nitrate therapy. Treating this with a thorn delays the cardiovascular assessment, which is the real loss.
譯 1.47.2 Source원문
一名棘鍼, 一名棘刺. 棘, 小棗也. 叢生, 花葉莖實都似棗, 而有赤白二種, 白者莖白如粉.
Translation영역
One name for it is geukchim, the thorn-needle, and one is geukja, the thorn-spine. Geuk is the small jujube. It grows in thickets, and its flower, leaf, stem and fruit are all like the jujube's, but there are two kinds, red and white, and in the white kind the stem is white as powder.
Clinical note임상 주석
**棘小棗也 — geuk is the small jujube — is the book explaining its own headword, and the gloss settles the plant.** 小棗, the small jujube, is Ziziphus jujuba var. spinosa, the wild thorny jujube, which this chapter already carries two headwords above at 1.9 酸棗仁, whose Korean gloss is 묏대쵸ᄡᅵ, the seed of the mountain jujube. So 白棘 is the thorn of the same shrub whose seed is 酸棗仁 — one plant yielding two drugs under two headwords twenty-six entries apart, as 桑 does with its root bark, leaf, twig and fruit.
That relationship is worth recording and it is not a reason to join the two entries. 酸棗仁 is the seed and a current pharmacopoeial sedative; 白棘 is the thorn, which has no modern use, no entry in this corpus's herb table, and no appearance in any prescription in the formulary under any of its three names — 白棘, 棘鍼 and 棘刺 are all nil. The thorn and the seed are different drugs from one shrub, and the thorn entry is correctly left without a drug link.
譯 1.47.3 Source원문
有鉤直二種, 直者宜入補藥, 鉤者宜入癕腫藥.
Translation영역
There are two kinds, hooked and straight: the straight ones are fit to go into supplementing medicines, and the hooked ones into medicines for welling abscess.
Clinical note임상 주석
The two thorn forms are real — Ziziphus bears a straight spine and a shorter recurved one at each node — so the distinction the text draws is between two organs of the same plant, not between two kinds of plant. That the straight one should supplement and the hooked one should drain an abscess is doctrine by resemblance, and the companion case in this part of the chapter is 1.59.2 皂角刺, where a thorn is likewise made the drug that opens what is closed.
譯 1.47.4 Translation영역
The thorn-needle may be gathered at any season.
1.48 Lindera 烏藥
譯 1.48.1 Source원문
性溫, 味辛, 無毒. 治一切氣, 除一切冷. 主中惡心腹痛, 疰忤鬼氣, 療膀胱腎間冷氣攻衝背膂, 治霍亂及反胃吐食, 㵼痢, 癕癤疥癩, 止小便滑數, 婦人血氣痛, 小兒腹中諸虫.
Translation영역
Its nature is warm, its flavour acrid, and it is without toxicity. It treats every kind of qi and eliminates every kind of cold. It governs pain of the heart and abdomen from being struck by malignity, influx-offence and demon qi; it treats cold qi between the bladder and the kidney striking up into the back and spine, treats sudden turmoil and stomach reflux with vomiting of food, diarrhoea and dysentery, welling abscesses, boils, scabies and leprosy; it checks slippery frequent urination, women's blood and qi pain, and worms of all kinds in a child's belly.
Clinical note임상 주석
烏藥 is the root of Lindera aggregata (Linderae Radix) and a current pharmacopoeial drug. **It can be used**, and the formulary carries it in seventy prescriptions, among them 烏藥順氣散, which is named for it. It is one of the standard qi-moving, interior-warming drugs and there is nothing in the modern toxicology against it at usual doses.
Two items on the list need answering rather than endorsing. 小兒腹中諸虫, worms in a child's belly, is intestinal helminthiasis, diagnosed on stool microscopy or antigen testing and treated with a single dose of albendazole or mebendazole according to species; a child with a heavy ascaris burden can obstruct and needs assessment, not a decoction. 癩, leprosy, is treated with WHO multidrug therapy, as at 1.42.3 and 1.59.2.
譯 1.48.2 Source원문
生天台者爲勝. 白而虛軟, 以作車轂形如連珠狀者爲佳. 《本草》
Translation영역
The kind grown at Tiantai is the best. The ones that are white and spongy-soft, and shaped like a cartwheel hub, strung like a row of beads, are the fine kind.
Clinical note임상 주석
連珠, strung beads, is still the grading mark for this drug and it is a real morphological feature: good Lindera root is constricted at intervals into a row of fusiform swellings, and the trade name for the best grade in Chinese practice is 烏藥珠, lindera beads. A straight, woody, unswollen root is the inferior grade, so the specification can be checked in the hand.
譯 1.48.3 Source원문
入足陽明ㆍ少陰經. 生嶺南者, 色褐而堅硬, 土産亦好. 去皮心畧炒用, 或磨刺入湯服. 《入門》
Translation영역
It enters the foot yangmyeong and soyin channels. The kind grown in Lingnan is brown in colour and hard and firm; the home-grown kind is also good. Remove the bark and the core, parch it lightly and use it, or grind it, pierce it and take it in the decoction.
Clinical note임상 주석
土産亦好, the home-grown kind is also good, sits oddly against the 唐 mark on this entry, which says the drug was imported. 土産 here is most naturally read as the Chinese local product rather than as a Korean one — Lindera aggregata does not grow in Korea — and the entry's import mark is the firmer witness. Compare 1.50 安息香, where the book does claim Korean production, and the entry carries no 唐 mark.
1.49 Myrrh 沒藥
譯 1.49.1 Source원문
性平一云溫, 味苦一云辛, 無毒. 破癥結宿血, 止痛. 主打撲傷折筋骨瘀痛, 金瘡杖瘡, 諸惡瘡痔漏, 消腫毒, 卒下血, 去目中瞖暈痛膚赤.
Translation영역
Its nature is balanced one says warm, its flavour bitter one says acrid, and it is without toxicity. It breaks concretions, binds and stale blood, and checks pain. It governs the static pain of sinew and bone from blows, falls and fractures, metal wounds and cudgel wounds, all malignant sores and fistulous piles; it disperses swelling toxin, treats sudden descent of blood, and removes screens, haloes, pain and reddened membrane within the eye.
Clinical note임상 주석
沒藥 is myrrh, the oleo-gum-resin of Commiphora myrrha and related species of Arabia and the Horn of Africa, and it is a current drug — Myrrha stands in the Chinese Pharmacopoeia and in Korean practice. **It can be used**, and this corpus's formulary carries it in a hundred and nineteen prescriptions, almost all of them for trauma, static blood and sores, which is exactly the indication range the book gives. It is the standard partner of 乳香 (1.26) in the trauma formulas.
Two cautions attach to it in current use. Myrrh is a blood-moving drug and the classical texts from the Ming onward contraindicate it in pregnancy; that contraindication should be kept. And the eye indications need the same answer as at 1.41: opacity and halo within the eye are corneal and lens disease and are not treated with a resin.
譯 1.49.2 Source원문
似安息香, 其塊大小不定, 黑色. 硏細入藥, 或𤍠酒和服. 《本草》
Translation영역
It resembles benzoin; its lumps are of no fixed size and are black in colour. Grind it fine to put into medicine, or mix it with hot wine and take it.
Clinical note임상 주석
似安息香 points forward to the next entry, which is the one place in this chapter where a resin's identity comes apart (see 1.50). Myrrh and benzoin are both tapped gum-resins that harden into dark irregular lumps, so the comparison is fair on appearance and useless for identification; the two are told apart by smell, by the milk-white emulsion myrrh makes when triturated with water, and by taste.
譯 1.49.3 Source원문
波斯國松脂也. 破血消腫止痛, 爲瘡家奇藥也. 《入門》
Translation영역
It is the pine resin of Persia. It breaks blood, disperses swelling and checks pain, and it is the wonder-drug of the sore-doctors.
Clinical note임상 주석
**波斯國松脂也, the pine resin of Persia, is botanically wrong and worth keeping as printed.** Myrrh is not a conifer product at all: it comes from Commiphora, a thorny tree of the Burseraceae, and it reached East Asia through Persian and Arab traders, which is what the sentence is really recording. Calling any imported tapped resin a 松脂 is the trade route being read back into the botany, and the same move is made at 1.50 (`似松脂`) about benzoin and at 1.26 about frankincense. For a reader of this site the point is practical: the group of imported resins the Bogam files by appearance — myrrh, frankincense, benzoin, storax, dragon's blood — come from five unrelated families, and substitution among them has been commercially routine.
1.50 Benzoin Resin 安息香
`븕나모진` 은 `븕나모`(붉나무) + `진`(진, 樹脂)이다. `븕 → 붉` 은 ㅡ/ㅜ 흔들림의 되돌림이고 `나모 → 나무` 는 이 편의 꼴이므로 `붉나무 진` 으로 또렷하게 이어진다. **그런데 이 향명이 한자 표제어와 다른 식물을 가리킨다 — 이 몫에서 가장 값진 자리다.** `安息香` 은 본문대로 `生南海`, 곧 동남아에서 들여오는 *Styrax* 속의 진(benzoin)이다. 그런데 향명은 `붉나무`(*Rhus chinensis*)의 진이라 하고, 셋째 구절이 `我國出濟州 … 忠淸道亦有之≪俗方≫` 로 **우리 땅에서 난다**고 못 박는다. *Styrax tonkinensis* 는 우리 땅에 없으므로, 그 셋을 함께 읽으면 **16세기 조선의 鄕藥 대용품이 붉나무 진이었다**는 말이 된다. 같은 `붉나무` 가 1.55 `五倍子` 의 향명 `븕나모여름` 에도 나오므로, 한 나무가 이 문에 **두 품목의 향명**을 대고 있다. 붉나무는 옻나무과(Anacardiaceae)이고 이 문 1.12 의 `乾漆ㆍ生漆` 과 같은 과이므로 **그 진은 benzoin 과 약리도 위험도 다르다** — 아래 임상 주석에 적는다.
譯 1.50.1 Source원문
性平, 味辛苦, 無毒. 主心腹惡氣鬼疰, 治邪氣魍魎鬼胎, 辟蠱毒瘟疫, 療腎氣霍亂, 治婦人血噤, 産後血暈.
Translation영역
Its nature is balanced, its flavour acrid and bitter, and it is without toxicity. It governs malign qi and demon-influx in the heart and abdomen, treats evil qi, goblins and demon-pregnancy, wards off go-toxin and epidemic pestilence, treats kidney qi and sudden turmoil, and treats blood-lockjaw in women and blood dizziness after childbirth.
Clinical note임상 주석
安息香 proper is benzoin, the balsamic resin tapped from Styrax tonkinensis or S. benzoin in mainland and insular Southeast Asia, and it remains in use as a resin — tincture of benzoin and compound benzoin tincture are still pharmacopoeial preparations, used as inhalations and as skin protectants, and the resin is a standard fixative in perfumery.
**Which material a Korean practitioner of 1613 actually had in hand is the problem of this entry, and the Korean gloss and the 俗方 passage answer it differently from the Chinese headword.** See the gloss note above and the note on the third passage; the short form is that the vernacular name points at the resin of Rhus chinensis, a sumac, and the third passage claims domestic production of a tree that does not grow here. That substitution has a consequence that benzoin does not: Rhus is in the Anacardiaceae, the lacquer and poison-ivy family, and its sap carries urushiol-type catechols. **These are potent contact sensitisers**; handling or applying the fresh sap causes an allergic contact dermatitis that in the sensitised is severe and blistering, and the same family relationship is why 1.12 生漆, raw lacquer, carries its own warning in this corpus's herb table. Benzoin is also a sensitiser but a much weaker one, and compound benzoin tincture is a recognised cause of contact allergy in dressings.
鬼胎, demon-pregnancy, deserves a word because it is a real clinical entity under an old name: it covers hydatidiform mole and the other gestational trophoblastic diseases, which present as a pregnancy that is not one, with bleeding and a uterus too large for dates. Molar pregnancy is diagnosed on ultrasound and β-hCG and treated by uterine evacuation with follow-up, because a proportion progresses to choriocarcinoma, which is curable with chemotherapy and lethal untreated. A resin has no place in it.
譯 1.50.2 Source원문
生南海, 刻其樹皮, 其膠如飴, 六七月堅凝, 乃取之. 似松脂, 黃黑色爲塊, 新者亦柔軟. 燒之通神, 辟衆惡. 《本草》
Translation영역
It grows by the Southern Sea. The bark of the tree is cut and its gum is like malt syrup; in the sixth and seventh months it hardens and sets, and then it is taken. It resembles pine resin, forms yellow-black lumps, and the fresh kind is still soft. Burning it communicates with the spirits and wards off the host of malignities.
Clinical note임상 주석
The tapping method is accurate for benzoin — the trunk of Styrax is incised and the exudate collected after it has set — and 似松脂, it resembles pine resin, is the same appearance-based filing as at 1.49. 燒之通神 is the resin's real historical use: benzoin is an incense before it is a medicine, and the name 安息 itself is 安息國, Parthia, the trade route, not a quality of the drug.
譯 1.50.3 Source원문
我國出濟州, 如膏油者名水安息香, 作塊者名乾安息香. 忠淸道亦有之. 《俗方》
Translation영역
In our country it comes from Jeju; the kind like a fatty oil is called wet benzoin and the kind that forms lumps is called dry benzoin. It is also found in Chungcheong Province.
Clinical note임상 주석
**This passage and the Korean gloss above are the evidence that what was dispensed in Korea under this name was not benzoin.** Styrax tonkinensis and S. benzoin are trees of Laos, Vietnam, Sumatra and Java; neither grows in Jeju or in Chungcheong, and no 俗方 notice can make them. What does grow in both places, abundantly, is 붉나무, Rhus chinensis — the tree the vernacular gloss names and the same tree that supplies 1.55 五倍子 — and a wounded sumac does exude a resin that sets into lumps. The 水/乾 distinction the passage draws, between a fatty-oily grade and a lump grade, is the sort of distinction a domestic collector would make and not an import grade.
Note also what this entry does **not** carry: the import mark 唐. Nine of my thirty-five items carry it, including 沒藥 at 1.49, which is the resin this one is compared to. The absence of the mark here fits the 俗方 claim exactly — the editor marked what had to be bought from China, and this one, in the form Korea actually used, did not.
For practice the conclusion is not that the entry is worthless but that two drugs are hiding under one name. If benzoin is wanted, it must be bought as benzoin; if a packet sold as 안식향 is a domestic sumac resin, it is an Anacardiaceae sap with the sensitising chemistry described above, and it should not be applied to skin or taken internally on the strength of this entry.
1.51 Usnea Lichen 松蘿
`소나모우희숑낙` 은 `소나모`(소나무) + `우희`(위에) + `숑낙`(송낙)이다. `우희 → 위에` 는 이 편에 여러 번 나오는 꼴이고(1.17.7 `뫼ᄲᅩᆼ` 들의 짜임과 같다), `숑낙` 은 지금도 `송낙`ㆍ`송라`(松蘿)로 남아 수염이끼류 지의(*Usnea*)를 가리킨다. 그러므로 `소나무 위의 송낙` 으로 이어진다. 향명이 **기생한다는 사실까지** 담고 있어 본문의 `松樹上寄生也` 와 겹쳐 읽히고, 그 둘이 함께 이것이 소나무에 붙는 지의(地衣)임을 가리킨다 — 꽃식물도 균도 아니고 조류와 균의 공생체다.
譯 1.51.1 Source원문
性平一云微𤍠, 味苦甘一云苦辛, 無毒. 主寒𤍠溫瘧, 能吐𦚾中客𤍠痰涎, 利水道, 去頭瘡, 消項上癭瘤, 除嗔怒邪氣, 令人得睡.
Translation영역
Its nature is balanced one says slightly hot, its flavour bitter and sweet one says bitter and acrid, and it is without toxicity. It governs cold-heat and warm malarial fever, is able to make one vomit out visiting heat and phlegm-drool in the chest, promotes the water passages, removes sores of the head, disperses goitres and tumours on the neck, eliminates the evil qi of rage, and makes a person able to sleep.
Clinical note임상 주석
**松蘿 is a lichen — the beard lichen Usnea, a symbiosis of a fungus and an alga, not a plant and not a parasite on the pine despite the next passage — and it is the one item in my part of this chapter that is used in the formulary and has no entry in this corpus's herb table.** It appears as a weighed ingredient, 眞松蘿 三錢, in 海藻散堅丸; as a single-drug remedy in the 又方 group for goitre and tumour, 松蘿治癭瘤, 水煮服之; and 破結散 records a case in which the physician dropped the 松蘿 and doubled the mistletoe instead. The gap is reported with this file.
**The modern caution on Usnea is hepatic and it is specific.** The genus's characteristic constituent is usnic acid, which uncouples mitochondrial oxidative phosphorylation, and that is not a theoretical hazard: the weight-loss supplement LipoKinetix, whose formula included sodium usniate, caused a cluster of cases of acute hepatocellular injury and fulminant hepatic failure, reported in 2001–2002, and the US Food and Drug Administration warned consumers against it. Other usnic-acid products have produced the same picture. Usnic acid is also a genuine antibacterial, active against Gram-positive organisms including staphylococci and mycobacteria, which is why the external uses — 頭瘡, sores of the head — are the plausible part of this entry.
溫瘧, warm malaria, needs the same answer as at 1.46: malaria is a parasitological diagnosis and an emergency. 能吐, making a patient vomit, is an old therapeutic category that is now obsolete and dangerous; induced emesis is no longer used even in poisoning, because of aspiration.
譯 1.51.2 Source원문
一名女蘿, 松樹上寄生也. 五月採陰乾, 在松上者爲真. 《本草》
Translation영역
One name for it is yeora. It is a parasite upon the pine tree. It is gathered in the fifth month and dried in the shade, and the kind that is on the pine is the genuine article.
Clinical note임상 주석
松樹上寄生也 is the one piece of natural history here that is wrong in a way worth correcting, because the error has a practical edge. Usnea is not a parasite: it is an epiphyte, it takes nothing from the pine, and it grows equally on dead branches and on rock. What that means for the drug is that the specification 在松上者爲真, the genuine kind is the one on pine, is not a specification at all in botanical terms — the same lichen grows on oak and on fir — while in practice it does exclude the mistletoes and the other true parasitic epiphytes that look superficially similar from a distance and are entirely different drugs. This chapter already carries one of those at 1.16 桑上寄生, mulberry mistletoe, whose Korean gloss is built on the same word 겨으사리.
**The thyroid indication needs a modern answer and it is the most useful thing in this note.** 項上癭瘤, goitres and tumours on the neck, is what this drug is used for in all three of its appearances in the formulary, and in every one it is combined with 海藻 and 昆布, which are seaweeds and therefore large iodine loads. A neck swelling must be characterised before anything is given: thyroid function tests and ultrasound, with fine-needle aspiration of a nodule. Iodine loading in a patient with an autonomous nodule precipitates thyrotoxicosis (the Jod-Basedow effect) and in a patient with autoimmune thyroiditis can precipitate hypothyroidism (the Wolff-Chaikoff effect), and iodine given before a thyroid scan or radioiodine treatment makes that treatment impossible for weeks. Adding a hepatotoxic lichen to an iodine load is a combination with two separate hazards and no established benefit.
1.52 Winged Euonymus Twig 衛矛
Medicinal entry ᄇᆞᄃᆡ회 hoe-tree (the second element only; the first is not identified) **이 향명은 낱말로는 풀리고 식물 이름으로는 못 가렸다 — 그래서 `hyangmyeong_mod` 를 비웠다.** 글자는 또렷하다: `ᄇᆞᄃᆡ` + `회`. 뒤의 `회` 는 지금도 **`회나무`**(*Euonymus*)로 살아 있으므로 속(屬)까지는 이어진다. 앞의 `ᄇᆞᄃᆡ` 는 `ᄇᆞ → 바`ㆍ`ᄃᆡ → 대/디` 로 기계적으로는 `바대`ㆍ`바디` 가 되지만, 그 꼴을 가진 식물 이름이 지금 말에 없다. 베틀의 `바디`(筬)로 읽으면 본문의 `其幹有三羽`(줄기에 세 날개가 있다)와 어울리는 그림이 되지만 그것은 **내 짐작** 이므로 칸에 넣지 않았다. 지어내는 것보다 비우는 것이 낫다. **종은 향명이 없어도 흔들리지 않는다** — 책이 `一名鬼箭`ㆍ`其幹有三羽狀如箭翎` (줄기에 화살깃 같은 세 날개)이라 적고, 그것이 곧 화살나무(*Euonymus alatus*)의 코르크 날개다. 별칭표도 이미 `鬼箭`ㆍ`鬼箭羽` 를 `wimo` 에 달아 두었다.
譯 1.52.1 Source원문
性寒, 味苦, 無毒一云小毒. 主蠱疰中惡腹痛, 除邪殺鬼及百邪鬼魅, 殺腹藏虫, 通月經, 破癥結, 止血崩帶下, 産後瘀痛, 消風毒腫, 能落胎.
Translation영역
Its nature is cold, its flavour bitter, and it is without toxicity one says slightly toxic. It governs go-influx and abdominal pain from being struck by malignity; it eliminates evil and kills demons and the hundred evil demon-sprites, kills worms in the belly and viscera, frees the menses, breaks concretions and binds, checks flooding and vaginal discharge, treats static pain after delivery, disperses wind-toxin swelling, and is able to drop the fetus.
Clinical note임상 주석
衛矛 is the winged twig of Euonymus alatus, 화살나무, and it is a current drug in Korean and Chinese practice under the name 鬼箭羽. **It can be used**, and the formulary carries it in seven prescriptions, all of them in the demon-dispelling and malign-qi group that this entry's indications describe.
**能落胎 — it is able to drop the fetus — and the gloss 一云小毒 are the two phrases to carry out of this passage.** The main line says 無毒 and the gloss immediately qualifies it; the book is printing two readings of the toxicity and not resolving them, and the entry then ends by stating an abortifacient action. Both halves point the same way in practice: **this drug is contraindicated in pregnancy**, and that is the standing contraindication on 鬼箭羽 in current materia medica. A blood-moving drug that frees blocked menses and breaks concretions is not something to give to a woman who may be pregnant.
殺腹藏虫, killing worms, needs the modern answer given at 1.48. 蠱疰 and 鬼魅 are not conditions with modern counterparts and the note will not pretend otherwise.
譯 1.52.2 Source원문
一名鬼箭. 處處有之. 其幹有三羽, 狀如箭翎. 八月ㆍ十一月ㆍ十二月採, 削取皮羽用之. 《本草》
Translation영역
One name for it is gwijeon, the demon's arrow. It is found everywhere. Its stem has three wings, shaped like the fletching of an arrow. It is gathered in the eighth, eleventh and twelfth months, and the bark and the wings are pared off for use.
Clinical note임상 주석
**其幹有三羽狀如箭翎 is as good a diagnostic sentence as this chapter contains, and it identifies the plant without help from anywhere else.** Euonymus alatus carries two to four flat corky ridges running the length of each young twig, and nothing else in the Korean flora looks like it; the whole of the Korean and the Chinese names — 화살나무, 鬼箭羽, the arrow-feather — rest on that one feature, and so does the specification 削取皮羽, pare off the bark and the wings, which tells the gatherer that the drug is the wing and the bark of the young twig and not the wood.
譯 1.52.3 Source원문
又名鬼箭羽. 人家多燔之, 以祛祟. 《入門》
Translation영역
It is also called demon's-arrow feather. Households often burn it to drive off haunting.
Clinical note임상 주석
A folk use rather than a medical one, and worth keeping because it explains the drug's whole indication list: a plant burnt at the door against haunting will be prescribed for 鬼疰, 鬼魅 and 邪氣, and that is most of what this entry claims. The pharmacology, where it has been looked at, is about Euonymus's effects on glucose handling, not about anything in this list.
1.53 Castor Aralia Bark 海桐皮
`엄나모겁질` 은 `엄나모`(엄나무) + `겁질`(껍질)이다. `엄나무` 는 지금도 *Kalopanax septemlobus*(음나무ㆍ엄나무)의 우리말 이름이므로 `엄나무 껍질` 로 그대로 이어진다. **이 향명이 이 절의 종을 정하고, 그래서 표가 그렇게 적혀 있다** — `haedongpi 海桐皮` 의 라틴명이 *Kalopanacis Cortex* 이고 영문이 Castor Aralia Bark 인 것은 중국 本草의 海桐皮(*Erythrina variegata*, 콩과)가 아니라 **조선의 鄕藥 대용품인 엄나무**를 따른 것이다. 다만 이 절은 그 자리에서 **스스로 엇갈린다** — 셋째 구절이 `我國惟濟州有之≪俗方≫`(우리나라에서는 제주에만 있다)라 하는데, 엄나무는 한반도 전역에 흔하다. 향명과 俗方이 서로 다른 식물을 가리키는 셈이니 한쪽으로 못 박지 않고 아래 주석에 둘을 다 적었다.
譯 1.53.1 Source원문
性平一云溫, 味苦, 無毒. 主腰脚不遂, 麻痺疼痛, 赤白㵼痢, 治中惡霍亂, 療疳𧏾疥癬, 牙齒痛及目赤, 除風氣.
Translation영역
Its nature is balanced one says warm, its flavour bitter, and it is without toxicity. It governs the lower back and legs that will not obey, numbness and pain, and red and white dysentery; it treats being struck by malignity and sudden turmoil, treats gan-erosion, scabies and ringworm, toothache and red eyes, and eliminates wind qi.
Clinical note임상 주석
**This is a drug whose name has carried three different trees, and the Korean gloss decides which one Korean practice means.** In Chinese materia medica 海桐皮 is the bark of Erythrina variegata, the Indian coral tree, a legume of the tropical coasts. In Korea the drug dispensed under this name is 엄나무, the bark of Kalopanax septemlobus, a large prickly-trunked member of the Araliaceae native to the whole peninsula — which is what the vernacular gloss here names and what this corpus's herb table follows. A third candidate for the Chinese name is 海桐, Pittosporum tobira, 돈나무, which in Korea grows only on the southern coast and on Jeju.
**Keeping all three in view is not pedantry: the 俗方 passage below says the tree is found in Korea only on Jeju, which is false of 엄나무 and true of Pittosporum, so the section's own two Korean witnesses disagree.** The book is not resolved here and this note will not resolve it either. What a practitioner needs to know is that a packet labelled 해동피 may be any of the three, and that the Korean material is the Araliaceae bark.
**That said, it can be used**: Kalopanacis Cortex is a recognised Korean herbal drug, used for exactly the musculoskeletal pain and wind-damp indications given here, and the formulary of this site carries it in four prescriptions. Its reputation rests on triterpene saponins and on kalopanaxsaponins, which are haemolytic in vitro like most saponins and not a practical concern in decoction.
腰脚不遂, the lower back and legs that will not obey, and 麻痺 cover radiculopathy, spinal stenosis, peripheral neuropathy and the leg after a stroke. Sudden inability to move a leg, or back pain with saddle numbness or loss of bladder control, is cauda equina compression and a surgical emergency.
譯 1.53.2 Source원문
似梓白皮, 不拘時月採. 《本草》
Translation영역
It resembles the white bark of the catalpa, and may be gathered without regard to season.
譯 1.53.3 Translation영역
In our country it is found only in Jeju.
Clinical note임상 주석
One of this chapter's local notices and, as described in the note above, the half of the section's evidence that points away from 엄나무. The same formula of words appears at 1.62.1, where the root bark of the chinaberry is said to be found only in Jeju and nowhere else; in that case the claim is right, since Melia in Korea is effectively confined to the far south and the island. Here it cannot be right for Kalopanax, which grows throughout the peninsula and is sold in every market as a vegetable shoot.
1.54 Mimosa Tree Bark 合歡皮
`자괴나모겁질` 은 `자괴나모`(자귀나무) + `겁질`(껍질)이다. `자괴 → 자귀` 는 ㅚ/ㅟ 흔들림이고 `자귀나무` 는 지금도 *Albizia julibrissin* 의 우리말 이름이므로 `자귀나무 껍질` 로 또렷하게 이어진다. 향명이 한자 표제어와 **같은 식물**을 가리키는 자리이고, 본문의 `其葉至暮而合故一名合昏`(잎이 저물면 합하므로 合昏이라 한다)이 이름의 까닭까지 적어 두어 셋이 서로 맞물린다.
譯 1.54.1 Source원문
性平, 味甘, 無毒. 主安五藏, 利心志, 令人歡樂無憂.
Translation영역
Its nature is balanced, its flavour sweet, and it is without toxicity. It governs quieting the five viscera, benefits the heart and the will, and makes a person joyful and free of care.
Clinical note임상 주석
合歡皮 is the bark of Albizia julibrissin, 자귀나무, and it is a current pharmacopoeial drug in Korea and China — Albizziae Cortex. **It can be used.** It is one of the tradition's quieting drugs and the formulary carries it in one prescription, 黃昏湯, which is the formula the third passage's indication belongs to.
令人歡樂無憂, making a person joyful and free of care, is the entry that the modern literature on this bark actually investigates: the extract is studied for anxiolytic and antidepressant activity, and it is widely sold on that basis. Nothing in that literature establishes efficacy in a clinical population, and the point that matters for a reader of this site is the diagnostic one — persistent low mood, loss of interest, sleep and appetite change, and above all thoughts of self-harm, are depression, which is treatable and dangerous untreated, and a patient presenting with them needs assessment and not a bark.
譯 1.54.2 Source원문
木似梧桐, 枝甚柔弱, 葉似皂莢ㆍ槐等, 極細而繁密, 互相交結. 其葉至暮而合, 故一名合昏. 五月花發, 黃白色, 瓣上若絲茸然. 至秋而實作莢, 子極薄細. 不拘時月採皮及葉用. 又名夜合皮. 《本草》
Translation영역
The tree resembles the paulownia; its branches are very soft and weak. The leaves are like those of the gleditsia and the pagoda tree, extremely fine and densely crowded, interlacing with one another. Its leaves come together at dusk, and so one name for it is haphon, the dusk-joiner. In the fifth month the flowers open, yellow-white, the petals like silk floss. By autumn it fruits in a pod, and the seed is extremely thin and fine. It may be gathered without regard to season, and the bark and the leaf are used. It is also called night-joining bark.
Clinical note임상 주석
The botany is right and unusually full. Albizia julibrissin is a mimosoid legume with bipinnate leaves of many tiny leaflets that fold together at nightfall — the nyctinastic movement the name 合昏 and 夜合 both record — flowers that are a brush of long stamens rather than petals, and a thin flat pod. The comparison with 皂莢 (1.59, also a mimosoid legume) and 槐 (1.3) is a comparison with the right relatives.
**採皮及葉用, the bark and the leaf are used, contradicts this entry's own headword, which is 皮, bark, alone.** This chapter's practice elsewhere is to give a leaf its own subnumber when a second part is a drug — 1.42 has three, 1.59 has three — and here the second part is named inside the parent and given no entry. The flower is a separate drug in later practice (合歡花), and it is not in this chapter at all.
譯 1.54.3 Source원문
主肺癕吐膿, 又殺虫, 續筋骨, 消癕腫. 《入門》
Translation영역
It governs lung abscess with the spitting of pus; it also kills worms, knits sinew and bone, and disperses welling abscess and swelling.
Clinical note임상 주석
**肺癕, lung abscess with purulent sputum, is the serious indication in this entry and it is the one the formulary uses the drug for** — 黃昏湯 is the single-drug 合歡皮 decoction for 肺癰. Lung abscess is a necrotising bacterial infection of the lung, usually from aspiration, with anaerobes, streptococci and Staphylococcus aureus the usual organisms. It is diagnosed on chest imaging and treated with several weeks of antibiotics, with drainage where there is empyema; untreated it carries a substantial mortality and can erode into a vessel. **A patient coughing pus needs a chest radiograph and antibiotics, not a bark.** Tuberculosis and lung cancer with post-obstructive infection present the same way and are the other reason imaging comes first.
譯 1.54.4 Source원문
養生論曰, 合歡蠲忿, 卽此也. 樹之階庭, 使人不忿. 《入門》
Translation영역
The Discourse on Nourishing Life says that haphwan dispels anger, and this is the plant it means. Planted at the steps of a courtyard, it keeps people from anger.
Clinical note임상 주석
A literary citation rather than a pharmacological one — Xi Kang's 養生論 — and it is the root of the whole 歡樂無憂 indication in the first passage. Keeping it visible is useful, because it shows that the drug's reputation as a calming agent begins in a pun on its name and in a tree planted in a courtyard, not in observation of patients.
譯 1.54.5 Source원문
榮花樹皮, 卽夜合花根也. 《回春》
Translation영역
Yeonghwasu bark is the root of the night-joining flower.
Clinical note임상 주석
A gloss identifying a third trade name for the same tree, and it is internally confused: it equates a **bark** (榮花樹皮) with a **root** (夜合花根). The Bogam prints it as it found it in the 萬病回春 and the inconsistency is the source's, not the transcription's. The practical content is that 榮花樹 and 夜合花 and 合歡 are one tree under three names, which is worth knowing when reading prescriptions.
1.55 Chinese Gall 五倍子
`븕나모여름` 은 `븕나모`(붉나무) + `여름`(열매)이다. 1.50 `安息香` 의 향명 `븕나모진`(붉나무 진)과 **같은 나무**이므로, 붉나무(*Rhus chinensis*) 하나가 이 문에 두 품목의 향명을 대고 있다. `여름 → 열매` 는 또렷하게 이어진다. **다만 이것은 열매가 아니다** — 본문 스스로 `生膚木葉上`(붉나무 잎 위에 난다)ㆍ `無花`(꽃이 없다)ㆍ`內多虫`(안에 벌레가 많다)ㆍ`剝去內虫`(안의 벌레를 발라낸다)이라 적으므로 책이 보고 있는 것은 **잎에 생긴 충혼(蟲瘤)**이다. 향명이 그것을 「열매」로 부른 것은 생김새 때문이고, 그 어긋남은 아래 주석에 적는다. `膚木` 이 곧 붉나무이니 한자와 향명이 같은 나무를 가리키는 데는 흔들림이 없다.
譯 1.55.1 Source원문
性平, 味苦酸, 無毒. 主齒宣疳𧏾, 肺藏風毒作皮膚瘡癬瘙痒膿水, 五痔下血不止, 小兒面鼻疳瘡, 大人口瘡.
Translation영역
Its nature is balanced, its flavour bitter and sour, and it is without toxicity. It governs loose teeth with gan-erosion, wind-toxin of the lung viscus producing skin sores, ringworm, itching and weeping pus, the five kinds of piles with unceasing bleeding, gan-sores on the face and nose of children, and mouth sores in adults.
Clinical note임상 주석
五倍子 is Galla Chinensis, and **it can be used**: it is a current drug in Korean and Chinese practice and the formulary of this site carries it in thirty-three prescriptions, nearly all of them astringent and topical, which is what it is good for.
**It is also the most heavily tannic material in the entire materia medica — the gall runs to something like fifty to seventy per cent gallotannin by dry weight — and both its usefulness and its hazards follow from that one fact.** Precipitating protein is what a tannin does, so the indications here are the ones that work: a tannin on a bleeding haemorrhoid, an oozing eczema, a mouth ulcer or a loose gum contracts the surface, stops capillary ooze and dries the exudate. That is a real, mechanical, local action and it needs no modern apology.
The hazards are three, and all of them are about quantity and route. **First, iron.** Gallotannins chelate iron and other polyvalent cations in the gut lumen, and a high-tannin preparation taken with or near food will substantially reduce non-haem iron absorption; in a menstruating woman, a child, or anyone being treated for iron-deficiency anaemia that matters. The same chelation interferes with the absorption of many drugs, alkaloids and mineral supplements, so it should not be taken within a couple of hours of other medication. **Second, the liver.** Tannic acid absorbed in quantity is hepatotoxic: the lesson was learnt from medicine, not from herbalism — tannic acid was used for decades as a burn dressing and as a barium-enema additive, and it was abandoned after fatal hepatic necrosis in burn patients and in children. Oral astringent doses of the gall are not the same exposure, but prolonged high-dose use, and any use on a large raw surface, carries the same principle. **Third, the gut.** A strong astringent given by mouth for diarrhoea does not treat an infection; it slows the gut while the cause continues, and in dysentery with fever and blood that is the wrong direction.
Of the specific indications, 五痔下血不止 — continuous bleeding from piles — is the one that must not be treated at home: rectal bleeding is piles in most people and colorectal carcinoma in enough of them that persistent bleeding, change in bowel habit, or bleeding over the age of forty is an indication for colonoscopy. 疳瘡 in a child covers the perioral and perinasal impetigo that is a streptococcal or staphylococcal infection and needs antibiotics.
譯 1.55.2 Source원문
處處有之. 生膚木葉上, 七月結實, 無花. 其實生靑熟黃, 大者如拳, 內多虫. 九月採子暴乾. 一名百虫倉, 一名蚊蛤. 《本草》
Translation영역
It is found everywhere. It grows on the leaves of the bumok; in the seventh month it sets fruit and has no flower. The fruit is green when raw and yellow when ripe, and the large ones are the size of a fist; there are many insects within. In the ninth month the seed is gathered and dried in the sun. One name for it is the hundred-insect granary, and one is munhap.
Clinical note임상 주석
**This is the book describing an insect gall accurately and calling it a fruit anyway, and both halves deserve to be noticed.** 五倍子 is not a fruit of anything: it is the hollow gall induced on the leaf and petiole of Rhus chinensis by the aphid Schlechtendalia chinensis, which lives and breeds inside it. Every observational detail in the passage is right — it grows **on the leaves**, it appears without any flower preceding it, it is hollow, and **there are many insects inside** — and the next passage says to strip those insects out before use. The tradition saw the aphid, named the thing the hundred-insect granary, and still filed it among the fruits; the vernacular gloss calls it 열매, fruit, for the same reason.
一名蚊蛤 is a name worth flagging because it is a trap in the prescriptions. The alias table of this corpus records that the transcription of the 解毒 chapter writes 蚊蛤 where the received text has 文蛤, and that in those places the drug is this gall and not the clam of the same name. The two readings are a single stroke apart and the drugs are unrelated.
譯 1.55.3 Source원문
剝去內虫, 湯洗生用, 入丸藥畧炒. 《入門》
Translation영역
Strip out the insects inside, wash it in hot water and use it raw; for pills, parch it lightly.
Clinical note임상 주석
剝去內虫 and the hot wash are a real cleaning step and they do what they claim: they remove the aphids, their exuviae and their honeydew, which are the part of the crude drug most likely to cause trouble in a sensitive patient. They do nothing to the tannin, which is the pharmacologically active and the potentially hepatotoxic constituent — this is a processing instruction that reduces one hazard and leaves the other untouched, and the difference is worth stating plainly. 畧炒, light parching, does begin to degrade the tannin and reduces astringency, which is presumably why it is specified for pills and not for the raw use.
1.56 Bamboo Silica 天竺黃
譯 1.56.1 Source원문
性寒一云平, 味甘, 無毒. 治中風痰壅, 卒失音不語, 去諸風𤍠, 主小兒驚風天吊客忤癎疾, 療金瘡.
Translation영역
Its nature is cold one says balanced, its flavour sweet, and it is without toxicity. It treats wind-stroke with phlegm congestion and sudden loss of voice and speech, eliminates all wind-heat, governs fright-wind, sky-hanging, visitor-offence and epilepsy in children, and treats metal wounds.
Clinical note임상 주석
天竺黃 is tabashir — the siliceous concretion that forms in the internodes of bamboo culms, chiefly hydrated silica with a little potash and lime. **It can be used in the sense that it is in use**: it is a pharmacopoeial drug in China and this corpus's formulary carries it in eleven prescriptions, most of them paediatric sedatives. Pharmacologically there is very little there — amorphous silica is essentially inert and insoluble — and the honest statement is that the drug is close to a placebo with a mild demulcent action, which is a different thing from being dangerous.
**It is also almost certainly the same material as 竹黃 at 1.18.7 of this chapter, which another part of this work covers**, and the overlap is reported with this file. That entry describes 竹黃 as 卽竹節間黃白者, the yellow-white matter between the bamboo nodes, which is this substance; and this entry's own 一名竹膏, bamboo paste, is the third name for it. 竹黃 has no entry in the herb table and appears in no prescription, so the two headwords are one drug with one of them carrying all the usage.
**The paediatric indications are where this note has to be firm.** 小兒驚風 is the convulsing child, and that is febrile seizure, meningitis, encephalitis, hypoglycaemia, electrolyte derangement or epilepsy. A child who is convulsing needs airway, glucose, temperature and, where there is fever with neck stiffness, rash or altered consciousness, immediate antibiotics for suspected meningococcal or pneumococcal meningitis — delay is what kills and what leaves deafness and brain injury. 卒失音不語 with 中風 is an acute stroke with aphasia, where thrombolysis and thrombectomy are time-limited to hours. There is no version of this entry in which the right action is to reach for a bamboo concretion.
譯 1.56.2 Source원문
生南海邊竹內, 塵沙結成如黃土, 着竹作片. 凉心去𤍠, 小兒病最宜. 一名竹膏. 《本草》
Translation영역
It forms inside the bamboos by the shore of the Southern Sea, dust and sand setting together like yellow earth and clinging to the bamboo in flakes. It cools the heart and removes heat, and is most suitable for children's diseases. One name for it is bamboo paste.
Clinical note임상 주석
塵沙結成如黃土 is a fair account of what the material looks like and a wrong account of where it comes from: it is not dust blown in from outside but silica drawn up by the plant and deposited within the culm, which is why it occurs in sound, unopened internodes. The description explains the commercial problem, though. Tabashir is scarce and the market has long been supplied with manufactured and adulterated material — ground silica, chalk, starch, kaolin — and because the genuine article is itself nearly inert there is no clinical signal to tell a practitioner that the packet is wrong.
譯 1.56.3 Source원문
生天竺國竹內, 如黃土. 《入門》
Translation영역
It forms inside the bamboos of the land of Cheoncheuk, like yellow earth.
Clinical note임상 주석
**The two sources disagree on where the drug comes from and the Bogam prints both without choosing.** 本草 puts it in the bamboos of the southern seacoast; 入門 puts it in 天竺國, India, which is the reading the name itself invites — 天竺黃, the yellow of India. The name is older than either explanation and the Sanskrit original, tvakṣīrā, is the source of the Persian and Arabic tabāshīr from which the European name comes, so the Indian connection is in the word rather than in the botany: the bamboos that yield it grow across South and Southeast Asia. Where the book leaves two readings standing, the note records both and does not pin it to one.
1.57 Buddleia Flower 密蒙花
譯 1.57.1 Source원문
性平一云微寒, 味甘, 無毒. 主靑盲膚瞖, 赤脉多淚, 小兒瘡疹及疳氣攻眼.
Translation영역
Its nature is balanced one says slightly cold, its flavour sweet, and it is without toxicity. It governs blue blindness and membranous screens, red vessels with much tearing, and the sores and rashes of children and gan-qi attacking the eye.
Clinical note임상 주석
密蒙花 is the flower bud of Buddleja officinalis (Buddlejae Flos), a current drug in Chinese practice and an entirely ophthalmic one — every indication in this entry is an eye indication, and the formulary of this site carries it in fourteen prescriptions, nine of which are eye formulas and two of which are named for it. **It can be used**, within the honest limits set out below.
**Those limits are the whole of this note.** 靑盲 is blindness with a clear pupil — in modern terms optic atrophy, glaucomatous or other optic neuropathy, and retinal disease — and no flower treats it; what matters is that glaucoma, the commonest cause of this picture in the old texts, is a disease whose damage is irreversible and whose progression is preventable, so the one useful action is tonometry and a visual field. 膚瞖, membranous screen, is corneal opacity or pterygium, and advanced pterygium and corneal scarring are surgical. 赤脉多淚, red vessels and tearing, is the commonest and most treatable: conjunctivitis, blepharitis, dry eye, allergic eye disease, or nasolacrimal obstruction, all diagnosable in a clinic. 疳氣攻眼 in a child covers the eye disease of severe malnutrition, which is vitamin A deficiency — xerophthalmia and keratomalacia — and that is a medical emergency reversed by high-dose vitamin A within days and blinding within weeks if it is missed. **Of everything in this entry, that is the one the note most needs to say.**
譯 1.57.2 Source원문
花細碎, 數十房成一朶. 冬生春開, 二三月採花暴乾. 《本草》
Translation영역
The flowers are minute and finely divided, some tens of chambers making up a single cluster. It buds in winter and opens in spring; in the second and third months the flowers are gathered and dried in the sun.
Clinical note임상 주석
Accurate: Buddleja officinalis carries dense terminal panicles of very small tubular flowers, and the drug is the panicle gathered in bud, which is what 二三月採 and the winter budding describe. A fully opened, shattered inflorescence is the inferior grade.
譯 1.57.3 Source원문
酒浸一宿候乾, 拌蜜蒸晒用. 《入門》
Translation영역
Steep it in wine for a night, let it dry, then mix it with honey, steam it and sun it for use.
1.58 Croton Seed 巴豆
譯 1.58.1 Source원문
性𤍠一云生溫熟寒, 味辛, 有大毒. 蕩鍊五藏六府, 開通閉塞, 利水穀道, 破癥瘕積聚, 痰癖留飮, 治十種水病, 除鬼疰蠱毒, 去惡瘡息肉, 墮胎, 殺虫魚及斑猫毒, 又殺腹藏虫.
Translation영역
Its nature is hot one says warm raw and cold cooked, its flavour acrid, and it has great toxicity. It scours and smelts the five viscera and six bowels, opens and frees what is blocked and stopped up, and frees the water and grain passages; it breaks concretions, conglomerations and accumulations, phlegm-aggregations and lodged rheum; it treats the ten kinds of water disease, eliminates demon-influx and go-toxin, removes malignant sores and fleshy growths, drops the fetus, kills the toxin of insects and fish and of the blister beetle, and kills worms in the belly and viscera.
Clinical note임상 주석
**巴豆 is the seed of Croton tiglium, and it is the single most dangerous botanical in this part of the chapter. It should not be used.** The book's own 有大毒, great toxicity, is the first warning and it is not the strongest one the entry contains; the passages below supply 最能㵼人, it purges a person most powerfully, 能殺人, it can kill a person, and 不可輕用, it is not to be used lightly. All of them are kept.
The chemistry is the reason. Croton seed and the oil pressed from it carry tigliane diterpene esters — the phorbol esters — of which 12-O-tetradecanoylphorbol-13-acetate, TPA, is the best known compound in the whole of experimental carcinogenesis. **Phorbol esters are the textbook tumour promoters**: they activate protein kinase C, and croton oil is the agent that defined the initiation–promotion model of cancer in the mouse skin assay, where a single sub-carcinogenic dose of an initiator followed by repeated croton oil painting produces papillomas and carcinomas that neither agent alone produces. The same class of activity is what makes the oil a severe irritant and vesicant: a drop on skin produces erythema and then blistering, and contact with the eye can cause corneal injury. By mouth, one or two seeds produce violent watery purging and vomiting with burning of the mouth, throat and gut, and there are recorded human deaths from ingestion; the seed also contains crotin, a toxic ribosome-inactivating lectin of the same kind as ricin and abrin, which adds a cellular toxicity to the irritant one.
**墮胎, dropping the fetus, must be read with that.** This is an abortifacient by violent purgation and mucosal injury, which is a mechanism that endangers the woman at least as much as the pregnancy; procuring abortion with a toxic purgative has killed, and it is a criminal act in many jurisdictions. There is no circumstance in which this entry is a guide to practice there.
**This entry belongs to a group, and the group should be read together.** 1.81 芫花 in the lower part of this chapter — Daphne genkwa — carries daphnane diterpene orthoesters, which are structural kin of the phorbol esters and likewise irritant and tumour-promoting; and 甘遂 and 大戟 in the lower herb chapter are the other two of the tradition's drastic water-expellers, both Euphorbiaceae-type diterpene bearers, both marked 有毒, and both contraindicated in pregnancy. Four drugs, one chemistry, one set of warnings. The conditions they were aimed at — 十種水病, the ten water diseases, meaning ascites and gross oedema — are now treated by establishing the cause and using measured diuresis, paracentesis, albumin and treatment of the underlying liver, heart or kidney disease, under monitoring. Driving the fluid out through the bowel with a mucosal poison is the one approach guaranteed to add harm.
譯 1.58.2 Source원문
出巴蜀, 形似大豆, 最能㵼人. 新者佳, 得火良.
Translation영역
It comes out of Ba and Shu; in shape it is like a large bean, and it purges a person most powerfully. The fresh kind is good, and it is improved by fire.
譯 1.58.3 Source원문
其中一名江子, 顆小似棗核兩頭尖者, 勿用, 能殺人. 《本草》
Translation영역
Among them is one called gangja; the small ones, like a jujube stone and pointed at both ends, are not to be used — they can kill a person.
Clinical note임상 주석
**能殺人 — they can kill a person — is the book's own second lethal warning in this one section, and like 閉口者殺人 at 1.42 it is kept exactly as printed.** What it points at is a sorting rule within the drug: the full, rounded seeds of Croton tiglium against small, pointed ones that the tradition calls 江子 and rejects. Whether those are immature seeds of the same species, or the seed of a related Croton, cannot be settled from the text, and nothing here should be read as implying that the accepted seeds are safe. They are not; the book has just said so in the first passage.
譯 1.58.4 Source원문
斬關奪門之將, 不可輕用. 若急治, 爲水穀道路之劑, 去皮心膜油, 生用; 若緩治, 爲消堅磨積之劑, 換水煮五次, 或炒烟盡色紫黑, 硏用. 可以通腸, 可以止泄. 《湯液》
Translation영역
It is a general who hacks through the barrier and seizes the gate, and it is not to be used lightly. If the treatment is urgent, it serves as a medicine for the water and grain passages: remove the husk, the core, the membrane and the oil, and use it raw. If the treatment is to be slow, it serves as a medicine that dissolves what is hard and grinds down accumulation: boil it in five changes of water, or parch it until the smoke is gone and the colour is purple-black, and grind it for use. It can free the bowel, and it can check diarrhoea.
Clinical note임상 주석
**This is the processing passage, and the honest thing to say about it is which parts of it work and which do not.**
*What it reduces.* 去油, removing the oil, is the serious step and it is not empty: the phorbol esters are carried in the fixed oil, and defatting removes the bulk of them along with the bulk of the irritant purgative action. This is exactly the principle on which the modern processed article is made — 巴豆霜 is the defatted, diluted powder, and the Chinese Pharmacopoeia specifies it by residual fat content precisely because the potency tracks the oil. 去皮心膜 removes the seed coat and the embryo, which concentrate part of the toxin. Boiling in five changes of water leaches water-soluble material and, more importantly, **destroys crotin**, which is a protein toxin and heat-labile — this is a real detoxification of one of the two poisons. Parching 炒烟盡色紫黑, until the smoke stops and the colour turns purple-black, takes the material well past charring, and prolonged dry heat does degrade diterpene esters substantially.
*What it does not reduce.* None of it makes the drug safe. Defatting is a partial removal, not an elimination, and the standardised modern preparation is still a potent irritant purgative with a narrow margin — which is why 巴豆霜 carries a maximum dose measured in tenths of a gram and is contraindicated in pregnancy, in the frail and in children. **No processing step described here removes the tumour-promoting activity as a class concern**, and repeated mucosal application of a promoter is precisely the exposure pattern that the mouse skin model was built on. The 可以止泄, it can check diarrhoea, in the last clause is the paradox of a drug used at low dose after a mucosal insult, and it is not a reason to try it.
*What survives as knowledge.* The passage shows a tradition that understood the dose–route relationship clearly — raw and defatted for a fast purge, boiled or charred for slow dissolving — and that attached a warning to the drug rather than to the patient. 斬關奪門之將, the general who hacks through the gate, is a metaphor for a drug of last resort. The last resorts available now are better.
譯 1.58.5 Translation영역
Whenever it is used, the husk and the core and the membrane are removed.
1.59 Gleditsia Pod 皂莢
`주엽나모여름` 은 `주엽나모`(주엽나무) + `여름`(열매)이다. `주엽나무` 는 지금 `쥐엄나무`ㆍ`주엽나무` 로 남아 *Gleditsia japonica* 를 가리키므로 `주엽나무 열매` 로 이어진다. 향명이 한자 표제어와 같은 나무를 가리키고, 책이 마지막 구절에서 `一名皂角` 이라 적어 **스스로** 표의 `jogak 皂角` 과의 짝을 대어 주므로(별칭표도 이미 `皂莢 → jogak` 을 「같은 쥐엄나무 열매」로 적어 두었다) 고리에 흔들림이 없다.
譯 1.59.1 Source원문
性溫, 味辛醎, 有小毒. 通關節, 除頭風, 利九竅, 消痰涎, 止咳嗽, 療脹滿, 破堅癥, 能墮胎, 治中風口噤, 殺勞虫.
Translation영역
Its nature is warm, its flavour acrid and salty, and it is slightly toxic. It frees the joints, eliminates head wind, frees the nine orifices, disperses phlegm-drool, checks coughing, treats distension and fullness, breaks hard concretions, is able to drop the fetus, treats wind-stroke with clenched jaw, and kills the taxation worm.
Clinical note임상 주석
皂莢 is the pod of Gleditsia japonica and G. sinensis, and it is a drug still in use — Gleditsiae Fructus — with a hundred and thirty-four prescriptions in this corpus's formulary under the name 皂角. It is not in the same class of danger as 巴豆, but it is not a mild drug either, and three things have to be said about it.
**First, the saponins.** The pod's characteristic constituents are triterpene saponins (gleditsia saponins), and they are the explanation for nearly everything in this entry: the foaming, detergent property the book itself records two passages below (可爲沐湯去垢), the mucosal irritancy that produces the sneeze, and the expectorant action on phlegm. Saponins **lyse red blood cells** — they are haemolytic in direct contact with blood, which is a standard laboratory property of the class — so they are harmless enough on skin and in the gut lumen in small amounts and harmful if they reach the circulation in quantity. **Oral overdose of gleditsia pod has caused poisoning and death**, with vomiting, diarrhoea, haemolysis, methaemoglobinaemia and renal failure reported; the margin between an expectorant dose and a toxic one is not wide, and the book's 有小毒 understates it.
**Second, 能墮胎.** This is an abortifacient claim, and like the one at 1.52 and 1.58 it functions as a contraindication: **not in pregnancy.**
**Third, the nasal route.** 利九竅, freeing the nine orifices, and 治中風口噤, treating wind-stroke with clenched jaw, are the indications behind the classical practice of blowing the powdered pod into the nose to provoke a sneeze. The formulary carries that practice directly in 通關散 — 細辛ㆍ皂角ㆍ薄荷ㆍ雄黃 各一錢, 吹入鼻中 — and the formula's own line is the thing to notice: 有嚏可治, 無嚏不可治, if there is a sneeze the patient can be treated, if not he cannot. That is being used as a prognostic test on an unconscious patient. **In modern terms this is an acute stroke or another cause of sudden coma, and the intervention is harmful on two counts**: it delays the one thing that changes the outcome, which is imaging and reperfusion within hours, and blowing a powder into the airway of a patient who cannot protect it risks aspiration. The formula's own sign also contains 雄黃, realgar, an arsenic sulphide.
殺勞虫, killing the taxation worm, is the old aetiology of consumption — tuberculosis — which is a curable bacterial infection treated with a six-month four-drug regimen, and a sneezing powder does nothing for it.
譯 1.59.2 Source원문
在處有之. 樹高, 枝間生大刺. 九月十月採莢陰乾.
Translation영역
It is found everywhere. The tree is tall, and great thorns grow out among the branches. In the ninth and tenth months the pods are gathered and dried in the shade.
譯 1.59.3 Source원문
有長皂莢ㆍ猪牙皂莢二種. 今醫家作踈風氣丸散, 多用長皂莢; 治齒及取積藥, 多用猪牙皂莢. 大抵性味不相遠.
Translation영역
There are two kinds, the long gleditsia pod and the pig's-tooth gleditsia pod. Physicians nowadays, in making pills and powders to dredge the wind qi, mostly use the long pod; for treating the teeth and for medicines that draw out accumulation they mostly use the pig's-tooth pod. On the whole their nature and flavour are not far apart.
Clinical note임상 주석
The two grades are real and the distinction is still made in the trade. The long pod is the normal fertile fruit of Gleditsia, and 猪牙皂莢 — pig's-tooth gleditsia, 저아조각 — is the small, curved, often seedless abortive pod, which is more concentrated in saponin per weight. The alias table of this corpus already records 猪牙皂角 and 大皂角 and 肥皂角 against the same entry, so the grades are collapsed into one drug id, which is defensible given the book's own 性味不相遠.
譯 1.59.4 Source원문
不蛀而肥者佳, 可爲沐湯去垢甚妙. 《本草》
Translation영역
The ones that are not worm-eaten and are plump are good, and it makes a wash that removes dirt most admirably.
Clinical note임상 주석
**可爲沐湯去垢 is the book stating the drug's chemistry without knowing it.** A plant that lathers and removes grease is a saponin plant — that is what the word means — and the soap-pod has been used as soap across East Asia, which is also why the one entirely benign use in this section is the external one at 1.59.3. Everything said above about haemolysis follows from the same molecules that do the washing.
譯 1.59.5 Source원문
引入厥陰經藥也. 去皮及子, 酥灸或蜜灸用. 《入門》
Translation영역
It is a drug that leads into the gyeorum channel. Remove the skin and the seeds, and roast it with butter or with honey for use.
Clinical note임상 주석
去皮及子, removing the skin and the seeds, is worth noting against the next entry: the seeds this passage orders discarded are 1.59.1, which stands immediately below as a drug in its own right. The same two-step — the parent throws a part away and the chapter then makes that part a headword — happens at 1.42 with 椒目, and it is one of the recurring shapes of this chapter.
譯 1.59.6 Source원문
鐵碪以鍜金銀, 雖千百年不壞; 以槌皂莢則卽碎. 一名皂角. 《丹心》
Translation영역
An iron anvil used for forging gold and silver will not fail in a thousand years; but pound gleditsia pods on it and it will shatter at once. One name for it is jogak.
Clinical note임상 주석
A piece of workshop lore offered as evidence of the drug's dissolving power, and the inference is doctrine by analogy of exactly the kind the 丹溪心法 likes: if it destroys iron it will destroy a hard mass in the body. There is no metallurgical fact behind it — a saponin does not attack iron — and the interest of the passage is that it shows how a reputation for 破堅癥, breaking hard concretions, was built. 一名皂角 at the end is the book supplying the name under which the drug appears in every prescription in the formulary, and it is the anchor for this entry's drug link.
1.59.1 Gleditsia Seed 皂莢子
譯 1.59.1.1 Source원문
踈導五藏風𤍠壅滯, 又入治肺藥, 療大腸風秘. 炮核取中心嚼餌, 治膈痰呑酸. 《本草》
Translation영역
It dredges and conducts away wind-heat congestion and stagnation in the five viscera, and it also goes into medicines that treat the lung; it treats wind-constipation of the large intestine. Roast the kernel, take the centre and chew it as a morsel: it treats phlegm in the diaphragm and acid swallowing.
Clinical note임상 주석
This is the part the parent entry orders thrown away, standing here as a drug of its own — the same shape as 椒目 at 1.42.1. The seed is the same saponin-bearing material as the pod with a hard coat around it, and the roasting-and-chewing route in the second half means the saponin is in contact with oral and oesophageal mucosa, which is where a saponin is most irritant.
**呑酸, acid swallowing, is the indication a modern reader will recognise**: it is gastro-oesophageal reflux, and it matters because the picture has alarm features that must not be chewed over. Difficulty or pain on swallowing, vomiting, weight loss, anaemia or new reflux in an older patient is an indication for endoscopy, since oesophageal and gastric carcinoma present this way; and ordinary reflux responds to a proton pump inhibitor. 大腸風秘, wind-constipation, is constipation, where the first questions are about fibre, fluid, drugs and thyroid function, and where new constipation with bleeding or weight loss again means colonoscopy.
In the formulary, the only place the seed appears as a weighed ingredient under its own name is 龍骨膏, where 皂角子 五箇, 燒存性 is recorded against this same drug id with the preparation named — so the parent entry already carries the seed's one use, and the seed needs no separate id. The six other appearances of 皂角子 in the formulary are the size-comparison 如皂角子大, pills the size of a gleditsia seed, which is a measure and not an ingredient.
1.59.2 Gleditsia Thorn 皂角刺
譯 1.59.2.1 Source원문
一名天丁. 凢癕疽未破者能開竅, 已破者能引藥達瘡處, 乃諸惡瘡及癘風要藥也. 《入門》
Translation영역
One name for it is cheonjeong, the heavenly nail. Whenever a welling abscess or a flat abscess has not yet burst it is able to open an orifice in it, and when it has burst it is able to lead the medicine through to the place of the sore; it is thus the essential drug for all malignant sores and for leprosy.
Clinical note임상 주석
The thorn of Gleditsia, jogakja, and a current drug. The doctrine is transparently morphological — a spine is the drug that pierces what is closed and shows the medicine the way in — and it is the same reasoning as the hooked and straight thorns of 1.47 白棘 twelve entries above.
**Two modern answers are needed.** An abscess that has not yet burst is treated by incision and drainage, which is a procedure and not a drug; a drug that is believed to open it instead is a reason for delay, and a deep abscess that is left to point can spread to fascia and blood. Fever, spreading redness, severe pain out of proportion, or crepitus means necrotising infection and is a surgical emergency. And 癘風 is leprosy, which is Hansen's disease, a curable mycobacterial infection treated with multidrug therapy under WHO regimens; the nerve damage that disables is the part that becomes irreversible while the diagnosis is delayed.
1.59.3 Demon Gleditsia 鬼皂莢
譯 1.59.3.1 Source원문
生澤畔, 如皂莢, 高一二尺. 可作浴湯, 去風瘡疥癬衣垢, 又沐頭長髮. 《本草》
Translation영역
It grows at the edges of marshes, resembling the gleditsia, and is one or two feet high. It can be made into a bath: it removes wind-sores, scabies, ringworm and the grime of clothes, and washing the head with it makes the hair grow.
Clinical note임상 주석
**The book says plainly that this is a different plant, not a part of the gleditsia, and the words that say so are 如皂莢 and 高一二尺.** A tree the parent entry calls 樹高, tall, cannot be the thing described here as one or two feet high and growing at a marsh edge; 如, resembling, is the book's own signal that it is working by likeness. So this subnumber is a case of a leaf that is a separate plant rather than a part of its parent — the same shape as 赤檉 under 柳花 at 1.61.4, and as 柘木 under 桑根白皮 and 樟腦 under 龍腦香 elsewhere in this chapter.
**What plant it is cannot be settled, and no species is asserted here.** Later Chinese materia medica attach the name 鬼皂莢 to more than one thing, and a low marsh-side plant used as a soap could be any of several saponin-bearing herbs. Inventing a binomial for it would be the worst kind of error this work can make, so the entry keeps the name, the habitat, the height, the use and the source, and leaves the drug link empty. It is in no prescription in the formulary under this name.
The use itself is the one benign thing in this group: an external wash. 去衣垢, removing the grime of clothes, is the saponin again, and the same molecule that lathers the laundry is the one that would be dangerous taken by mouth. 沐頭長髮, washing the head to make the hair grow, is a shampoo and not a treatment for hair loss — androgenetic alopecia responds to topical minoxidil and to oral 5-alpha-reductase inhibitors, and sudden patchy or scarring hair loss needs a diagnosis.
1.60 Chebula 訶子
譯 1.60.1 Source원문
性溫, 味苦一云酸澁, 無毒. 消痰下氣, 治肺氣喘急, 霍亂奔豚, 腎氣, 中㵼痢, 腸風㵼血, 崩中帶下, 破結氣, 心腹脹滿, 消食開胃, 療膈氣安胎.
Translation영역
Its nature is warm, its flavour bitter one says sour and astringent, and it is without toxicity. It disperses phlegm and makes the qi descend; it treats lung qi with hasty panting, sudden turmoil and running piglet, kidney qi, and checks diarrhoea and dysentery; it treats intestinal wind with bleeding, flooding and vaginal discharge, breaks bound qi, treats distension and fullness of the heart and abdomen, disperses food and opens the stomach, treats diaphragm qi and quiets the fetus.
Clinical note임상 주석
訶子 is the fruit of Terminalia chebula, harītakī, and it is both a food and a current drug. **It can be used**: it stands in Korean and Chinese practice as 가자 / 訶子, it is the first of the three fruits of the Ayurvedic triphala, and the formulary of this site carries it in sixty-four prescriptions. Nothing in the modern record argues against it at ordinary doses.
Its chemistry is tannin — chebulagic and chebulinic acids and related hydrolysable tannins, with up to a third of the dry fruit as tannin in some material — so the iron and drug chelation caution given in full at 1.55 applies here too, and more practically, because this is a drug taken by mouth over weeks rather than applied to a sore. **Keep this fruit and iron supplements and other oral medication a couple of hours apart.** A second caution is specific to the triphala context: the fruit has a laxative action at higher doses, and it should not be combined blindly with other laxatives.
療膈氣安胎 — treating diaphragm qi and quieting the fetus — is the kind of claim this work does not endorse: nausea and vomiting of pregnancy is managed with established antiemetics, and hyperemesis with dehydration or ketonuria needs admission.
譯 1.60.2 Source원문
子似梔子, 皮肉相着, 七八月實熟時採. 六稜黑色肉厚者良. 一名訶梨勒.
Translation영역
The fruit resembles the gardenia, its skin and flesh adhering together, and it is gathered in the seventh and eighth months when the fruit is ripe. The ones with six ridges, black in colour and thick in flesh, are good. One name for it is gari-rek.
Clinical note임상 주석
六稜, six ridges, is the standing grading mark and it is a real feature: the chebula fruit is longitudinally five- or six-ribbed, and 肉厚, thick-fleshed, excludes the thin shrivelled fruit that is mostly stone. 一名訶梨勒 is the Sanskrit harītakī transcribed through Chinese, which is the surest sign of the drug's route — it came into East Asian medicine from India, and the 唐 mark on this entry records that it had to be bought.
譯 1.60.3 Source원문
其子未熟時風飄墮者, 謂之隨風子, 暴乾收之. 彼人尤珎貴, 益小者益佳. 《本草》
Translation영역
Those fruits that the wind blows down while still unripe are called wind-borne fruits; they are dried in the sun and stored. The people there prize them especially, and the smaller they are the finer they are held to be.
Clinical note임상 주석
隨風子 is the small immature fruit, and it is still a separate grade in the Indian trade — bāla harītakī, the child chebula, picked small and valued for a stronger purgative action. The preference the passage records is therefore real and it has a consequence worth knowing: the small unripe grade is the more laxative one, so a prescription written for the ordinary fruit and filled with this grade will purge more than intended.
譯 1.60.4 Source원문
此物能澁腸而又泄氣, 盖其味苦澁故爾. 《湯液》
Translation영역
This thing is able to make the bowel astringent and yet it also discharges the qi, and that is because its flavour is bitter and astringent.
Clinical note임상 주석
**The paradox the passage notices is genuine and the chemistry explains it.** The astringency is the hydrolysable tannin, which precipitates mucosal protein and slows the gut; the discharging action is dose-dependent and belongs to the same fruit — chebula is a recognised mild laxative in quantity. So one fruit does astringe at a low dose and loosen at a high one, which is exactly what 能澁腸而又泄氣 says, and the tradition reaching that observation from the taste alone is a fair piece of reasoning.
譯 1.60.5 Source원문
訶子, 以水濕麪包裹煨熟, 或酒浸蒸, 並去核取肉, 焙乾用. 《入門》
Translation영역
Chebula is wrapped in dough moistened with water and roasted in the embers until done, or else steeped in wine and steamed; in either case the stone is removed, the flesh is taken, and it is dried over a fire for use.
Clinical note임상 주석
去核取肉, removing the stone and taking the flesh, is the step that matters, because the flesh is where the tannin is; the alias table of this corpus already records 訶子肉 and 訶子皮 as parts of this entry, which is the formulary's way of carrying the same distinction. 煨, roasting wrapped in damp dough in hot ash, is the standard operation for moderating a drug, and in this case it reduces the astringency and the laxative edge together.
1.61 Willow Catkin 柳花
버들가야지 버들강아지 willow catkin
`버들가야지` 는 `버들`(버드나무) + `가야지` 다. `가야지 → 강아지` 로 ㅇ 이 끼어든 꼴이고, `버들강아지`ㆍ`버들개지` 는 지금도 버드나무의 꽃차례를 가리키는 우리말 이름이므로 또렷하게 이어진다. 향명이 **부위까지** 집어 주어 본문의 `柳花卽初發時黃蘂也`(柳花는 처음 필 때의 누런 꽃술이다)와 맞물린다 — 곧 이 절의 약은 껍질이 아니라 꽃차례다.
譯 1.61.1 Source원문
性寒, 味苦, 無毒. 主風水黃疸, 面𤍠黑痂疥惡瘡, 金瘡止血, 治濕痺.
Translation영역
Its nature is cold, its flavour bitter, and it is without toxicity. It governs wind-water and jaundice, heat in the face, black scabs, scabies and malignant sores; it checks bleeding in metal wounds and treats damp numb impediment.
Clinical note임상 주석
**The drug here is the catkin, not the bark, and that distinction governs the whole note.** Salix bark is the famous salicin plant — the source of salicylic acid and so of the chemistry behind aspirin — and the bark is what modern herbal medicine uses and what the European monographs cover. The catkin is a different part with a much smaller salicin content, and no part of this entry should be read as a licence for willow-bark dosing.
Where any salicylate exposure is in question, three cautions carry over: **salicylates should not be given to a child or adolescent with a viral illness, because of Reye's syndrome**; they are avoided in salicylate allergy and in aspirin-exacerbated respiratory disease; and they add to the bleeding risk of anticoagulants and antiplatelets, which cuts across the 止血 claim in this very sentence.
黃疸, jaundice, is the indication to answer plainly. Jaundice is never a diagnosis: it is viral hepatitis, alcohol-related or drug-induced liver injury, gallstone or malignant biliary obstruction, or haemolysis, and painless jaundice with weight loss in an older patient is pancreatic or biliary cancer until imaging says otherwise. It needs blood tests and an ultrasound on the day it is noticed. 風水 is the oedema of nephritic and nephrotic illness; facial oedema with frothy urine is a renal diagnosis.
柳花 has no entry in this corpus's herb table and appears in no prescription under that name or under 柳絮; recording the name, the Korean gloss, the natures and the source is the whole of this entry's job.
譯 1.61.2 Source원문
柳花, 卽初發時黃蘂也. 及其花乾, 絮方出, 謂之柳絮, 收之貼灸瘡, 及爲裀褥. 子乃飛絮, 絮之下連小黑子, 因風而起, 其子極細, 入池塘化爲浮萍. 《本草》
Translation영역
Willow flower is the yellow anthers at the time of first opening. When the flower has dried, the floss then comes out, and this is called willow floss; it is collected to dress moxibustion sores and to stuff mattresses and cushions. The seed is the flying floss, and beneath the floss small black seeds are attached, which rise on the wind; the seeds are extremely fine, and falling into a pond they turn into duckweed.
Clinical note임상 주석
**柳花卽初發時黃蘂也 is the book explaining its own headword, and the explanation decides what the drug is** — the catkin in male anther-stage, not the later floss, which the same passage names separately as 柳絮. The rest of the botany is accurate and observant: the floss is the seed hair, the tiny black seeds really are attached at its base, and willow seed really is carried on the wind in enormous quantity.
**入池塘化爲浮萍, falling into a pond they turn into duckweed, is false, and it is the kind of falsehood worth marking rather than passing over.** Duckweed (浮萍, Lemna and Spirodela) is an unrelated flowering plant that reproduces vegetatively and appears on still water in days; willow seed is viable for a week or two and germinates on wet mud, not into a floating frond. This is spontaneous-generation reasoning of the same family as the belief that rotting matter breeds maggots, and the Bogam prints it as natural history. 浮萍 is itself a headword in the lower herb chapter, so the two entries stand in the same work with a false descent asserted between them.
貼灸瘡, dressing moxibustion sores with the floss, is a plausible use: willow floss is a clean, fine, absorbent fibre and it would serve as lint. Stuffing mattresses with it is not medicine.
譯 1.61.3 Source원문
楊與柳不相似. 楊葉圓闊而赤, 枝條短硬; 柳葉狹長靑綠, 枝條長軟. 《本草》
Translation영역
The poplar and the willow are not alike. The poplar's leaf is round and broad and reddish and its twigs are short and stiff; the willow's leaf is narrow and long and blue-green and its twigs are long and supple.
Clinical note임상 주석
**A genuine and useful species separation, and it is right.** Populus has broad, deltoid or orbicular leaves with reddish petioles and short rigid shoots; Salix has narrow lanceolate leaves and long flexible shoots. The distinction matters within this chapter, which carries 1.68 白楊樹皮, white poplar bark, as a separate headword, and it matters for the drug, since the two genera do not have the same chemistry — the salicin content on which willow's reputation rests is much higher in Salix. The passage is also the one that makes 1.61.4 赤檉 difficult, since that leaf is described there as a 小楊, a small poplar, while the name 檉 belongs to a plant that is neither.
1.61.1 Willow Twig 枝
譯 1.61.1.1 Source원문
主齒痛, 風𤍠腫痒. 可作浴湯膏藥. 牙齒病爲最要之藥. 《本草》
Translation영역
It governs toothache and wind-heat swelling and itching. It can be made into a bath or into a paste medicine. For diseases of the teeth it is the most essential of drugs.
Clinical note임상 주석
This leaf is linked to the willow-twig entry of this corpus's herb table, which stands there under the fuller name 柳枝梢, the willow twig tip, with 柳枝 already recorded against it as a variant; the formulary uses it in six prescriptions and writes it 柳枝 in five of them. The parent headword 柳花 has no entry in the table, so this subnumber carries no `part_of` — the page template links a subnumber to its parent section by number.
The dental indication is the one place where a salicylate-bearing bark has a plausible mechanism: chewing willow twig delivers salicin, which is the same lineage as aspirin, and relief of toothache is analgesia. **It is analgesia and nothing else.** Toothache means caries, pulpitis, a cracked tooth or an abscess, all of which progress; a dental abscess spreading into the submandibular space or the neck threatens the airway and is an emergency. The salicylate cautions in the parent note apply, and in particular willow preparations should not be given to children with a febrile viral illness.
1.61.2 Worm Dust from Within the Wood 木中蟲屑
譯 1.61.2.1 Translation영역
It governs wind-itching and hidden papules.
Clinical note임상 주석
The frass — the bored dust and droppings — that wood-boring insect larvae leave inside a willow trunk. It is not a plant part at all but the residue of an animal working on wood, which is why it is worth marking: this chapter carries a small number of such items, 1.17.6 桑蠹虫 among them.
**There is no modern use and there is a specific reason not to look for one.** Insect frass and wood dust are potent inhalant and contact allergens, and the condition this is prescribed for — 癮疹, urticaria, and wind-itching — is the condition such a dust would be most likely to cause. Hardwood dust is also an IARC Group 1 carcinogen by inhalation, for nasal and sinonasal cancer. Urticaria is treated with antihistamines, with escalation for the chronic form, and acute urticaria with airway or circulatory involvement is anaphylaxis.
1.61.3 Willow Leaf 葉
譯 1.61.3.1 Source원문
主丁瘡, 湯火瘡毒入腹𤍠悶, 治傳尸骨蒸勞, 下水氣.
Translation영역
It governs nail-sores, and scald and burn sores whose toxin has entered the belly with heat and oppression; it treats corpse-transmitted bone-steaming taxation, and brings down water qi.
Clinical note임상 주석
**湯火瘡毒入腹𤍠悶 — a scald whose toxin has entered the belly with heat and oppression — is a recognisable and dangerous picture under an old name.** A burn large enough to produce systemic illness is producing hypovolaemic shock, and later sepsis, and the modern treatment is fluid resuscitation calculated on the burned surface area, analgesia, and referral to a burns unit. Burns to the face or airway, circumferential burns, and burns in a child are urgent on sight. Nothing applied to the skin addresses what the sentence describes.
丁瘡 (釘瘡), the nail-sore, is a furuncle or a carbuncle, and on the face, especially around the nose and upper lip, it is the lesion the old texts rightly feared because of spread into the cavernous sinus; it is treated with antibiotics and drainage. 傳尸骨蒸勞 is consumption — tuberculosis — which is curable with standard chemotherapy and which the tradition could only name.
譯 1.61.3.2 Source원문
煎膏續筋骨長肉, 止牙痛. 《本草》
Translation영역
Decocted into a paste it knits sinew and bone and makes flesh grow, and it checks toothache.
1.61.4 Red Tamarisk 赤檉
譯 1.61.4.1 Source원문
一名雨師. 今河邊小楊, 莖赤葉細, 所謂赤柳. 主疥癬及一切惡瘡. 《本草》
Translation영역
One name for it is the rain-master. It is what is now the small poplar of the riverbanks, with red stems and fine leaves, the so-called red willow. It governs scabies and ringworm and every kind of malignant sore.
Clinical note임상 주석
**This subnumber is a leaf that is a different tree, not a part of the willow above it** — the second such in my part of the chapter, with 1.59.3 鬼皂莢. The book files it under 柳花 because it calls it a 赤柳, a red willow, and describes it as a riverside 小楊, a small poplar; so within four words it has assigned the plant to two genera, neither of which is likely to be right.
The graph 檉 is the standard character for the tamarisk in Chinese materia medica, where 檉柳 and 西河柳 are Tamarix chinensis, 위성류 — a riverside shrub with reddish twigs and minute scale-like leaves, which is exactly 莖赤葉細, red-stemmed and fine-leaved, and which looks from a distance like a small feathery willow. That reading fits every word of the description except the two genus names, and 一名雨師, the rain-master, is also a recorded name for the tamarisk, from the belief that it flowers before rain. **I take the plant to be Tamarix and say so as a reading rather than a certainty**, since the book's own two comparisons point elsewhere and nothing here settles it beyond the graph.
A note on the romanization: the Korean reading of 檉 is given as both 정 and 성 in the hanja dictionaries, and I have followed 정. The drug has no entry in this corpus's herb table, appears in no prescription under 赤檉 or 檉, and is used only externally here.
Of the indications, 疥, scabies, is the one with a definite modern answer, and it is worth giving because scabies is still common and still misdiagnosed as eczema: it is an infestation with Sarcoptes scabiei, treated with topical permethrin or oral ivermectin, with all household contacts treated at the same time and bedding laundered. 癬, ringworm, is a dermatophyte infection and needs an antifungal, topical or, for nail and scalp disease, oral.
1.62 Chinaberry Fruit 練實
譯 1.62.1 Source원문
性寒, 味苦, 無毒. 主溫病傷寒大𤍠煩狂, 利水道, 殺三虫疥瘍.
Translation영역
Its nature is cold, its flavour bitter, and it is without toxicity. It governs warm disease and cold damage with great heat, vexation and mania; it promotes the water passages and kills the three worms and treats scabby ulcers.
Clinical note임상 주석
**無毒, without toxicity, is the single most misleading statement in my part of this chapter, and the entry's own subnumber contradicts it two passages later.** 練實 is the fruit of Melia azedarach — and in Chinese pharmacopoeial use of Melia toosendan — the chinaberry, 멀구슬나무, and **the fruit is poisonous to people.** The toxic principles are limonoid tetranortriterpenoids, toosendanin chief among them, with the group loosely called meliatoxins. **Children have died from eating the berries**, which are attractive, yellow and abundant, and the published picture of chinaberry poisoning is vomiting and diarrhoea, abdominal pain, then ataxia, weakness, respiratory distress, convulsions and in the fatal cases cardiorespiratory failure; livestock, pigs especially, are poisoned the same way. Toosendanin itself is a potent presynaptic blocker at the neuromuscular junction and is hepatotoxic, and the current Chinese Pharmacopoeia carries 川楝子 with a dose limit and an explicit warning about liver injury on overdose or prolonged use.
**So: this drug is in current use, as 川楝子, and it is one that needs a dose ceiling, a short course, liver monitoring where it is used at all, and absolute avoidance in children and in pregnancy.** It is not in the 巴豆 class of things that should simply not be used, but the book's 無毒 must not be carried forward. The formulary of this site uses it in forty-nine prescriptions, mostly for 疝氣 and lower abdominal and genital pain, which is the indication the 湯液 passage below gives.
殺三虫, killing the three worms, is the anthelmintic use, and it belongs properly to the root bark at 1.62.1, where the margin between the worming dose and the poisoning dose is the whole subject.
譯 1.62.2 Source원문
一名金鈴子, 一名川練子, 一名苦練子. 木高丈餘, 葉密如槐而長, 三四月開花紅紫色, 芬香滿庭, 實如彈丸, 生靑熟黃. 十二月採實. 《本草》
Translation영역
One name for it is geumryeongja, the golden bell fruit; one is cheollyeonja; and one is goryeonja. The tree is more than ten feet high; its leaves are dense like the pagoda tree's but longer; in the third and fourth months it opens red-purple flowers whose fragrance fills the courtyard; the fruit is like a bullet, green when raw and yellow when ripe. In the twelfth month the fruit is gathered.
Clinical note임상 주석
The botany is exact for Melia azedarach: a tree of modest height with long bipinnate leaves, lilac-purple panicles with a strong sweet scent in late spring, and round drupes that turn from green to a pale yellow and hang on the bare tree through winter — which is why the gathering is in the twelfth month. 金鈴子, the golden bell, is the winter fruit.
**The three names in this one line matter for the drug table.** This corpus carries 川楝子 and 苦練子 as **two separate entries**, both registered to this chapter, both Melia fruit; the book says here in its own words that they are three names for one thing, and 金鈴子 is already recorded in the alias table against 川楝子. The prescriptions divide forty-nine to one in favour of 川楝子, so this headword is linked there and the near-duplicate entry is reported with this file rather than altered.
譯 1.62.3 Source원문
入心經, 主上下部腹痛及諸疝. 《湯液》
Translation영역
It enters the heart channel and governs abdominal pain in the upper and lower parts and all kinds of san.
Clinical note임상 주석
諸疝 is the classical bundle for pain in the lower abdomen, groin and genitals, and it covers inguinal hernia, testicular and epididymal disease, and renal colic. **Two of those are emergencies and will not wait for a decoction**: a tender, irreducible hernia is strangulated bowel, and sudden severe testicular pain, especially in an adolescent, is torsion, which must be operated on within hours or the testis is lost. This is the indication the drug is most used for in the formulary, and it is the one where the diagnostic step matters most.
譯 1.62.4 Source원문
酒浸濕蒸軟, 剝取肉, 去皮核, 晒乾用. 《入門》
Translation영역
Steep it in wine, steam it damp until soft, peel off and take the flesh, discard the skin and the stone, and sun-dry it for use.
Clinical note임상 주석
去皮核, discarding the skin and the stone, is a real reduction: in Melia fruit the limonoids are concentrated in the seed and the fibrous endocarp more than in the pulp, so taking the flesh alone lowers the toxic load. The alias table of this corpus already records 川楝肉 and 川練子肉 as parts, which is the formulary carrying the same step. It is a reduction and not a removal, and the dose ceiling in the note above still applies.
1.62.1 Chinaberry Root Bark 根
譯 1.62.1.1 Source원문
性微寒, 味苦, 微毒. 殺諸虫, 利大腸.
Translation영역
Its nature is slightly cold, its flavour bitter, and it is slightly toxic. It kills worms of all kinds and frees the large intestine.
Clinical note임상 주석
**This is 苦楝根皮, chinaberry root bark, and the whole of this section is one problem: the worming dose and the poisoning dose are close together.**
The drug was one of East Asia's standard remedies for roundworm, and it works — toosendanin and the related limonoids paralyse the worm. They are also what poison the patient. **Human poisonings with this root bark are documented and have been fatal**, with the clinical picture of vomiting, abdominal pain, dizziness, then hepatic injury with raised transaminases and jaundice, respiratory depression from the neuromuscular block, and in severe cases coma and cardiorespiratory arrest; hepatotoxicity is the effect that appears at the lower end and the one that catches a patient taking a course rather than a single dose. Children, who were the usual recipients because they were the ones with worms, are the most vulnerable, and the dose that worms a child is not far below the dose that harms one.
**There is no reason to accept that margin now.** Ascariasis, the condition this is for, is cured by a single dose of albendazole or mebendazole, with pyrantel and ivermectin as alternatives; the drugs are cheap, are given once, and have a safety record this bark cannot approach. Heavy ascaris burdens causing intestinal or biliary obstruction need surgical or endoscopic assessment, and this is exactly the circumstance in which a paralytic anthelmintic can make an obstruction worse.
The formulary of this site carries the root bark in sixteen prescriptions, all of them worming formulas — 化蟲丸, 安蟲散, 追蟲丸 and their kin — which is a consistent record and a reason to translate the section carefully rather than a reason to use it.
譯 1.62.1.2 Source원문
有雌雄. 雄者根赤無子, 有大毒, 服之令人吐不止; 雌者根白有子, 微毒, 藥用當取雌者. 《本草》
Translation영역
There are male and female. The male has a red root and bears no fruit, and it has great toxicity: taken, it makes a person vomit without stopping. The female has a white root and bears fruit, and is slightly toxic; for medicinal use the female should be taken.
Clinical note임상 주석
**This is the book contradicting its own parent entry, and the contradiction is the most valuable thing in the section.** Two passages above, the fruit was 無毒, without toxicity. Here the root of the same tree is 有大毒 in one form and 微毒 in the other, and the great toxicity is described with a specific clinical sign — 服之令人吐不止, taken, it makes a person vomit without stopping — which is the first symptom of chinaberry poisoning in every modern case report. The Bogam prints both and reconciles neither; the entry that is wrong is the parent's, and a reader who takes 無毒 at face value has been warned by the book itself four lines later.
**The 雌雄 rule is a real attempt at a safety specification and it cannot be what the book thinks it is.** Melia azedarach is not dioecious: its flowers are hermaphrodite and every mature tree fruits, so there is no male tree with a red root and no fruit. What the distinction is probably tracking is something else — two species (M. azedarach against M. toosendan, which Chinese practice does separate and does prefer for the drug), or root age and depth, or simply the colour of the bark on a tree that happened not to be fruiting that year. The limonoid content of Melia root bark does vary substantially with species, provenance and season, so a selection rule of some kind was worth having; this one is not reliable, and nobody should treat a white root as the safe one.
譯 1.62.1.3 Source원문
皮一兩, 入糯米五十粒, 煎煮殺毒. 《入門》
Translation영역
One nyang of the bark, with fifty grains of glutinous rice put in, is decocted and boiled to kill the toxin.
Clinical note임상 주석
**This is the one processing instruction in my part of the chapter that should be read as not working, and the point is worth making plainly because the book presents it as a detoxification.** 殺毒, killing the toxin, is what the passage claims the rice does. Glutinous rice in a decoction is a demulcent and a source of starch: it coats mucosa, it slows absorption a little, and it makes a harsh drug easier to swallow. It does not destroy a limonoid. Toosendanin is a stable tetranortriterpenoid and survives boiling; nothing about rice starch degrades it. Compare the genuine reductions elsewhere in this part of the chapter — defatting at 1.58, which removes the carrier of the phorbol esters; boiling at 1.58, which destroys the heat-labile lectin; calcining at 1.45, which drives off adsorbed polycyclic aromatics; discarding the stone at 1.62. Those change the material. This one changes the mouthfeel.
**The dose is the other thing to notice, and it is kept exactly as the book gives it.** 皮一兩, one nyang of the bark, is on the order of thirty-seven grams of Melia root bark in a single decoction — a substantial dose of a hepatotoxic and neurotoxic drug, given on the understanding that the rice has made it safe. The figure is not softened here: this work prints the quantities the book prints, because a reader who finds the number missing will go and look for it in another edition.
譯 1.62.1.4 Source원문
我國惟濟州有之, 他處無. 《俗方》
Translation영역
In our country it is found only in Jeju, and nowhere else.
Clinical note임상 주석
A local notice, and this one is accurate: Melia azedarach is at the northern edge of its range in Korea and grows naturally only on Jeju and the far southern coast, which is why 멀구슬나무 is a southern tree in Korean usage. It is also a small point about the import mark: the parent entry 1.62 carries 唐, because the fruit was bought from China, while this subnumber records the root bark as obtainable at home from the island. The same 我國惟濟州有之 appears at 1.53 海桐皮, where the claim is harder to credit.
1.63 Ailanthus Root Bark 樗根白皮
`가듁나모불휫겁질` 은 `가듁`(가죽) + `나모`(나무) + 관형격 `ㅅ` 이 붙은 `불휫`(뿌리의) + `겁질`(껍질)의 짜임이고 네 토막 모두 지금 말로 이어진다 — `듁 → 죽` 은 ㄷ 구개음화 이전 표기이며(이 문 1.18 `䈽竹葉` 의 `댓닙` 과 같은 자리다), `불휘 → 뿌리`ㆍ `겁질 → 껍질` 은 이 묶음에 열 번 넘게 나오는 꼴이다. 그러므로 **`가죽나무 뿌리 껍질`** 이고, `가죽나무` 는 지금도 *Ailanthus altissima* 의 우리말 이름이다. **이 향명이 이 절의 종 가름에 그대로 걸린다** — 본문이 樗와 椿을 갈라 적는데(아래 두 구절), 향명은 머리말 樗 쪽을 `가죽나무`(*Ailanthus*, 소태나무과)로 받고 椿 (참죽나무, *Toona sinensis*, 멀구슬나무과)을 받지 않는다. 우리말이 책의 가름을 한 번 더 받쳐 주는 자리다.
譯 1.63.1 Source원문
性凉, 味苦, 有小毒. 主赤白久痢, 腸滑及痔疾, 腸風㵼血不住, 殺口鼻中疳虫, 去疥𧏾. 主鬼疰傳尸蠱毒, 下血, 能縮小便.
Translation영역
Its nature is cool, its flavour bitter, and it has slight toxicity. It governs long-standing red and white dysentery, slippery intestine and haemorrhoidal disease, and intestinal-wind spotting of blood that will not stop; it kills the gan worms in the mouth and nose and removes scabby erosion. It governs ghost-fixity, corpse-transmitted gu toxin, and precipitation of blood, and it can shrink the urine.
Clinical note임상 주석
樗根白皮 is the root bark of Ailanthus altissima, the tree of heaven, 가죽나무 in Korean. Everything in the first line is an astringent indication, and that is what the drug is: the bark is rich in tannin and in the quassinoids of the Simaroubaceae, ailanthone chief among them, and it was used for exactly this spectrum of bloody dysentery and relaxed bowel. The Korean Herbal Pharmacopoeia carries it, and so does Chinese practice under the name 椿皮 — which is the start of the identification problem set out below.
傳尸, corpse-transmission, is the classical name for consumption, which is to say pulmonary tuberculosis; 鬼疰 and 蠱毒 are the wasting and poisoning categories that sat beside it. None of the three is a use to carry forward. Tuberculosis is diagnosed on sputum culture or molecular testing and treated with a four-drug regimen; the entry's claim here is of historical interest only.
殺口鼻中疳虫, killing the gan worms of the mouth and nose, covers what would now be read as noma, oral candidiasis and the destructive gingivostomatitis of severe malnutrition. The quassinoids do have real antiprotozoal and antiparasitic activity in vitro, so the worm language is not purely doctrinal, but nothing here substitutes for antimicrobial treatment and nutritional repair.
譯 1.63.2 Source원문
樗與椿大抵相類, 但樗木臭而踈, 椿木實而葉香, 並採無時.
Translation영역
The jeo and the chun are broadly of a kind; only the jeo wood is foul-smelling and loose-grained, while the chun wood is solid and its leaves are fragrant. Both are gathered at any season.
Clinical note임상 주석
**This is the first of the two passages in which the Bogam separates two trees that the later materia medica ran together, and it does it on characters that hold botanically.** 樗 is foul-smelling and loose-grained; 椿 is solid-wooded with fragrant leaves. Ailanthus altissima has a notoriously rank smell when the leaves or bark are crushed, and its wood is coarse, ring-porous and weak. Toona sinensis, 참죽나무, has fragrant young leaves that are eaten as a vegetable in Korea and China — 참죽나물 — and its timber is the prized close-grained wood sold as Chinese mahogany. Two characters, two trees, two families: Simaroubaceae and Meliaceae.
譯 1.63.3 Source원문
又云, 椿樗皆臭, 但一種有花結子, 一種無花不結子. 世以無花不實, 木身大, 幹端直者爲椿; 椿用根葉. 其有花而莢, 木身小, 幹多迃矮者爲樗; 樗用根葉莢.
Translation영역
It is also said that the chun and the jeo are both foul-smelling, and that the only difference is that one kind has flowers and sets seed while the other has no flowers and sets no seed. The world takes the one that has no flower and bears no fruit, whose body is large and whose trunk stands straight, to be the chun; of the chun the root and the leaf are used. The one that has flowers and pods, whose body is small and whose trunk is often crooked and stunted, is taken to be the jeo; of the jeo the root, the leaf and the pods are used.
Clinical note임상 주석
**The second separation, and the decisive one for the materia medica of this site.** Four characters are offered, and three of them point the same way. The tree with flowers and pods — the samaras — a small body and a crooked stunted trunk is 樗; Ailanthus altissima bears dense clusters of papery winged samaras that hang on the tree through winter, and it is a short-lived, suckering, often leaning tree. The tree with a large body and a straight trunk is 椿; Toona sinensis grows to a tall, straight-boled timber tree. The claim that 椿 bears neither flower nor fruit is wrong — Toona flowers and sets capsules — but it is wrong in the way a pollarded tree makes people wrong: a Toona cut back every spring for its edible shoots never flowers, and that is how the tree was kept in Korea and China.
This bears directly on two entries in the materia medica of this site that at present carry the same Latin name. `樗根白皮` and `椿根白皮` are both recorded as Ailanthi Cortex, and they cannot both be right, because 樗 and 椿 are trees of different families. By the Bogam's own two passages the division is 樗 = Ailanthus altissima and 椿 = Toona sinensis, so the second name should carry a Toona Latin rather than Ailanthi Cortex. The reason the duplication arose is worth recording rather than hiding: the current Chinese Pharmacopoeia uses 椿皮 as the official name for the bark of Ailanthus altissima, inverting this entry's distinction, and 椿根白皮 and 樗根白皮 have been dispensed interchangeably in both countries for centuries. So the duplication is not a clerical slip but the trace of a real and old confusion — and the Bogam is on the side of the separation, not the merger.
譯 1.63.4 Source원문
樗一名虎目樹, 以葉脫處有痕如目也. 《本草》
Translation영역
The jeo has another name, tiger-eye tree, because where the leaf has fallen there is a scar like an eye.
Clinical note임상 주석
虎目樹, the tiger-eye tree, is a field character and a good one. The compound leaves of Ailanthus altissima leave very large shield-shaped or heart-shaped leaf scars on the twig, conspicuously bigger than those of almost any tree a gatherer in Korea would meet, each with a crescent of bundle traces inside it that does read as an eye. It is the single quickest way to confirm the tree in winter, when there are no leaves and the samaras may have blown off, and it belongs with the smell and the samaras as the third independent check on this identification.
譯 1.63.5 Source원문
性凉而燥, 須炒用, 或塗蜜炙用. 《丹心》
Translation영역
Its nature is cool and drying; it must be used stir-fried, or else smeared with honey and roasted.
Clinical note임상 주석
The processing is not decorative. Dry-frying and honey-roasting both moderate the bark's harshness on the stomach, and the honey-roasted form is the one the formulary of this site actually calls for — 四神丸 specifies 樗根白皮 honey-water-fried, in the words of this very passage. A drug given for dysentery has to be tolerated by an already irritated gut, and the quassinoids of Ailanthus are emetic in quantity; heating reduces that. This is one of the places where the book's 修治 does real work rather than ritual work.
譯 1.63.6 Translation영역
While taking this, greasy things, hot wheat-flour foods and poisonous articles are to be avoided.
1.63.1 Toona Leaf 椿木葉
譯 1.63.1.1 Translation영역
Its flavour is bitter and it is toxic. It governs the washing of sores, scabies and wind-ulcer.
Clinical note임상 주석
**Note the 有毒 against the parent entry's 有小毒.** The leaf of the 椿 is given as outright toxic where the root bark of the 樗 is only slightly so, and the one use allowed for it is 洗, washing — an external decoction, not a draught. That is consistent: Toona sinensis leaves are eaten in Korea as 참죽나물, but only the young shoots and only after blanching, and the mature foliage is not food. The Bogam is keeping the leaf out of the mouth.
This leaf is why the parent section's two discriminating passages are printed at all. Having separated 樗 from 椿, the book then hangs the 椿 under the 樗 as a leaf, so that the two trees sit in one section with their distinction stated. The arrangement is the compiler's, not the Bencao's.
譯 1.63.1.2 Source원문
根皮, 一名苦木瘡, 性溫. 主疳𧏾, 又止㵼, 澁精氣. 《本草》
Translation영역
The root bark, one name for which is bitter-wood sore, is warm in nature. It governs gan erosion, and it also checks diarrhoea and astringes the essential qi.
Clinical note임상 주석
**This half-sentence is where 椿根白皮 enters the corpus, and it is the only place it enters as materia medica rather than as a prescription line.** The transcription's two levels of indentation cannot carry a part beneath a part, so the root bark of the 椿 is printed inside the body of the 椿 leaf instead of being given a head of its own. The materia medica of this site has an entry for it — `椿根白皮` — but that entry grew from the formulary, where two prescriptions name it, and not from this chapter.
Its indications here are worth comparing with the parent's. The 樗 root bark is 性凉 and treats bloody dysentery; the 椿 root bark is 性溫 and checks diarrhoea and astringes the essence. Cool against warm is not a distinction a copyist invents, and it is further evidence that the Bogam held the two barks to be two drugs. Anyone dispensing 저근백피 or 춘근백피 in Korea today will in practice receive Ailanthus bark for both, which is the modern situation and not this book's.
1.64 Bush Cherry Kernel 郁李仁
`묏이스랏ᄡᅵ` 는 `뫼`(산) + 관형격 `ㅅ` 이 붙은 `묏`(산의) + `이스랏` + `ᄡᅵ`(씨)다. `ᄡᅵ → 씨` 는 ㅄ 어두자음군의 된소리화이고, **`이스랏` 은 지금 말 `이스라지`로 이어진다** — 이스라지는 바로 *Prunus japonica* 의 우리말 이름이다. 그러므로 `산이스라지 씨` 이고, **향명이 책의 한자와 따로 같은 식물을 가리켜 준다** — 이 묶음에서 종을 가장 든든하게 못 박아 주는 자리다(본문 `枝條花葉皆若李, 惟子小若櫻桃` 와 이스라지의 생김이 그대로 맞는다). 본문 안에 둘째 이름 `又名산ᄆᆡᄌᆞ`(산매자)가 한글로 박혀 있는데, 그것은 향명 칸에 들어가는 것이 아니라 **본문의 글자**이므로 지침 §10 대로 `hanja` 에 전사본 그대로 실었다. `ᄆᆡᄌᆞ → 매자` 로 읽히므로 `산매자` 이고, 木部의 유일한 「본문 안의 우리말」 자리 둘 가운데 하나다(다른 하나는 내 몫 밖 1.42.3 `䄅椒` 의 `ᄂᆞᆫ되`).
譯 1.64.1 Source원문
又名산ᄆᆡᄌᆞ. 性平, 味苦辛, 無毒. 主通身浮腫, 利小便, 治腸中結氣, 關格不通, 通泄膀胱五藏急痛, 宣腰脚冷膿, 消宿食, 下氣.
Translation영역
It is also called san-maeja. Its nature is balanced, its flavour bitter and acrid, and it is without toxicity. It governs puffy swelling of the whole body, disinhibits the urine, treats bound qi in the intestines and blockage that will not pass, frees and drains urgent pain of the bladder and the five viscera, disperses cold pus in the lumbus and legs, disperses stagnant food, and precipitates qi.
Clinical note임상 주석
郁李仁 is the kernel of Prunus japonica and its near relatives, 이스라지 in Korean, and in current practice it is a mild moistening laxative and a diuretic — the two actions the passage gives it first. It is a real and still-used drug: the Korean and Chinese pharmacopoeias both carry it, and it sits in the same functional class as 杏仁 and 桃仁.
It sits in that class chemically too, and that is the caution. Like the apricot and peach kernels of 果部, Prunus seed carries the cyanogenic glycoside amygdalin, which β-glucosidase in the gut flora and in the crushed seed itself converts to hydrogen cyanide. The clinical consequences are the ones set out at 果部 1.21 桃核仁 and 1.22 杏仁: the hazard is dose-dependent and real, children are at much greater risk than adults by body weight, and the danger lies in large amounts of raw or crudely crushed kernel, not in a decocted prescription dose. The processing given two passages below — blanching, husking, and discarding the twinned kernels — is the traditional handling, and part of it does reduce the glycoside load.
關格, blockage above and below, covers the presentations of intestinal obstruction and anuria. Neither waits for a laxative seed.
譯 1.64.2 Source원문
處處有之. 枝條花葉皆若李, 惟子小若櫻桃, 赤色而味甘酸微澁. 核隨子熟, 六月採實, 并根用. 一名車下李. 《本草》
Translation영역
It is found everywhere. Its twigs, flowers and leaves are all like those of the plum, only the fruit is small, like a cherry, red in colour and sweet-sour in flavour with a slight astringency. The stone ripens with the fruit; in the sixth month the fruit is gathered, and the root is used along with it. One name for it is cart-under plum.
Clinical note임상 주석
The description is accurate for Prunus japonica down to the taste: a small red drupe, sweet-sour and slightly astringent, borne on a shrub whose foliage and flowers read as a small plum. 處處有之, found everywhere, is also right — the shrub is common in Korean hill scrub, which is what the Korean name's 묏, mountain, records.
譯 1.64.3 Source원문
去殼湯浸, 去皮尖雙仁, 蜜水浸一宿, 硏用. 《入門》
Translation영역
Shell it, steep it in hot water, discard the skin, the tip and the twinned kernels, soak it overnight in honey-water, and grind it for use.
Clinical note임상 주석
去皮尖雙仁 is the standing processing instruction for every Prunus kernel in the book, and it is the one piece of it with a modern justification. Blanching and skinning removes the seed coat, where much of the enzyme that liberates cyanide from amygdalin sits; discarding the 雙仁, the twinned or double kernels, removes the malformed seeds that gatherers in several traditions independently singled out as the dangerous ones. The honey-water soak is for the harshness, not the glycoside.
譯 1.64.4 Source원문
一名千金藤, 破血潤燥. 《正傳》
Translation영역
One name for it is thousand-gold vine; it breaks up blood and moistens dryness.
Clinical note임상 주석
A name-collision to flag rather than follow. 千金藤 in later materia medica is Stephania japonica, a Menispermaceae vine with a quite different alkaloid pharmacology, and reading this line forward from that identification would put a bisbenzylisoquinoline vine where a Prunus seed belongs. The line comes from the 醫學正傳 and is an alternative name reported for this drug there, not a cross-reference to another plant. The trap is the same shape as 果部 1.21.9 急性子, where the book's own gloss had to be allowed to overrule the later standard name.
1.64.1 Bush Cherry Root 根
譯 1.64.1.1 Source원문
主齒痛, 齒根腫齲, 堅齒, 去白虫. 煎湯含漱. 《本草》
Translation영역
It governs toothache and swollen, decayed tooth-roots; it firms the teeth and removes white worms. Decoct it and hold it in the mouth as a rinse.
Clinical note임상 주석
A mouthwash, and the route matters: this leaf is to be held and spat, not swallowed, which also keeps the cyanogenic question of the kernel away from it. Prunus root bark is tannin-rich and astringent, which would tighten inflamed gingiva, and the drug is still reasonable as a rinse on that basis.
白虫, the white worms, are the imagined agents of caries. Dental caries is a bacterial demineralisation of enamel and dentine and is treated by restoration; swollen, decaying tooth-roots are periapical or periodontal infection, which needs drainage, debridement and often extraction or root canal. A rinse will not reach either.
1.65 Aleppo Gall 沒食子
譯 1.65.1 Source원문
性溫一云平, 味苦, 無毒. 主赤白痢, 腸滑, 治陰瘡陰汗, 小兒疳痢, 能黑鬚髮.
Translation영역
Its nature is warm one says balanced, its flavour bitter, and it is without toxicity. It governs red and white dysentery and slippery intestine, treats sores and sweating of the genitals and gan dysentery in children, and it can blacken the beard and hair.
Clinical note임상 주석
沒食子 is the gall raised on Quercus infectoria by a cynipid wasp — the Aleppo or Turkey gall — and it is the single most tannin-dense article in the whole materia medica, running to half its dry weight in gallotannin. Every indication in this line follows from that one fact: astringency for dysentery and slippery bowel, astringency for weeping genital sores, and the black colour for the hair.
The entry is marked 唐, imported, and it has to be. Quercus infectoria is a Near Eastern and eastern Mediterranean oak; the galls reached Korea through the Chinese trade, and the name 沒食子 is a transcription of a Persian word. The materia medica of this site carries the drug as `沒石子`, the commoner spelling in the formulary, and the link is made to it; the pair should go into the alias table.
譯 1.65.2 Source원문
一名無食子. 圓如彈丸, 色微黑, 皮無孔者入藥. 《本草》
Translation영역
One name for it is musikja. It is round like a pellet and faintly black in colour; the ones whose skin has no hole are the ones put into medicine.
Clinical note임상 주석
皮無孔者入藥, only the galls with no exit hole, is a grading rule with a straightforward mechanism behind it: a hole means the wasp larva has emerged, and a gall that has released its insect has already begun to dry, split and lose tannin. The unperforated galls — still containing the larva — are the heavier, denser, higher-tannin ones, and they are exactly what the European dyeing and ink trades also graded as best. The Bogam and the Aleppo gall merchants were selecting on the same character for the same reason.
譯 1.65.3 Source원문
凢使, 勿犯銅鐵, 炒硏細用. 《入門》
Translation영역
Whenever it is used, let it not come near copper or iron; parch it and grind it fine for use.
Clinical note임상 주석
This is a processing caution with exact chemistry behind it, and it is the most satisfying one in my share. Gallotannin plus iron gives iron gallate, the blue-black pigment of iron-gall ink — the ink that most of Europe wrote with for a thousand years, and which was made by mixing a decoction of these very galls with green vitriol. Grinding or decocting the drug in an iron mortar or pot therefore does not merely discolour it: it converts the active tannin into an insoluble complex and destroys the astringency the drug was chosen for. Copper does the same with a green-black product. A 1613 compiler had no theory of coordination chemistry and recorded the result anyway, and the instruction is still correct for anyone preparing a tannin drug today.
1.66 Omphalia 雷丸
譯 1.66.1 Source원문
性寒, 味苦醎, 有小毒. 殺三虫及寸白虫, 去蠱毒. 竹之苓也.
Translation영역
Its nature is cold, its flavour bitter and salty, and it has slight toxicity. It kills the three worms and the inch-white worm and removes gu toxin. It is the sclerotium of bamboo.
Clinical note임상 주석
雷丸 is the sclerotium of Omphalia lapidescens, a fungus that grows on the roots of bamboo — which is exactly what 竹之苓也, it is the 苓 of bamboo, says, 苓 being the word the book uses for the hard underground body of a fungus (compare 茯苓 at 1.6 and 猪苓 at 1.46). The entry is in the wood chapter because the bamboo is, and the compiler puts the fungus with its host.
寸白虫, the inch-white worm, is the tapeworm, named from the proglottid; 三虫 is the standing triad of intestinal parasites. This is an anthelmintic and it is one of the chapter's claims with a measurable basis — the sclerotium carries a proteolytic enzyme that has real activity against cestodes, and 雷丸 was used in Chinese practice specifically for taeniasis into the twentieth century.
Two modern points have to go with it. First, the enzyme is heat-labile, so the drug was given as a cold-ground powder rather than decocted — which is at odds with the parching in the next passage, and worth noticing. Second, overdose is neurotoxic: the Chinese literature records headache, dizziness, vomiting and, in excess, convulsions and coma, and the 有小毒 of this line is not a formality. Taeniasis today is diagnosed on stool microscopy or antigen testing and treated with a single dose of praziquantel or niclosamide, which is both safer and reliable. The thirteen prescriptions in the formulary of this site that carry 雷丸 are worm formulas, and all of them have been superseded.
譯 1.66.2 Source원문
色白者善. 醋浸炮, 去黑皮, 焙用. 《入門》
Translation영역
The white-coloured ones are good. Steep it in vinegar and blast-roast it, remove the black skin, and dry it over a gentle fire for use.
Clinical note임상 주석
色白者善 is a quality rule with a reason: the sclerotium darkens as it ages and rots, so a white interior means sound material. The parching and gentle drying, however, work against the drug's own anthelmintic principle, which is a protein — this is a place where the book's processing does not reduce a hazard and may remove an effect.
1.67 Acorn 橡實
`굴근도토리` 는 `굵다` 의 관형형 `굴근`(굵은) + `도토리`다. `굵 → 굵은` 의 ㄺ 겹받침 표기가 아직 `굴ㄱ` 으로 풀려 적힌 꼴이고, `도토리` 는 글자째 지금 말이다. 그러므로 **`굵은 도토리`** 이고, 뜻풀이가 아니라 **등급 수식이 붙은 이름**이다 — 이 묶음에서 향명이 종을 가리키지 않고 **크기로 고른 것**을 가리키는 유일한 자리다. 본문이 `槲櫟皆有斗, 而以櫟爲勝`(槲과 櫟이 다 깍정이가 있으나 櫟이 낫다)으로 두 상수리붙이를 가려 큰 쪽을 고르는 것과 향명이 맞물린다.
譯 1.67.1 Source원문
性溫, 味苦澁, 無毒. 主下痢, 厚腸胃, 肥健人, 澁腸止㵼, 充飢禦歉.
Translation영역
Its nature is warm, its flavour bitter and astringent, and it is without toxicity. It governs dysentery, thickens the intestines and stomach, makes a person stout and strong, astringes the intestine and checks diarrhoea, and it fills the hungry and wards off dearth.
Clinical note임상 주석
充飢禦歉, filling the hungry and warding off dearth, is the sentence that marks this entry out from everything around it. The acorn is in the wood chapter as a drug and in Korean life as a famine food, and the Bogam says both in one breath. 도토리 is still eaten in Korea as 도토리묵, the acorn-starch jelly, and the leaching that makes it edible — repeated soaking to wash out the tannin — is the same operation that removes most of what this entry values it for as a medicine. Food and drug pull in opposite directions on the same compound.
As a drug it is a simple astringent: oak acorn is tannin-dense, which is the whole of 澁腸止㵼. There is nothing here to warn a modern reader off, with one caveat — large habitual intakes of unleached tannin reduce iron absorption and, in grazing animals, cause real renal and gastrointestinal injury. The Bogam's 굵은 도토리, the large acorn picked for quantity, is a famine ration, and the famine is what made the trade-off acceptable.
譯 1.67.2 Source원문
橡實, 櫟木子也. 處處有之. 其實爲皂斗, 槲櫟皆有斗, 而以櫟爲勝. 不拘時採, 皮并實用, 入藥並炒.
Translation영역
The acorn is the fruit of the yeok tree. It is found everywhere. Its fruit sits in a black cup; the gok and the yeok both have cups, but the yeok is reckoned the better. It is gathered without regard to season, the bark being used along with the fruit, and for medicine both are parched.
Clinical note임상 주석
This passage is the structural key to the section. It names two oaks, 櫟 and 槲, says both bear cupped acorns, and prefers the 櫟 — and that is why the three leaves below are what they are: the cup of the preferred oak, the bark of the preferred oak, and then the leaf of the other oak, which is given its own description because it is a different tree. The Bogam is sorting the oaks, not cataloguing the parts of one.
譯 1.67.3 Source원문
柞也, 櫟也, 杼也, 栩也, 皆橡櫟之通名也. 《本草》
Translation영역
Jak, yeok, jeo and heo are all common names for the oak.
Clinical note임상 주석
Four characters collapsed into one drug. This is the book doing the opposite of what it does at 1.63 — there it split two names that later usage merged, here it merges four names that it judges to be one tree. The judgement is sound: 柞, 櫟, 杼 and 栩 are all classical names covering the sawtooth and sweet oaks of the Quercus acutissima and Q. serrata group, and no useful distinction rides on them. It also tells the reader that only 槲, in the leaf below, is being held apart.
1.67.1 Acorn Cup 橡殼
譯 1.67.1.1 Source원문
卽斗也. 止腸風崩中帶下, 冷𤍠㵼痢, 堪染皂, 並染鬚髮令黑. 《本草》
Translation영역
This is the cup. It checks intestinal wind, flooding and vaginal discharge, and cold or hot diarrhoea and dysentery; it will dye black, and it is also used to dye the beard and hair black.
Clinical note임상 주석
卽斗也, it is the cup, is the book glossing its own headword in the manner of §3.6, and it settles the link: this is the acorn cupule, carried in the materia medica of this site as `橡實殼`. The pair 橡殼 = 橡實殼 belongs in the alias table.
堪染皂, it will dye black, is the same tannin fact as the Aleppo gall two sections back, and it is why acorn cups were a staple of the dyer's trade across Eurasia: with an iron mordant, oak tannin gives the greys and blacks. The hair-dyeing use is that reaction applied to keratin. As a drug the cupule is simply the most astringent part of the acorn — the tannin is concentrated in it — which is why the bleeding and discharge indications are given to the cup rather than to the kernel.
1.67.2 Oak Bark 櫟樹皮
listed under Acorn橡實 덥갈나모겁질 떡갈나무 껍질 tteokgal oak bark `덥갈나모겁질` 은 `덥갈` + `나모`(나무) + `겁질`(껍질)이고, `덥갈 → 떡갈` 의 어두 된소리화와 `겁질 → 껍질` 이 둘 다 이 묶음의 다른 향명에서 되풀이되는 꼴이므로 **`떡갈나무 껍질`** 로 이어진다. `떡갈나무` 는 *Quercus dentata* 의 우리말 이름이다. **다만 낱말이 풀리는 것과 어느 상수리붙이인지 아는 것은 다르다** — 본문이 櫟을 橡實의 어미 나무로 삼고 `柞也櫟也杼也栩也皆橡櫟之通名也` 로 네 이름을 한 나무에 묶으므로, 책의 櫟은 *Quercus acutissima*ㆍ*Q. serrata* 계열까지 아우르는 넓은 이름이고 `떡갈나무` 한 종으로 좁혀 읽을 근거가 본문에 없다. 그러므로 향명은 풀어 적되 **학명은 적지 않는다.** --- 전사본은 이 잎의 잎(041a) 발에 교감줄 `모 : 못(초간본)` 하나를 찍는다. 041a 의 본문에서 전사본이 `모` 로 읽는 자리는 **둘**이다 — 이 절의 `덥갈나모겁질` 과 1.67.3 槲若의 `소리ᄎᆞᆷ나모닙` 이고, 같은 잎의 1.68 白楊樹皮는 `사ᄉᆞ나못겁질` 로 이미 `못` 을 쥐고 있어 교감 대상이 아니며 1.69 蘇方木의 `다목` 에는 `모` 가 없다. 줄이 하나뿐이고 차례가 둘 사이를 가려 주지 않으므로 **첫 자리인 이곳에 달고, 둘 가운데 어느 것인지는 전사본에서 가릴 수 없음을 적어 둔다.** 初刊本의 읽기는 `덥갈나못겁질`(또는 `소리ᄎᆞᆷ나못닙`)로 속격 `ㅅ` 이 붙은 꼴이고, 木部 전체에서 `나모`(1.63ㆍ1.67.2ㆍ1.67.3ㆍ1.70ㆍ1.82ㆍ1.86)와 `나못`(1.68ㆍ1.72, 그리고 내 몫 밖 1.10)이 섞여 적히는 흔들림의 한 자리다.
譯 1.67.2.1 Source원문
性平, 味苦, 無毒. 主水痢, 消瘰癧, 除惡瘡及瘡中風露腫痛者. 《本草》
Translation영역
Its nature is balanced, its flavour bitter, and it is without toxicity. It governs watery dysentery, disperses scrofula, and removes malign sores and sores that have taken wind and dew and become swollen and painful.
Clinical note임상 주석
Oak bark is the European pharmacopoeial astringent — Quercus cortex is still a monographed drug for acute diarrhoea and for topical use on inflamed skin and mucosa — and the indications here are the same two: watery dysentery taken internally, malign and weeping sores washed externally. This is a place where a 1613 Korean entry and a current European monograph agree on both the drug and the uses, and the note should say so plainly.
瘰癧, scrofula, is tuberculous cervical lymphadenitis. It is treated with the standard antituberculous regimen; an astringent bark does nothing for it. 瘡中風露, a sore that has taken wind and dew, is the classical way of describing a wound that has become infected after exposure, and the modern reading is a secondarily infected wound needing cleaning and, where indicated, antibiotics.
1.67.3 Gok Oak Leaf 槲若
listed under Acorn橡實 소리ᄎᆞᆷ나모닙 소리참나무 잎 sori-oak leaf `소리ᄎᆞᆷ나모닙` 은 `소리` + `ᄎᆞᆷ`(참) + `나모`(나무) + `닙`(잎)이다. `ᄎᆞ → 차/참` 은 ᄉᆞㆍᄒᆞ 계열과 같은 ㆍ의 ㅏ 합류이고 `닙 → 잎` 은 ㄴ 두음의 탈락이므로 낱말은 **`소리참나무 잎`** 으로 또렷이 풀린다. 그러나 **종은 못 가린다** — `소리나무`ㆍ `소리참나무` 는 상수리나무(*Quercus acutissima*) 쪽으로도 쓰이고 다른 상수리붙이에도 붙는 이름이며, 본문은 槲을 `與櫟相類, 亦有斗, 但小不中用`(櫟과 비슷하고 깍정이도 있으나 작아 쓸 만하지 않다)으로만 적어 **櫟과 다른 나무라는 것 외에 더 좁혀 주지 않는다.** 지침 §5 대로 낱말은 풀어 적고 **학명은 적지 않는다.** 041a 발의 교감줄 `모 : 못(초간본)` 은 이 향명의 `나모` 와 1.67.2 의 `나모` 둘 가운데 어느 것인지 가릴 수 없다 — 1.67.2 의 주기에 그 셈을 적어 두었고 줄은 첫 자리인 그곳에 달았다.
譯 1.67.3.1 Source원문
性平, 味甘苦, 無毒. 療血痢, 主痔, 止渴. 取葉炙用. 若, 卽葉也.
Translation영역
Its nature is balanced, its flavour sweet and bitter, and it is without toxicity. It heals bloody dysentery, governs haemorrhoids and checks thirst. The leaf is taken and roasted for use. Yak means the leaf.
Clinical note임상 주석
若, 卽葉也 is the Bogam glossing its own headword again, and the gloss is needed: 若 in its ordinary sense is a particle, and without this half-line the reader cannot know that 槲若 is the leaf of the gok oak and not a drug named 若. This is the §3.6 pattern in its simplest form, and the whole identification of the leaf rests on five characters.
譯 1.67.3.2 Source원문
樹皮, 味苦澁, 除蠱及瘻, 治惡瘡.
Translation영역
The bark is bitter and astringent in flavour; it removes gu and fistula and treats malign sores.
Clinical note임상 주석
A part beneath a part, printed inside the body because the transcription's two levels of indentation cannot hold a third. 1.67.2 櫟樹皮 has a head of its own for the bark of the yeok; the bark of the gok gets only this half-sentence inside the gok leaf. The same thing happens at 1.63.1, where the root bark of the 椿 is folded into the body of the 椿 leaf. Both are structural places of the kind the 菜部 count turned on, and both are recorded in the report.
瘻 here is the transcription's graph and reads as fistula; 蠱 is the standing poisoning category. Chronic fistula — perianal, enterocutaneous or tuberculous — is surgical, and nothing applied to its surface closes it.
譯 1.67.3.3 Source원문
與櫟相類, 亦有斗, 但小不中用. 不拘時採用. 《本草》
Translation영역
It is of a kind with the yeok and also has a cup, only it is small and not fit for use. It is gathered and used without regard to season.
Clinical note임상 주석
This is the sentence that makes the gok a second tree rather than a part of the first. 與櫟相類, of a kind with the yeok, concedes the resemblance; 亦有斗, 但小不中用, it also has a cup but a small and useless one, is the discriminating character and the reason the acorn of this tree is not gathered while its leaf is. The Bogam is therefore running two oaks under one headword — the useful one for its fruit, cup and bark, the other for its leaf and bark alone — and the arrangement is the compiler's own.
1.68 Aspen Bark 白楊樹皮
사ᄉᆞ나못겁질 사시나무 껍질 sasi-namu bark
`사ᄉᆞ나못겁질` 은 `사ᄉᆞ` + `나모`(나무) + 관형격 `ㅅ` + `겁질`(껍질)이다. `ᄉᆞ → 시` 의 ㆍ 변화와 `겁질 → 껍질` 로 **`사시나무 껍질`** 이 되고, `사시나무` 는 *Populus davidiana* 의 우리말 이름이다. **이 향명이 종을 가리켜 주고, 본문이 그것을 받친다** — `體圓蔕弱, 微風大揺`(잎이 둥글고 잎자루가 약해 산들바람에도 크게 흔들린다)는 사시나무의 그 떨림이고 (`사시나무 떨듯` 이라는 말이 거기서 나왔다), `葉面靑背白` 은 사시나무 잎의 흰 뒷면이다. 곧 책의 `白楊` 은 유럽의 흰포플러(*Populus alba*)가 아니라 **사시나무 쪽**이고, 한자만 보고 `白楊 = 흰포플러` 로 읽으면 다른 나무가 된다. 전사본이 이 향명을 `나못` 으로 적고 같은 잎(041a)의 1.67.2ㆍ1.67.3 을 `나모` 로 적으므로, 그 잎 발의 교감줄 `모 : 못(초간본)` 의 대상이 **이 절이 아님**을 재어 둔다 — 이미 `못` 을 쥔 자리는 고칠 것이 없다.
譯 1.68.1 Source원문
性冷, 味苦一云酸, 無毒. 主毒風脚氣腫, 去風痺, 消撲損瘀血作痛, 療折傷血瀝痛, 煎膏可續筋骨.
Translation영역
Its nature is cold, its flavour bitter one says sour, and it is without toxicity. It governs toxic wind and leg-qi swelling, removes wind numbness, disperses the static blood and pain of a blow or strain, heals the dripping-blood pain of a fracture, and decocted into a paste it will knit sinew and bone.
Clinical note임상 주석
This is one of the chapter's claims that survives translation into pharmacology, and it should be said so. Populus bark carries salicin and its relatives — populin, tremulacin — which are hydrolysed and oxidised in the body to salicylic acid. Willow and poplar bark are the historical source of that chemistry, and the European Medicines Agency carries poplar bark and leaf as a traditional herbal medicinal for minor joint pain and bruising. Every indication in this line is an analgesic and anti-inflammatory one: wind numbness, the pain of a blow, the pain of a fracture, leg swelling. A 1613 entry and a modern monograph are describing the same drug doing the same thing by the same mechanism.
The caveats are the salicylate ones rather than anything specific to this bark. It should be avoided in salicylate sensitivity and in people on anticoagulants, and the standing paediatric caution about salicylates and Reye's syndrome applies. 可續筋骨, it will knit sinew and bone, is a claim for the paste and not a reason to leave a fracture unset: a displaced or unstable fracture needs reduction and immobilisation, and an analgesic poultice is adjunctive at best.
譯 1.68.2 Source원문
處處有之. 木身微白, 故曰白楊. 葉面靑背白, 體圓蔕弱, 微風大揺. 古人多種於墟墓間. 《本草》
Translation영역
It is found everywhere. The trunk is faintly white, and so it is called white poplar. The leaf is green on the face and white on the back, round in body with a weak stalk, so that a slight breeze sets it shaking greatly. The ancients planted it much among ruins and graves.
Clinical note임상 주석
微風大揺, a slight breeze sets it shaking greatly, is the aspen and nothing else. The flattened petiole that makes Populus section Populus leaves tremble in the least air is the character the whole genus is named for in English and in Korean alike, and the Korean gloss 사시나무 names precisely the tree that the idiom 사시나무 떨듯, trembling like an aspen, is built on. The Chinese headword 白楊 is read off the pale trunk; the Korean name and the book's own description are read off the trembling leaf; both land on the same tree.
古人多種於墟墓間, planted among ruins and graves, is an ethnographic notice rather than a pharmacological one, and it is accurate for the funerary planting of poplars across northern Asia.
1.69 Sappan Wood 蘇方木
`다목` 은 두 음절 모두 지금 꼴이고 **지금도 *Caesalpinia sappan* 의 우리말 이름이 `다목`** 이므로 글자째 그대로 이어진다 — 이 묶음에서 옛꼴과 지금꼴이 완전히 같은 향명 둘 가운데 하나다(다른 하나는 1.80 `무궁화`). 이 절은 **唐材이면서 향명도 있는** 자리이고, 湯液篇 전체에 그런 절이 다섯뿐이다 (龍骨ㆍ野駝脂ㆍ獮猴ㆍ蝎ㆍ그리고 이 蘇方木). 수입 염료목인데도 우리 이름이 붙어 있는 것은 그만큼 들어와 쓰였다는 뜻이고, 본문의 `今人用染色者`(요즘 사람이 물들이는 데 쓴다)가 그 쓰임을 적어 둔다.
譯 1.69.1 Source원문
性平一云寒, 味甘醎, 無毒. 治婦人血氣心腹痛及産後血脹悶欲死, 女子血噤失音, 消癕腫撲損瘀血, 排膿止痛, 能破血.
Translation영역
Its nature is balanced one says cold, its flavour sweet and salty, and it is without toxicity. It treats a woman's blood-and-qi pain in the heart and abdomen, and post-partum blood distension with oppression to the point of death; it treats a woman's blood lockjaw with loss of voice, disperses the static blood of abscess, swelling, blows and strains, expels pus, checks pain, and it can break up blood.
Clinical note임상 주석
蘇方木 is the heartwood of Caesalpinia sappan, sappan, 다목 — an imported dyewood from south-east Asia that entered the materia medica as a blood-moving drug, and it is still in the Korean and Chinese pharmacopoeias in that role. Its colouring principle, brazilin, and the related brazilein have real documented anti-inflammatory and platelet-affecting activity, so the 破血 category it is put in is not arbitrary.
The obstetric indications are where the note has to be firm. 産後血脹悶欲死, post-partum blood distension with oppression to the point of death, is post-partum haemorrhage or retained products with shock, and it kills quickly; it is managed with uterotonics, uterine massage, tranexamic acid, examination for retained placenta and laceration, fluid resuscitation and transfusion, and theatre if those fail. 血噤失音, blood lockjaw with loss of voice, in the puerperium most plausibly covers eclampsia and puerperal sepsis, both of which are emergencies with specific treatments — magnesium sulphate and delivery for the first, antibiotics and source control for the second. A blood-moving decoction has no place in the acute management of any of them.
Because the drug does affect platelets, it is also one to hold in mind alongside anticoagulant and antiplatelet therapy rather than one to treat as inert.
譯 1.69.2 Source원문
一名蘇木, 今人用染色者. 《本草》
Translation영역
One name for it is somok, and it is what people now use for dyeing.
Clinical note임상 주석
一名蘇木 is the book giving the link itself: the materia medica of this site carries the drug as `蘇木`, which is the spelling the formulary uses in all thirty-two of its prescriptions, and this line authorises the pair for the alias table.
今人用染色者 is worth keeping for its own sake. Sappan was one of the great dye commodities of the maritime trade — the red of Korean and Japanese court textiles came from it — and the Bogam identifies the drug for its reader by pointing at the dyer's shop rather than at a herbal. It also happens to be the best practical identity check available: the heartwood gives a deep red to an alkaline water extract, and a sample that does not is not sappan.
譯 1.69.3 Translation영역
Boil it in wine, discard the bark and the knots, and use it.
1.70 Paulownia Leaf 桐葉
머귀나모닙 오동나무 잎 odong (paulownia) leaf
`머귀나모닙` 은 `머귀` + `나모`(나무) + `닙`(잎)이고 낱말로는 **`머귀나무 잎`** 이다. 그런데 **낱말을 그대로 옮기면 다른 나무가 된다** — 지금 말의 `머귀나무` 는 *Zanthoxylum ailanthoides*(운향과)이고, 이 절의 나무가 아니다. 책이 스스로 가려 준다: 본문이 `桐有四種`(桐에 네 가지가 있다)을 적고 靑桐ㆍ梧桐ㆍ 白桐ㆍ崗桐을 늘어놓은 뒤 **`藥中所用, 是白桐也`**(약에 쓰는 것은 白桐이다)로 못 박으며, 白桐은 오동나무(*Paulownia*)다. 入門의 `白桐二月開淡紅花`(이월에 연붉은 꽃이 핀다)도 오동나무의 꽃이다. 그러므로 지침 §3.6 대로 **책의 풀이를 따라 `hyangmyeong_mod` 를 `오동나무 잎`** 으로 적고, `머귀나무` 가 뒤 세상에 다른 나무로 옮겨 간 것을 여기 적어 둔다. 16세기에 `머귀` 가 오동을 가리켰다는 것은 이 자리가 증언하는 바이고, **한자가 향명보다 센 자리**다(菜部 1.56 `白菜/머휘` 가 그 반대 자리였다 — 거기서는 향명이 이겼다). 둘을 함께 적어 두는 것이 뒤에 쓸 사람에게 값이 있다.
譯 1.70.1 Source원문
性寒, 味苦, 無毒. 主惡蝕瘡着陰.
Translation영역
Its nature is cold, its flavour bitter, and it is without toxicity. It governs malign eroding sores settled on the genitals.
Clinical note임상 주석
A single external indication, and a narrow one: ulcerating sores of the genitals. The modern reading of 惡蝕瘡着陰 is the genital ulcer differential — syphilitic chancre, chancroid, herpes simplex, and the ulcerating forms of Behçet's disease and of carcinoma — every one of which is diagnosed by examination, serology, swab or biopsy and treated specifically. A cold bitter leaf wash does not belong anywhere in that list, and a genital ulcer that is being treated with one is a genital ulcer that is not being investigated.
譯 1.70.2 Source원문
桐有四種, 靑桐無子, 梧桐皮白葉靑有子, 白桐有花與子, 堪作琴瑟者, 崗桐似白桐惟無子. 藥中所用, 是白桐也. 《本草》
Translation영역
There are four kinds of dong. The green dong has no seed; the odong has white bark and green leaves and does bear seed; the white dong has both flower and seed, and is the one fit for making the geum and the seul; the ridge dong resembles the white dong, only it has no seed. The one used in medicine is the white dong.
Clinical note임상 주석
This is the passage that fixes the plant, and it has to be read before the Korean name. Four trees are named and three are set aside; the one kept is 白桐, which is Paulownia — the tree whose light, even timber was the standard material for the soundboards of the geum and seul, and in Korea for the 가야금 and 거문고. 梧桐 in this list is the separate tree now called Firmiana simplex, the Chinese parasol tree, and the Bogam keeps it apart. Reading the headword 桐 forward to the modern Korean 머귀나무, Zanthoxylum ailanthoides, would put a prickly Rutaceae tree in place of a Paulowniaceae one; reading the book's own gloss puts Paulownia, and the gloss wins.
譯 1.70.3 Source원문
白桐二月開淡紅花結子, 可作油. 《入門》
Translation영역
The white dong opens pale red flowers in the second month and sets seed, which can be made into oil.
Clinical note임상 주석
The pale red — in fact pale violet — panicles opening before the leaves in early spring are Paulownia, and 可作油, the seed can be made into oil, is what the third leaf of this section is about.
譯 1.70.4 Source원문
桐子似蔓荊子而稍大, 靑綠色. 《俗方》
Translation영역
The dong seed resembles the vitex seed but is somewhat larger, and green in colour.
Clinical note임상 주석
A local identification notice of the kind the 俗方 passages exist for: the reader in Korea is told what the fruit looks like by reference to a drug he already handles, 蔓荊子, the vitex fruit of 1.14. The green capsule described is the Paulownia capsule before it ripens and browns.
1.70.1 Paulownia Bark 桐皮
譯 1.70.1.1 Source원문
主五痔, 殺三虫, 治五淋, 沐頭去風生髮. 《本草》
Translation영역
It governs the five haemorrhoids, kills the three worms, and treats the five dribbling urinations; washing the head with it removes wind and makes the hair grow.
Clinical note임상 주석
`part_of` is left empty here because the parent headword 桐葉 has no entry in the materia medica of this site to point at; the page template follows the numbering from 1.70.1 back to 1.70 and nothing has to be invented.
五淋, the five dribbling urinations, is the classical grouping of difficult and painful micturition, and it covers urinary tract infection, stones, prostatic obstruction and haematuria from any cause, including bladder tumour. It is a presentation for urinalysis, culture and imaging. 沐頭生髮, washing the head to make hair grow, is the commonest cosmetic claim in the chapter and has no support; androgenetic alopecia responds to topical minoxidil and oral finasteride or dutasteride, and alopecia areata to intralesional corticosteroid or JAK inhibition.
1.70.2 Paulownia-Seed Oil 桐油
譯 1.70.2.1 Source원문
性冷, 微毒. 付惡瘡疥䑕交瘡. 取桐子笮取油也. 《本草》
Translation영역
Its nature is cold and it is slightly toxic. It is applied to malign sores, scabies and rat-bite sores. It is got by taking the dong seed and pressing out the oil.
Clinical note임상 주석
The identity of this oil cannot be settled as confidently as the parent entry's tree, and the toxicology differs between the candidates, so both are given. The text says plainly that it is pressed from the seed of the 桐 of this section, which the parent entry has fixed as 白桐, Paulownia; so by the book's own wording this is Paulownia-seed oil. But 桐油 in later and current usage means tung oil, the drying oil of Vernicia fordii — the 油桐 — which is a different tree in a different family, and tung oil is what a reader coming to this name from outside the Bogam will think of.
That matters because tung oil has a documented oral toxicity. Ingestion causes vomiting, abdominal pain and profuse diarrhoea, with lethargy and, in substantial exposures, hepatic and renal involvement; the agents are the diterpene esters of the Euphorbiaceae, chemically kin to the croton-oil esters of 1.58 巴豆. Accidental poisonings are recorded repeatedly where tung oil has been stored in food containers or mistaken for a cooking oil, and children are the usual victims. Paulownia-seed oil is far less well characterised and has no comparable record.
The practical upshot is the same either way and the Bogam already states it: 微毒, slightly toxic, and the single route given is 付, applied to the surface. Nothing in this leaf is to be swallowed. It is also worth recording that 桐油 appears once in the formulary of this site, as the first-named vehicle of 馬齒膏 — 桐油或麻油調勻, mixed smooth with tung oil or with sesame oil — where it has no identifier of its own and the record points at the sesame oil instead; a drying oil used as an ointment base is a plausible external vehicle for either tree.
1.71 Black Pepper 胡椒
譯 1.71.1 Source원문
性大溫, 味辛, 無毒. 下氣溫中, 去痰, 除藏府中風冷, 止霍亂心腹冷痛及主冷痢, 殺一切魚肉鼈菌蕈毒.
Translation영역
Its nature is greatly warm, its flavour acrid, and it is without toxicity. It precipitates qi and warms the centre, removes phlegm, eliminates wind and cold from the viscera and bowels, checks sudden turmoil and cold pain in the heart and abdomen, governs cold dysentery, and kills every kind of toxin from fish, meat, turtle, fungus and mushroom.
Clinical note임상 주석
Pepper is a food before it is a drug, which is what makes its entry in a materia medica interesting: twenty-nine prescriptions in the formulary of this site carry it, and the same article is in every kitchen in the country. The warming indications are the ordinary ones for an acrid spice and need no warning.
The one place where pepper has a real and documented clinical consequence is not in this list at all, and it is worth setting out because it is easy to miss in something so familiar. Piperine, the pungent principle of Piper nigrum, is a potent inhibitor of several cytochrome P450 isoforms and of P-glycoprotein, and of UDP-glucuronosyltransferases as well. The practical effect is that piperine raises the systemic exposure of co-administered drugs — the best-documented case being curcumin, whose bioavailability it increases many-fold, which is why commercial turmeric preparations add it — and the same mechanism applies to phenytoin, propranolol, theophylline, rifampicin, carbamazepine and others. In culinary amounts this is of no consequence; in the concentrated piperine supplements now sold, and in prescriptions where pepper is a substantial component, it is a genuine interaction pathway and one of the few in this chapter with good human data behind it.
殺一切魚肉鼈菌蕈毒, killing every toxin of fish, meat, turtle and mushroom, has to be read as what it is: a claim that pepper is an antidote to food poisoning. It is not. Mushroom poisoning in particular — amatoxin above all — is a medical emergency in which hours matter, and the seasoning of the dish is irrelevant to it.
譯 1.71.2 Source원문
出南方, 形如䑕李子, 調食用之. 向陽者爲胡椒, 向隂者爲蓽澄茄, 硏末入藥. 一名浮椒. 《本草》
Translation영역
It comes out of the south; its form is like the fruit of the rat-plum, and it is used in seasoning food. The ones that face the sun become hocho, and the ones that face the shade become piljeungga; ground to powder it is put into medicine. One name for it is bucho.
Clinical note임상 주석
Three things in this passage are worth holding. First, 形如䑕李子, shaped like the fruit of the rat-plum, is an internal cross-reference: 䑕李子 is the alternative name the book gives for 牛李子 at 1.74, three sections on, so the compiler is identifying one drug of this chapter by another.
Second, 向陽者爲胡椒, 向隂者爲蓽澄茄 — the sunward fruits become pepper, the shaded ones become cubeb — is the botanical claim that puts 蓽澄茄 under this headword as a leaf rather than giving it a head of its own. It is wrong as botany: cubeb is a different plant, not a differently exposed fruit of the same one. But it is a revealing error, because it shows the compiler reasoning from the resemblance of the two dried fruits, which is exactly the resemblance that made the cubeb trade possible as a pepper substitute and as a pepper adulterant.
Third, 出南方 and the 唐 mark together record that this was an imported article throughout, which it was: the Malabar trade reached Korea through China, and pepper remained expensive enough in the sixteenth century to be worth listing as a drug.
1.71.1 Cubeb 蓽澄茄
譯 1.71.1.1 Source원문
性溫, 味辛, 無毒. 主下氣消食, 治霍亂泄㵼, 肚腹痛, 并腎氣膀胱冷, 能染髮及香身.
Translation영역
Its nature is warm, its flavour acrid, and it is without toxicity. It governs precipitating qi and dispersing food, treats sudden turmoil with draining diarrhoea, pain of the belly and abdomen, and cold of the kidney qi and bladder, and it can dye the hair and perfume the body.
Clinical note임상 주석
Two different plants have carried this name, and the Bogam's own wording points at one of them while the materia medica of this site records the other. The next passage calls it 嫩胡椒也, the tender pepper, and the parent entry derives it from shade-grown pepper fruit; both sentences make the book's 蓽澄茄 a Piper — which is to say cubeb, Piper cubeba, the Javanese tailed pepper that reached East Asia along the same route as black pepper and was prized for the urinary and respiratory uses given here. The entry in this site's materia medica carries the Latin Litseae Fructus, which is the current Chinese pharmacopoeial identification of 荜澄茄 as the fruit of Litsea cubeba, a Lauraceae tree. The substitution is real, old and documented: Litsea fruit replaced the imported cubeb in Chinese practice, and the name travelled with the substitute. The Bogam predates that shift, and the shift should be recorded rather than read back into it.
As a drug cubeb is not obsolete — it was in Western pharmacopoeias into the twentieth century as a urinary antiseptic and in medicated cigarettes for catarrh, and nine prescriptions in the formulary of this site carry it. 腎氣膀胱冷, cold of the kidney qi and bladder, is the indication its Western use also attached to, which is a convergence worth noting. But a urinary complaint needs urinalysis and culture before it needs an aromatic volatile oil, and 霍亂泄㵼, sudden turmoil with draining diarrhoea, is the cholera-and-gastroenteritis category, where the treatment that matters is oral or intravenous rehydration.
譯 1.71.1.2 Source원문
生南海, 嫩胡椒也. 似梧桐子及蔓荊子而微大, 靑時就樹採摘, 有柄麄而蔕圓是也. 《本草》
Translation영역
It grows in the Southern Sea and is the tender pepper. It resembles the seed of the odong and the vitex fruit but is slightly larger; while still green it is picked from the tree, and the genuine kind is the one with a coarse stalk and a round base.
Clinical note임상 주석
有柄麄而蔕圓, a coarse stalk and a round base, is an identity test and a sharp one — it is the persistent stalk that gives cubeb its old English name, tailed pepper, and it is the single character that separates a cubeb berry from a peppercorn in a jar. The Bogam is therefore giving the reader the means to detect the adulteration that the parent entry's botany invites.
譯 1.71.1.3 Source원문
去柄酒浸, 蒸半日, 杵細用. 《入門》
Translation영역
Remove the stalk, steep it in wine, steam it for half a day, and pound it fine for use.
1.72 Soapberry Bark 無患子皮
모관쥬나못겁질 모감주나무 껍질 mogamju-namu bark
`모관쥬나못겁질` 은 `모관쥬` + `나모`(나무) + 관형격 `ㅅ` + `겁질`(껍질)이고, `쥬 → 주` 의 단모음화와 `겁질 → 껍질` 로 **낱말은 `모감주나무 껍질`** 로 풀린다. **그런데 낱말이 풀리는 것과 어느 나무인지 아는 것이 여기서 갈린다** — 지금 말의 `모감주나무` 는 *Koelreuteria paniculata*(무환자나무과)이고, 한자 표제어 `無患子` 는 *Sapindus mukorossi*(무환자나무)다. 둘은 같은 과의 **다른 속**이며, 둘 다 단단한 검은 씨를 염주로 꿰어 쓴 탓에 우리말에서 오래 섞였다. 책이 한쪽을 가려 준다: 俗方의 **`我國惟濟州有之`**(우리 나라에서는 제주에만 있다)는 *Sapindus mukorossi* 의 자생지와 맞고 *Koelreuteria* 는 중부까지 널리 자라므로, 본문이 적은 나무는 **무환자나무 쪽**이다. 그러므로 향명은 낱말대로 `모감주나무 껍질` 로 적되 **학명은 향명에 걸지 않고** 본문이 가리키는 쪽을 주석에 적었다. **못 가린 것은 16세기의 `모관쥬` 가 두 나무 가운데 어느 것을 가리켰는지**다 — 이름이 아직 갈리지 않았을 수 있고, 전사본에는 더 좁힐 자료가 없다.
譯 1.72.1 Source원문
性平, 有小毒. 主澣垢, 去面䵟, 喉痺.
Translation영역
Its nature is balanced and it has slight toxicity. It governs the washing out of dirt, and removes blemishes of the face and throat numbness.
Clinical note임상 주석
主澣垢, it governs the washing out of dirt, is the drug's real property and the reason for the plant's whole history: the pericarp and bark of Sapindus are loaded with triterpene saponins and lather in water. These are the soapnuts still sold as laundry detergent, and the Korean and Chinese names for the tree sit beside that use.
The saponins are also the toxicity, and the book's 有小毒 is understated. Sapindus saponins are haemolytic — they lyse erythrocyte membranes on contact with blood — and they are powerful irritants of mucous membrane and of the gastrointestinal tract, causing nausea, vomiting and diarrhoea if swallowed in quantity. They are also markedly toxic to fish, which is why soapberry has been used as a fish poison across Asia. The practical reading of this entry is that it is a surface drug: a wash and a cosmetic application, not a draught.
喉痺, throat numbness, is the classical name for the acutely obstructed throat, and it covers peritonsillar abscess, epiglottitis, diphtheria and anaphylactic angio-oedema. Each is an airway emergency with specific management; introducing a saponin-bearing, mucosally irritant bark into an already swollen throat would make matters worse, and this is one of the places in the chapter where the traditional indication and the modern pharmacology are in direct conflict. 面䵟, facial blemish, is a cosmetic indication; melasma and post-inflammatory hyperpigmentation are what it covers, and saponin-based cleansing has no effect on either.
譯 1.72.2 Source원문
子中仁燒令香, 辟惡氣. 其子如漆珠, 僧家貫之爲念珠, 紫紅色小者佳. 昔有神巫, 以此木爲棒擊鬼殺之, 故名曰無患. 《本草》
Translation영역
The kernel inside the seed, burnt until it is fragrant, wards off malign qi. The seed is like a lacquer bead, and the monks string them for rosaries; the small purple-red ones are the good ones. There was once a spirit-shaman who made a club of this wood and struck ghosts dead with it, and so it is named muhwan, the no-trouble tree.
Clinical note임상 주석
The rosary is the identification. Sapindus mukorossi seeds are hard, round, glossy and nearly black — 如漆珠, like lacquer beads — and they are the standard material of Buddhist prayer beads across East Asia; the Korean name 염주나무 for a soapberry records the same fact. Koelreuteria seeds are also strung for beads, which is precisely why the two names ran together in Korean, and the Bogam's description does not separate them.
The etymology at the end is folk etymology — 無患, no trouble, read as the ghost-killing club — and the book marks it as a story, 昔有神巫, there was once a spirit-shaman. It is recorded here as the book has it, not as an account of the name.
譯 1.72.3 Translation영역
In our country it is found only on Cheju.
Clinical note임상 주석
This one line does more identification work than the rest of the entry. Sapindus mukorossi is at the northern edge of its range in Korea and occurs wild only in the far south, Cheju above all, where old temple specimens still stand; Koelreuteria paniculata grows up the west coast and well inland. A notice that the tree is found only on Cheju therefore points at the soapberry and away from the golden rain tree, and it does so independently of the Chinese headword. It is the same kind of sentence as the tangerine chapter's 我國惟産濟州 — a 俗方 notice that settles a question of supply, and incidentally of species.
1.73 Alpinia Fruit 益智子
譯 1.73.1 Source원문
性溫, 味辛, 無毒. 主遺精, 縮小便, 攝涎唾, 益氣安神, 調諸氣.
Translation영역
Its nature is warm, its flavour acrid, and it is without toxicity. It governs seminal emission, shrinks the urine, gathers in the drool and spittle, boosts the qi and quiets the spirit, and regulates the several qi.
Clinical note임상 주석
益智子 is the fruit of Alpinia oxyphylla, a Zingiberaceae of Hainan and the far Chinese south, and it is one of the best-used drugs in this half of the chapter — forty-seven prescriptions in the formulary of this site carry it, under the spelling 益智仁. It is in the Chinese pharmacopoeia and in Korean practice, and its indications have stayed where this line puts them: nocturnal emission, frequency and incontinence of urine, and drooling.
縮小便, shrinking the urine, is the use that needs a modern frame rather than a warning. Urinary frequency, urgency and nocturia in an older man are the presentation of benign prostatic enlargement, overactive bladder, poorly controlled diabetes or, less often, bladder carcinoma, and they are worked up with urinalysis, a glucose, a flow study and examination before anything is prescribed. In a child, nocturnal enuresis is common, usually self-limiting, and managed with an alarm, desmopressin or anticholinergics. The drug is benign; the risk is in the diagnosis not being made.
譯 1.73.2 Source원문
形大如棗, 皮白中仁黑, 核細者佳. 《本草》
Translation영역
It is as large in form as a jujube, white in the skin with a black kernel inside, and the ones with a fine stone are the good ones.
譯 1.73.3 Source원문
服之益人智慧, 故名. 主君相二火, 入手足太隂ㆍ足少隂經, 本脾經藥也. 治脾胃寒邪, 以𥂁煎, 煖胃固精. 《入門》
Translation영역
Taking it benefits a person's wits, and hence the name. It governs the sovereign and ministerial fires, enters the hand and foot greater yin and the foot lesser yin channels, and is fundamentally a spleen-channel drug. It treats cold evil in the spleen and stomach, and decocted with salt it warms the stomach and secures the essence.
Clinical note임상 주석
服之益人智慧, 故名 is folk etymology of the explicit kind — the name 益智, boosting the wits, read back as a pharmacological claim — and the Yixue rumen says so by giving it as the reason for the name rather than as an indication. It should not be carried forward as a cognitive claim. Alpinia oxyphylla has been studied for neuroprotective effects in animal models, but there is no clinical evidence that it improves cognition in anyone, and the gap between the two is where a reader of this entry could go wrong.
以𥂁煎, decocted with salt, is the standing processing for the drug and the one the formulary uses; 𥂁 is the transcription's form of 鹽. Salt-processing is the classical way of directing a drug to the kidney, and here it matches the urinary indications.
1.74 Buckthorn Fruit 牛李子
譯 1.74.1 Source원문
性微寒, 味苦, 有小毒. 主寒𤍠瘰癧, 能下血, 除疝瘕冷氣, 治水腫脹滿.
Translation영역
Its nature is slightly cold, its flavour bitter, and it has slight toxicity. It governs scrofula with cold and heat, can precipitate blood, eliminates mounting conglomeration and cold qi, and treats water swelling and distension.
Clinical note임상 주석
牛李子, also written 鼠李子 in the next passage, is the fruit of a Rhamnus — a buckthorn, 갈매나무 in Korean. I do not give a binomial: the Chinese materia medica has attached the name to several species of the genus, chiefly Rhamnus davurica and R. crenata, and nothing in this entry narrows it beyond the genus.
The pharmacology of the genus is the point of the entry and the source of its hazard. Rhamnus bark and fruit carry anthraquinone glycosides — the same chemical class as senna and cascara, and Rhamnus purshiana is cascara and R. frangula is alder buckthorn, both of them official laxatives. 治水腫脹滿, treating water swelling and distension, and 能下血 are what a stimulant laxative does when it is given for oedema and abdominal fullness: it empties the bowel vigorously.
Three modern cautions follow. Anthraquinone laxatives cause cramping, fluid and electrolyte loss and hypokalaemia, and they are not appropriate treatment for oedema, which in practice means heart failure, nephrotic syndrome, cirrhosis or venous disease and is treated by addressing the cause. Prolonged use produces laxative dependence and melanosis coli. And the unripe fruit is the dangerous form: fresh and green Rhamnus berries, which contain the parent glycosides before they have been mellowed by drying, cause violent vomiting and diarrhoea, and buckthorn berries are a recurring cause of accidental poisoning in children, who take them for edible berries. The book's own 有小毒 and its insistence in the next passage that the fruit be gathered ripe and then sun-dried both bear on exactly this.
瘰癧, scrofula, is tuberculous lymphadenitis and needs antituberculous chemotherapy.
譯 1.74.2 Source원문
一名䑕李子. 生野道邊, 木高七八丈, 枝葉如李而不澤. 至秋結實, 狀若五味子, 生於條上四邊. 生則靑, 熟則紫黑色, 成穗. 至秋葉落, 子尙在枝. 實熟時採, 日乾用之, 酒蒸. 《本草》
Translation영역
One name for it is the rat-plum. It grows wild by the roadside; the tree stands seven or eight jang high, and its twigs and leaves are like the plum's but without the gloss. In autumn it sets fruit shaped like the schisandra berry, borne on all four sides of the twig. Green while unripe and purple-black when ripe, it forms clusters. When the leaves fall in autumn the fruit is still on the branch. It is gathered when the fruit is ripe, sun-dried for use, and steamed with wine.
Clinical note임상 주석
A good description of a buckthorn: a roadside tree or large shrub with dull, un-glossy foliage, bearing black drupes in clusters along the twigs that persist after leaf fall. 一名䑕李子 is the name the pepper entry at 1.71 reaches for when it wants to describe a peppercorn, which ties the two sections together.
實熟時採, 日乾用之 — gathered only when ripe, then sun-dried — is the processing that matters here, and for once it is a genuine reduction of hazard rather than a ritual. Drying converts the parent anthraquinone glycosides of fresh buckthorn to the gentler forms, which is exactly why cascara bark must by pharmacopoeial requirement be aged a year before use: the fresh drug is an emetic and a drastic purge, the aged one a laxative. The book's instruction is the same correction arrived at empirically.
譯 1.74.3 Translation영역
For bringing out the eruption in a child's pox and rash it is most wonderfully effective.
Clinical note임상 주석
瘡疹 in a paediatric source of this period means smallpox and the exanthems grouped with it, and 起發, bringing the eruption out, is the central therapeutic idea of the whole pre-vaccination smallpox literature — that the disease was dangerous when the rash failed to come to the surface, and that a drug which drove it out was saving the child. Smallpox has been eradicated since 1980; measles, rubella and varicella are prevented by vaccination, and in none of them does driving out the rash form any part of treatment. Giving an anthraquinone purge to a febrile, dehydrating child is actively harmful, and this is one of the places where the right note is not caution but refusal.
1.74.1 Buckthorn Root Juice 根汁
譯 1.74.1.1 Source원문
空心服, 治脊骨疳. 口含, 治齒𧏾. 《本草》
Translation영역
Taken on an empty stomach it treats gan of the spinal bone; held in the mouth it treats erosion of the teeth.
Clinical note임상 주석
脊骨疳, gan of the spinal bone, is wasting with spinal involvement in a child, and the condition it most plausibly names is tuberculous spondylitis — Pott's disease — which destroys vertebral bodies and can cause cord compression. It is a diagnosis for imaging and tissue, treated with prolonged antituberculous chemotherapy and sometimes surgery. An anthraquinone-bearing root juice given on an empty stomach to a wasting child is a purge, and it is the last thing such a child needs.
1.74.2 Buckthorn Bark 樹皮
譯 1.74.2.1 Source원문
主諸瘡, 除身皮𤍠毒. 《本草》
Translation영역
It governs sores of all kinds and eliminates heat toxin from the body and skin.
Clinical note임상 주석
The bark is the part of the genus the Western pharmacopoeias actually took up — cascara sagrada and frangula bark are both Rhamnus barks — but the use given here is external, for sores and skin heat, and taken that way it carries none of the laxative hazard. It is worth noting that the Bogam does not give the bark the purgative role it gives the fruit, which is the reverse of later Western practice.
1.75 Jeonggongdeung Vine 丁公藤
마과목 마가목 magamok (rowan)
전사본은 `마과목` 으로 적고, **잎 042b 발의 교감줄 `과 : 가(초간본)` 가 그 글자를 `가` 로 돌려 준다 — 곧 初刊本의 읽기는 `마가목`** 이다. 042b 의 한글은 이 향명과 1.76 樺木皮의 `봇` 둘뿐이고 `봇` 에는 `과` 가 없으므로 **걸릴 자리가 하나뿐이고 자리잡기가 확실하다.** 이 줄은 글자 바뀜이 아니라 **낱말을 되살린다** — `마과목` 은 지금 말에 없고 **`마가목` 은 *Sorbus commixta* 의 우리말 이름**이다. 草部上 澤瀉의 `쇠기나물 : 쇠귀나물` 과 같은 종류이고, 국어사 쪽에서 이 묶음의 교감줄 가운데 값이 가장 큰 자리다. 그러므로 `hyangmyeong` 에는 전사본 글자를 그대로 싣고 `hyangmyeong_mod` 에 初刊本이 되살려 주는 `마가목` 을 적었다. **다만 향명이 가리키는 나무와 한자 표제어가 가리키는 식물이 다르다** — 아래 주석에 적었다. 향명은 우리 쪽 비정이고 한자는 중국 쪽 비정이며, 둘을 한쪽으로 못 박지 않았다.
譯 1.75.1 Source원문
性溫, 味辛, 無毒. 主風血, 補衰老, 起陽强腰脚, 除痺變白, 排風邪.
Translation영역
Its nature is warm, its flavour acrid, and it is without toxicity. It governs wind in the blood, supplements decline and age, raises the yang and strengthens the lumbus and legs, eliminates numbness and reverses whitening, and expels wind evil.
Clinical note임상 주석
The Chinese headword and the Korean gloss of this section name two quite different plants, and the difference has clinical weight, so neither is suppressed.
丁公藤 in Chinese materia medica is the stem of Erycibe obtusifolia or E. schmidtii, a Convolvulaceae liana of the far south — and the book's description in the next passage, a jointed stem like a horsewhip, purple-brown, with pointed leaves, is a liana's description. Erycibe is not a bland drug: it contains baogongteng A, a muscarinic agonist that was developed in China as a miotic for glaucoma, and preparations of the stem are known for a cholinergic syndrome on overdose — sweating, salivation, nausea, bradycardia, blurred vision. The Chinese pharmacopoeia carries 丁公藤 with an explicit toxicity warning and a contraindication in pregnancy, against this entry's 無毒.
The Korean gloss, recovered by the collation line as 마가목, names Sorbus commixta, the Korean rowan — a Rosaceae tree, not a vine. This is not a transcriber's slip but the standing Korean identification: 마가목 bark and fruit have long been dispensed in Korea for 정공등, and the indications Korean practice gives them are the ones in this line, aching lumbus and legs, cough and numbness. Sorbus commixta is pharmacologically mild and has no cholinergic activity.
So a prescription written on this entry will produce a benign Rosaceae bark in Korea and a cholinergically active Convolvulaceae stem in China. That is worth stating plainly, because the error runs one way only: a practitioner expecting 마가목 who receives Erycibe has received a drug with real autonomic effects and a pregnancy contraindication.
起陽, raising the yang, is an erectile indication. Erectile dysfunction is a vascular and endocrine marker as often as a complaint in its own right, and a new presentation warrants a cardiovascular and diabetes assessment before a tonic wine.
譯 1.75.2 Source원문
一名南藤. 莖如馬鞭, 有節, 紫褐色. 葉如杏葉而尖. 採無時, 漬酒服. 《本草》
Translation영역
One name for it is the southern vine. Its stem is like a horsewhip, jointed, and purple-brown in colour; its leaf is like an apricot leaf but pointed. It is gathered at any season and taken steeped in wine.
Clinical note임상 주석
莖如馬鞭, 有節 — a stem like a horsewhip, jointed — describes a climbing woody vine and not a tree, and it is the strongest evidence in the entry that the Bencao text behind it is about Erycibe rather than about a rowan. 一名南藤, the southern vine, says the same thing twice over: 藤 is a vine and 南 is the far south, which is where Erycibe grows and where no Sorbus does. The Korean gloss sits on a Chinese text that does not fit it, and the mismatch is the record of a substitution rather than a confusion inside the Bogam.
漬酒服, taken steeped in wine, is the standing preparation for this drug in both traditions, and it is the one that most readily produces an overdose: a wine extract is drunk by the cup rather than measured by the gram.
譯 1.75.3 Source원문
解叔謙母病禱神, 遇異人得服此藥, 卽此也. 《南史》
Translation영역
When Hae Suk-gyeom's mother was ill he prayed to the spirits, met an extraordinary man, and obtained this medicine to give her; this is that medicine.
Clinical note임상 주석
A piece of hagiography carried into a materia medica, and the only passage in my share whose source is a dynastic history rather than a medical book. The story of Xie Shuqian praying by night for his sick mother and being given the name of the southern vine by a stranger is told in the Nanshi among the exemplars of filial piety, and the Bogam cites it as the drug's pedigree.
It is worth keeping for what it shows about how authority worked in this literature — a drug could be warranted by a filial son's miracle as well as by a Bencao entry — and worth marking as carrying no information about the plant or its action. The romanisation Namsa 南史 is new to this corpus; it follows the pattern already used for 史記 and 漢史.
1.76 Birch Bark 樺木皮
`봇` 은 한 음절뿐인 이 묶음의 가장 짧은 향명이고, **`봇나무` 의 `나무` 를 떼고 적은 꼴**이다. `봇나무` 는 자작나무(*Betula*)의 옛 이름이자 지금도 쓰이는 이름이므로 `hyangmyeong_mod` 에 **`봇나무 (자작나무)`** 로 둘을 함께 적었다 — `봇` 만 적으면 지금 독자가 무슨 말인지 알 수 없고, `자작나무` 만 적으면 전사본이 적은 글자가 사라진다. 본문의 `今之裝弓樺皮也`(요즘 활을 싸는 그 화피다)가 이 이름을 받친다 — 우리 활의 줌통과 고자를 싸는 `화피` 가 바로 봇나무 껍질이고, 그 공예 쓰임이 이 향명이 한 음절로 줄어도 통했던 까닭이다.
譯 1.76.1 Source원문
性平, 味苦, 無毒. 主黃疸及乳癕, 肺風瘡, 小兒瘡疹.
Translation영역
Its nature is balanced, its flavour bitter, and it is without toxicity. It governs jaundice and breast abscess, lung-wind sores, and a child's pox and rash.
Clinical note임상 주석
樺木皮 is birch bark, Betula, and it is carried in the materia medica of this site as `樺皮`; the pair belongs in the alias table. Birch bark is rich in the triterpenes betulin and betulinic acid, which are the subject of a substantial modern literature on antiviral and antineoplastic activity, and birch bark extract is licensed in Europe as a wound-healing preparation for partial-thickness wounds and epidermolysis bullosa. So the skin indications here are not idle.
The three internal indications are each a reason to send the patient elsewhere. 黃疸, jaundice, is a sign and not a disease: it covers viral hepatitis, biliary obstruction from stone or tumour, haemolysis, drug injury and decompensated liver disease, and the first step is bilirubin fractionation, liver enzymes and imaging, not a bark decoction. 乳癕, breast abscess, needs drainage — needle aspiration or incision — together with antibiotics, and a lactating woman with a tender erythematous breast and fever has mastitis that may be hours from abscess; delay is the harm. And 小兒瘡疹 is again the smallpox-and-exanthem category, for which see 1.74 above: the eradicated disease and the vaccine-preventable ones.
譯 1.76.2 Source원문
今之裝弓樺皮也. 木似山桃, 皮有花紋, 北來者佳. 《本草》
Translation영역
It is the birch bark now used for dressing bows. The tree resembles the mountain peach; the bark has a figured grain, and the kind that comes from the north is the good one.
Clinical note임상 주석
The Bogam identifies this drug by pointing at the bowyer's bench, and for a Korean reader that is the most precise identification available. 화피, birch bark, is the material wrapped round the grip and the siyahs of the Korean composite bow, and a sixteenth-century reader who had never handled the drug had certainly handled the bow. 皮有花紋, the bark has a figured grain, is what makes it a decorative covering as well as a waterproof one — the lenticel markings of Betula bark.
北來者佳, the northern kind is best, is a sound supply note. The best bark comes from the cold-climate birches of the northern peninsula and Manchuria, where the trees grow slowly and the bark layers thickly, and the same preference governed the historical trade in it.
1.77 Momordica Seed 木鼈子
譯 1.77.1 Source원문
性溫, 味甘, 無毒. 消結腫惡瘡, 肛門痔腫, 婦人乳癕.
Translation영역
Its nature is warm, its flavour sweet, and it is without toxicity. It disperses bound swellings and malign sores, swollen haemorrhoids of the anus, and a woman's breast abscess.
Clinical note임상 주석
The book's 無毒 is wrong, and this is one of the places where the note has to say so rather than soften it. 木鼈子 is the seed of Momordica cochinchinensis, the gac vine, and the seed carries both triterpene saponins — momordica saponins, strongly irritant and haemolytic — and momorcharins, which are type I ribosome-inactivating proteins of the same general class as the better-known plant toxins. Oral poisoning is documented in the Chinese literature: vomiting, abdominal pain, diarrhoea, headache and, in substantial ingestions, collapse. The seed is on the toxic-drug lists in current Chinese practice and twenty prescriptions carry it in the formulary of this site, which makes the discrepancy worth flagging rather than passing over.
Against that, note what route this entry actually gives. All three indications are surface ones — bound swellings and malign sores, swollen haemorrhoids at the anus, breast abscess — and they are the uses the drug kept: 木鼈子 is a topical drug for suppurating and indurated lesions, used in pastes and in the anal and breast applications named here. Reading the entry as written, nothing in it is swallowed. That distinction is the single most useful thing to carry out of this section, and it holds for most of the formulary's uses too, which are plasters and pastes.
婦人乳癕, breast abscess, needs the same answer as at 1.76: aspiration or incision with antibiotics, and promptly. 肛門痔腫 covers thrombosed external haemorrhoid, perianal abscess and fistula; the abscess is surgical and will not resolve under a poultice.
譯 1.77.2 Source원문
木實也, 形似鼈, 故以爲名. 去殼剉麩炒用. 《本草》
Translation영역
It is the fruit of a tree, and its form resembles a soft-shelled turtle, hence the name. The shell is removed, it is cut up, and it is parched with bran for use.
Clinical note임상 주석
形似鼈, shaped like a soft-shelled turtle, is the name and the identification: the flattened, roughly circular, hard-margined seed of Momordica cochinchinensis does look like a small turtle, and it is unmistakable once seen. 木實也, the fruit of a tree, is wrong — gac is a vigorous climbing vine, not a tree — and the error is probably why the drug is in the wood chapter at all.
去殼剉麩炒 is the standing processing. Bran-parching reduces the irritancy of saponin-bearing seeds to some degree, and shelling removes the hard testa; neither destroys the momorcharins, which are proteins but reasonably heat-stable, so the processing moderates the drug without making it safe to swallow freely. 鼈 is the transcription's form of 鼈, and the materia medica of this site already carries that variant in its alias table.
1.78 Uncaria 釣藤
譯 1.78.1 Source원문
性寒一云平, 味苦一云甘, 無毒. 主小兒十二驚癎及客忤胎風, 專治驚𤍠.
Translation영역
Its nature is cold one says balanced, its flavour bitter one says sweet, and it is without toxicity. It governs the twelve fright epilepsies of children, and stranger-offence and foetal wind, and it treats fright heat above all.
Clinical note임상 주석
This is one of the drugs in my share that is squarely in current use, and it deserves to be said first. 釣藤 is Uncaria rhynchophylla and its relatives, carried in the materia medica of this site as `釣鉤藤`; the pair belongs in the alias table. Its indoles — rhynchophylline, isorhynchophylline, hirsutine — have documented calcium-channel-blocking, vasorelaxant and anticonvulsant activity, and the drug is a mainstay of the liver-calming category in Korean, Chinese and Japanese practice. It is a chief ingredient of 釣藤散, which Japanese practice uses for chronic headache and hypertension with good trial evidence behind it, and it is in the paediatric fright formulas of this book.
It is also the standing replacement for 羚羊角, saiga antelope horn, and that matters beyond pharmacology. The saiga is critically endangered and listed on CITES; horn cannot be legally or ethically dispensed. Where a formula of this book calls for 羚羊角 to settle wind and extinguish fright, uncaria is the substitution the modern pharmacopoeias and the clinical literature both recommend, and it is a substitution with a real mechanistic basis rather than a token one. Anyone working from the paediatric convulsion formulas of this corpus should make that swap.
The indications still need the usual translation. 驚癎, fright epilepsy, is the febrile convulsion and the epilepsies of childhood; a first seizure is investigated, status epilepticus is an emergency treated with benzodiazepines and then a second-line anticonvulsant, and established epilepsy is managed with specific drugs. 客忤, stranger-offence, is the classical category for the acute distress of an infant attributed to a stranger's presence, and in a modern clinic any acutely unwell infant is a sepsis question until proved otherwise. 胎風, foetal wind, covers neonatal seizures and neonatal tetanus — the latter still a killer where cord care is poor, preventable by maternal immunisation.
譯 1.78.2 Source원문
葉細莖長, 節間有刺, 若釣鉤者是也. 《本草》
Translation영역
Its leaves are fine and its stem long, and at the nodes there are thorns; the kind whose thorns are like fish-hooks is the genuine one.
Clinical note임상 주석
若釣鉤者是也, the one whose thorns are like fish-hooks, is the identity test and the name at once. The paired recurved hooks at the nodes of Uncaria — modified inflorescence stalks by which the liana climbs — are what both 釣 and 鉤 in the drug's names refer to, and they are the only character needed: a hooked stem node is uncaria and an unhooked one is not. The pharmacopoeial drug is specified as the hooked stem segment for exactly this reason, and the alkaloid content is higher in the hooks than in the plain stem. A 1613 identity test that coincides with a modern assay specification is worth marking.
1.79 Windmill Palm Fibre 棕櫚皮
譯 1.79.1 Source원문
性平, 無毒. 止鼻洪吐血, 腸風赤白痢及婦人崩中帶下.
Translation영역
Its nature is balanced and it is without toxicity. It checks flooding nosebleed and vomiting of blood, intestinal wind and red and white dysentery, and a woman's flooding and discharge.
Clinical note임상 주석
棕櫚皮 is the fibrous leaf-sheath of Trachycarpus fortunei, the windmill palm, and the alias table of this site already carries the pair to `棕櫚`. Charred palm fibre — 棕櫚炭 — remains a haemostatic in current Chinese and Korean practice, and eight prescriptions in the formulary of this site use it, every one of them a bleeding formula: 十灰散 and 十灰丸, the ten-ash powder and pill, and 五灰散, where it is one of a series of carbonised drugs ground together.
The mechanism, so far as there is one, is the one every charred haemostatic shares: a porous carbon powder is adsorbent and locally astringent, and applied to a bleeding surface it will assist clotting mechanically. There is no systemic haemostatic action worth relying on, and that is where the caution lies. 鼻洪, flooding nosebleed, 吐血, haematemesis, and 崩中, flooding uterine bleeding, are each potentially exsanguinating: haematemesis means variceal or ulcer bleeding and needs endoscopy; heavy uterine bleeding needs examination, a haemoglobin, a pregnancy test and often tranexamic acid, hormonal control or theatre; a severe epistaxis needs packing or cautery. These are not conditions in which to reach for a powder.
譯 1.79.2 Source원문
木皮也, 形如馬鬃, 赤黑色. 燒存性用. 《本草》
Translation영역
It is the bark of the tree, shaped like a horse's mane and red-black in colour. It is burnt with its nature preserved for use.
Clinical note임상 주석
形如馬鬃, like a horse's mane, is exact for the coarse matted fibre of the palm's leaf-base, which is the material used for brushes, ropes and rain capes across East Asia as well as for this drug.
燒存性, burnt with its nature preserved, is the technical term for charring under limited air so that the drug blackens without being reduced to ash, and it is the processing that makes a haemostatic out of a fibre. It is also the processing most often done badly: over-fired material is grey ash with no adsorptive structure left, and under-fired material is unchanged fibre. The pharmacopoeial preparation specifies the carbonised form for the same reason the Bogam does.
1.80 Rose of Sharon 木槿
무궁화 무궁화 mugunghwa, rose of Sharon
`무궁화` 는 세 음절 모두 지금 꼴이고 PUA 도 옛 자모도 없다 — **1569년 꼴과 지금 꼴이 글자째 같은** 이 묶음의 향명 둘 가운데 하나다(다른 하나는 1.69 `다목`). 한자어 `無窮花` 의 우리 소리이고, 이 이름이 지금 우리 나라꽃 이름이라는 것은 따로 적을 만하다 — 湯液篇의 향명 645 가운데 **지금 국민 모두가 아는 낱말**은 이것뿐이다.
譯 1.80.1 Source원문
性平, 無毒. 止腸風㵼血及痢後渴.
Translation영역
Its nature is balanced and it is without toxicity. It checks intestinal wind with spotting of blood, and the thirst that follows dysentery.
Clinical note임상 주석
木槿 is Hibiscus syriacus, 무궁화, the rose of Sharon and the national flower of Korea. The drug is the bark and root bark in Chinese practice, where it is a mild antifungal and antidiarrhoeal applied externally for ringworm and taken for bloody stool; it is a minor article, with no prescription in the formulary of this site carrying it, and nothing in it is hazardous.
腸風㵼血, intestinal wind with spotting of blood, is rectal bleeding, and that is where the note has to be firm regardless of how benign the plant is. Fresh blood per rectum is haemorrhoidal in most young patients and colorectal in too many older ones; it is investigated by examination and, above a threshold of age or risk, by colonoscopy. An astringent bark that stops the bleeding without the diagnosis being made is worse than one that does nothing. 痢後渴, thirst after dysentery, is dehydration following an enteric infection, and it is answered with oral rehydration.
譯 1.80.2 Source원문
處處有之. 作飮服, 令人得睡. 採無時. 《本草》
Translation영역
It is found everywhere. Made into a drink and taken, it brings a person sleep. It is gathered at any season.
Clinical note임상 주석
令人得睡, it brings a person sleep, is the only sedative claim in my twenty-four sections, and it is a thin one — there is no controlled evidence that Hibiscus syriacus affects sleep, and the hibiscus with a modest human literature behind it is the quite different H. sabdariffa, studied for blood pressure rather than sleep. Chronic insomnia responds best to cognitive behavioural therapy for insomnia, and a persistent sleep complaint is worth screening for depression, sleep apnoea and restless legs before anything is given for it.
1.80.1 Rose of Sharon Flower 花
譯 1.80.1.1 Source원문
性凉, 無毒. 治赤白痢及腸風㵼血, 宜炒用.
Translation영역
Its nature is cool and it is without toxicity. It treats red and white dysentery and intestinal wind with spotting of blood; it is best used parched.
譯 1.80.1.2 Translation영역
Made into a decoction and drunk in place of tea, it treats wind.
Clinical note임상 주석
代茶, in place of tea, marks this as the mildest kind of article in the chapter — a flower infusion taken as a daily drink. Hibiscus flowers are eaten and infused across the world and the practice is harmless; 治風, treating wind, is too broad a claim to assess, and no prescription in the formulary of this site calls for the flower.
1.81 Genkwa Flower 芫花
譯 1.81.1 Source원문
性溫, 味辛苦, 有毒一云大毒. 治心腹脹滿, 去水腫寒痰喜唾, 療咳嗽瘴瘧蠱毒, 治癕腫惡瘡風濕, 殺虫魚肉毒.
Translation영역
Its nature is warm, its flavour acrid and bitter, and it is toxic one says greatly toxic. It treats distension and fullness of the heart and abdomen, removes water swelling, cold phlegm and a liking for spitting, heals cough, miasmic malaria and gu toxin, treats abscess, swelling, malign sores and wind-damp, and kills worm and fish-and-meat toxin.
Clinical note임상 주석
This is the most dangerous drug in my share and the book says so twice in one line — 有毒, and then the gloss 一云大毒, one says greatly toxic. Both readings are preserved because they are the record of the drug's reputation hardening.
芫花 is the flower bud of Daphne genkwa, and its active principles are daphnane diterpene esters — yuanhuacine, yuanhuadine and their relatives — which are protein kinase C activators of the same chemical family as the phorbol esters of croton oil and the tiglianes of the Euphorbiaceae. The consequences are severe and well documented. Taken internally the drug is a drastic cathartic and diuretic that empties the gut and the serous cavities, with vomiting, violent watery diarrhoea, abdominal colic, dehydration and electrolyte derangement; in overdose there are convulsions, haemorrhagic gastroenteritis, hepatic and renal injury and death. On contact the esters are vesicant: they blister skin and inflame mucosa, and the dried flower powder is a severe irritant to the eye and the airway. It is abortifacient and absolutely contraindicated in pregnancy. Chinese practice lists it among the toxic drugs with a restricted dose, and it should not be dispensed outside a setting equipped to recognise and manage a poisoning.
It belongs to a group that this corpus should be read as a group. 巴豆 at 1.58 of this chapter is the croton seed, chemically the closest relative; 甘遂, 大戟 and 續隨子 in 草部下 are the other members of the drastic water-expelling class. 十棗湯, the ten-jujube decoction, is the formula this drug is best known from — 芫花, 甘遂 and 大戟 in equal parts with ten jujubes to temper them — and the jujubes are there precisely because the three principals are intolerable without them. A practitioner meeting any one of these five should recognise the class and its hazard.
The indications themselves need separating. 水腫, water swelling, and 心腹脹滿 are the oedema and ascites of heart failure, nephrotic syndrome and cirrhosis, which are treated by addressing the cause with diuretics, sodium restriction, albumin and paracentesis under monitoring — not by a cathartic that will produce hypovolaemia and acute kidney injury in a patient whose circulation is already strained. 瘴瘧, miasmic malaria, is malaria, diagnosed on blood film or rapid antigen test and treated with artemisinin-based combination therapy; delay in falciparum malaria is fatal. 咳嗽, cough, in a drug this toxic, is not an indication to entertain.
譯 1.81.2 Source원문
正二月花發紫碧色, 葉未生時收花, 日乾.
Translation영역
In the first and second months it puts out flowers of a purple-blue colour; the flowers are gathered before the leaves appear, and sun-dried.
Clinical note임상 주석
Accurate for Daphne genkwa: the lilac-purple flowers open on bare twigs in very early spring and the leaves follow. 葉未生時收花, gathering before the leaves come, is both the botanical window and the pharmacopoeial specification — the drug is the unopened or newly opened flower bud, and material collected later is weaker and more variable. It is also the point at which a gatherer is handling the most ester-rich part of the plant with bare hands.
譯 1.81.3 Source원문
凢使醋炒用, 不可近眼. 《本草》
Translation영역
Whenever it is used it is parched with vinegar, and it must not be brought near the eyes.
Clinical note임상 주석
Both halves of this sentence are pharmacologically exact, and together they are the most impressive piece of safety instruction in my share.
醋炒, vinegar-parching, is the mandated processing for 芫花 in the current Chinese pharmacopoeia as well, and it is not cosmetic: heating with vinegar hydrolyses and degrades a substantial part of the daphnane ester content, measurably reducing both the toxicity and the violence of the purge while leaving some activity. This is one of the places in the chapter where 修治 genuinely lowers risk, and it should be contrasted with the parching at 1.66 雷丸, which probably destroys the drug's action instead.
不可近眼, it must not be brought near the eyes, is a warning about the one organ most at risk from a vesicant diterpene ester. Daphne and croton esters cause intense keratoconjunctivitis, corneal injury and blepharospasm on contact, and the exposure route is not drinking the drug but grinding it — the dry flower powder is airborne, and an eye rubbed with a contaminated hand is the classical accident. A 1613 compiler recorded the specific target organ of a class of compounds not described until the twentieth century, and the instruction stands unchanged.
1.82 Walnut-Tree Bark 楸木皮
ᄀᆞ래나모겁질 가래나무 껍질 garae-namu (walnut) bark
`ᄀᆞ래나모겁질` 은 `ᄀᆞ래` + `나모`(나무) + `겁질`(껍질)이다. `ᄀᆞ → 가` 의 ㆍ 합류와 `겁질 → 껍질` 로 **`가래나무 껍질`** 이 되고, `가래나무` 는 *Juglans mandshurica* 의 우리말 이름이며 그 열매가 `가래` 다. **한자와 향명이 다른 나무를 가리킨다** — 중국 쪽 `楸` 는 개오동(*Catalpa bungei*)이고 우리 쪽 `楸` 는 예부터 가래나무였다(`楸子` = 가래). 俗方의 `木性堅硬, 可爲器用`(나무가 단단해 그릇을 만들 만하다)이 가래나무 쪽을 받친다 — 가래나무는 우리 나라에서 궤ㆍ 소반을 짜는 귀한 재목이고, 개오동은 그런 재목이 아니다. 그러므로 **향명이 가리키는 가래나무가 이 절의 나무**로 보이지만, 本草 본문이 중국 `楸` 를 두고 쓴 글일 수 있으므로 한쪽으로 못 박지 않고 둘을 주석에 적었다. --- 전사본은 이 잎(043a) 발에 교감줄 `모 : 못(초간본)` 하나를 찍고, **043a 의 한글에서 `모` 가 있는 자리는 이 향명 하나뿐**이다(같은 잎 1.80 木槿의 `무궁화` 에는 `모` 가 없다). 그러므로 **자리잡기가 확실하다** — 初刊本은 `ᄀᆞ래나못겁질` 로 속격 `ㅅ` 을 붙여 읽는다. 041a 의 같은 짝이 둘 사이에서 못 가려진 것과 달리 이 자리는 가려진다.
譯 1.82.1 Source원문
性小寒, 味苦, 無毒. 殺三虫及皮膚虫, 煎膏付惡瘡疽瘻癕腫, 下部疳𧏾, 除膿血, 生肌膚, 長筋骨. 《本草》
Translation영역
Its nature is slightly cold, its flavour bitter, and it is without toxicity. It kills the three worms and the worms of the skin; decocted into a paste and applied, it treats malign sores, ulcer, fistula and abscess swelling, and gan erosion of the lower body; it removes pus and blood, generates flesh and skin, and lengthens sinew and bone.
Clinical note임상 주석
The whole of this indication list is external — 煎膏付, decocted into a paste and applied — and that is how the drug should be read. Juglans bark and husk carry juglone, a naphthoquinone with genuine antifungal, antibacterial and larvicidal activity, and black walnut husk preparations are still sold on exactly that basis for skin fungal conditions. 皮膚虫, the worms of the skin, covers dermatophyte infection and scabies, and a juglone-bearing bark paste is a plausible if unmeasured topical for the first; scabies is treated with permethrin or ivermectin and requires treating the household and the bedding.
Juglone is also a contact sensitiser and a staining agent — it is what blackens the hands of anyone who hulls walnuts — and prolonged application to broken skin is not without irritancy. 疽瘻, ulcer and fistula, and 癕腫, abscess swelling, need the same answer as elsewhere in this chapter: an abscess is drained and a chronic fistula is a surgical problem, and a paste that closes the surface over an undrained collection does harm.
譯 1.82.2 Source원문
處處有之, 多生山中. 採無時. 木性堅硬, 可爲器用. 《俗方》
Translation영역
It is found everywhere and grows chiefly in the mountains. It is gathered at any season. The wood is hard and firm in nature and will serve for making vessels.
Clinical note임상 주석
A 俗方 notice that bears on which tree this is. 木性堅硬, 可爲器用, the wood is hard and will serve for vessels, is an accurate and specific description of Juglans mandshurica, the Manchurian walnut — a mountain tree of the Korean interior whose close, hard timber was worked into chests, trays and gunstocks and valued accordingly. Catalpa bungei, the Chinese 楸, has soft light wood that is not used that way. The Korean gloss and the Korean supply notice agree with each other against the Chinese reading of the headword, which is the pattern of this chapter's most useful 俗方 passages.
1.83 Photinia Leaf 石南葉
唐 imported
譯 1.83.1 Source원문
主筋骨皮膚風, 養腎强隂, 療脚弱.
Translation영역
It governs wind in the sinews, bones and skin, nourishes the kidney and strengthens the yin, and heals weakness of the legs.
Clinical note임상 주석
The identification of this drug is where the hazard lies, and the book's own description settles it — in the safer direction.
石南 or 石楠 in Chinese materia medica is the leaf of Photinia serrulata, a Rosaceae tree, and that is what the next passage describes. But 석남 in Korean has also named 만병초, Rhododendron brachycarpum, and reading this headword as a rhododendron would be a serious error: Rhododendron leaves carry grayanotoxins, which bind persistently to voltage-gated sodium channels and produce the syndrome of mad honey poisoning — nausea, vomiting, salivation, dizziness, profound bradycardia, hypotension, syncope and atrioventricular block. Korean and Turkish case series are substantial, and the 만병초 tea drunk as a folk remedy for arthritis and hypertension is a recurring cause of it. Treatment is atropine and fluids, with cardiac monitoring.
Photinia serrulata leaf carries no grayanotoxin. It is a minor drug with the tonic and anti-rheumatic indications given here, no prescription in the formulary of this site, and no comparable toxicity. Since the next passage excludes the rhododendron on a morphological character, this entry can be read as the Rosaceae leaf — but the Korean name is a live trap, and anyone sourcing 석남 in Korea should establish which plant is in the packet before dispensing it.
療脚弱, healing weakness of the legs, and 養腎强隂 are the tonic indications. Progressive leg weakness is a neurological presentation — radiculopathy, myelopathy, peripheral neuropathy, myopathy, motor neurone disease — and warrants examination rather than a tonic.
譯 1.83.2 Source원문
此藥生終南山石上, 如枇杷葉無毛, 猪脂炒用. 《入門》
Translation영역
This drug grows on the rocks of Mount Jongnam; it is like a loquat leaf but without hairs, and it is parched with pork fat for use.
Clinical note임상 주석
如枇杷葉無毛 — like a loquat leaf but without hairs — is the character that decides the identification, and it decides it against the rhododendron. Photinia serrulata has leathery, oblong, glabrous leaves of about the size and shape of a loquat leaf, and the resemblance is a standing one in the Chinese literature. Rhododendron brachycarpum leaves are also leathery and loquat-like in outline, but their undersides carry a dense rusty-brown indumentum that is impossible to miss on handling. The three characters 無毛, without hairs, therefore exclude the grayanotoxin-bearing plant, and they do it on the single most reliable field character available. This is the §3.6 pattern at its most useful: the book's own description overruling what a later reader would make of the name.
生終南山石上, growing on the rocks of Mount Zhongnan, names the mountain south of Chang'an and is of a piece with the 唐 mark — an imported drug identified by its Chinese locality. 猪脂炒, parched with pork fat, is an unusual processing in this chapter; fat-frying is used for drugs intended to enter and moisten, and it appears again at nothing else in my share.
1.84 Chaulmoogra Seed 大風子
譯 1.84.1 Source원문
性𤍠, 味甘. 主癘風疥癩瘡癬, 殺虫. 多服燥痰傷血.
Translation영역
Its nature is hot and its flavour sweet. It governs pestilential wind, scabies, leprosy, sores and ringworm, and it kills worms. Taken in quantity it dries the phlegm and damages the blood.
Clinical note임상 주석
This is the most historically weighty entry in my share, and the note has to carry both halves of it: what this seed was, and what has replaced it.
大風子 is the seed of Hydnocarpus — chaulmoogra — and its oil was, for something close to two thousand years in Asia and from the 1850s in Western medicine, the only treatment for leprosy that anyone had. The name says so: 大風, the great wind, is the classical Chinese name for the disease, and 癘風 and 癩 in this line are the same disease again. Chaulmoogra oil and the ethyl esters of its hydnocarpic and chaulmoogric acids were given by mouth, by intramuscular injection and intradermally into lesions; the injections were painful, the oral dose nauseating, and the results partial at best. It was nonetheless the standard of care in the leprosaria of Hawai'i, India, the Philippines and Korea into the 1940s, and there is a real pharmacological basis for it — the cyclopentenyl fatty acids have demonstrable activity against Mycobacterium leprae.
None of that is current, and the change is one of the great successes in medicine. Promin, the first sulfone, was used at Carville in 1941; dapsone followed, then rifampicin and clofazimine. Since 1981 the WHO standard has been multidrug therapy — rifampicin, dapsone and clofazimine for multibacillary disease, rifampicin and dapsone for paucibacillary — taken for six or twelve months. Leprosy is curable. The drugs are supplied free of charge by the WHO to every endemic country, a patient is rendered non-infectious within days of the first dose, and single-dose rifampicin post-exposure prophylaxis is now offered to contacts. What remains difficult is not the cure but the nerve damage already done at diagnosis, which is why early detection matters, and the management of type 1 and type 2 reactions, which need corticosteroids. No one should be treated for leprosy with a seed oil, and anyone with the anaesthetic skin patch, the thickened nerve or the nodular infiltration that suggests it should be referred for slit-skin smear and biopsy at once.
The social half of this history is worth a line of its own. Leprosy carried an isolation and a stigma out of all proportion to its contagiousness: compulsory segregation laws, separated families, and in Korea the Sorokdo colony, where patients were confined from 1916 and subjected, under the Japanese administration and after, to forced labour and forced sterilisation and abortion. Korean survivors won state compensation in litigation concluded in the 2010s. The stigma long outlived the untreatable disease, and it is part of why case detection is still delayed in endemic areas. A clinician reading this entry should know that the word on the page named a condition whose worst injuries were administrative.
多服燥痰傷血, taken in quantity it dries the phlegm and damages the blood, is the book's own dose caution, and it is a fair description of what the oral oil did: chaulmoogra was limited in practice by nausea, vomiting and intolerance long before it was limited by efficacy.
譯 1.84.2 Source원문
入丸藥去殼, 紙槌去油; 外塗帶油. 《入門》
Translation영역
For putting into pills the shell is removed and the oil pounded out in paper; for external application the oil is kept.
Clinical note임상 주석
A one-line processing instruction that encodes the whole therapeutic problem of this drug. The oil is the active principle and the oil is the intolerable part, so the book separates the two routes: de-oil the seed for internal use, keep the oil for the surface. 紙槌去油, pounding in paper to blot out the oil, is the standard way of defatting an oily seed in this pharmacy — the same operation is specified for 巴豆 at 1.58 — and it reduces both the purgative violence and the nausea.
It is worth noting that twentieth-century chaulmoogra practice arrived at the same division by a different road. The crude oil could not be tolerated by mouth in therapeutic amounts; the answer was to separate the fatty acids and esterify them, giving the injectable ethyl esters that were used until the sulfones arrived. The Bogam's instinct — that the oil must be managed differently depending on where it is going — was right, and the four prescriptions carrying this drug in the formulary of this site are consistent with it.
1.85 Dragon's Blood 血竭
譯 1.85.1 Source원문
主一切惡瘡疥癬, 療金瘡, 止血定痛, 生肌. 但性急, 不可多用, 反能引膿.
Translation영역
It governs malign sores and scabies and ringworm of every kind, heals metal wounds, checks bleeding, settles pain and generates flesh. But its nature is urgent; it must not be used in quantity, for it will instead draw pus.
Clinical note임상 주석
血竭 is dragon's blood, a red resin, and it is still in use: twenty-eight prescriptions in the formulary of this site carry it, and the external haemostatic and analgesic powders of current Chinese practice — 七厘散 above all — are built on it. The uses given here are the uses it kept, all of them on the surface: wounds, sores, bleeding, pain, the generation of granulation tissue.
Its botanical source is genuinely plural and the materia medica of this site records only one of the candidates. The entry there carries Daemonoropis Resina, the resin of the rattan palm Daemonorops draco of the Malay archipelago, which is the article the Chinese trade standardised on and the one the Chinese pharmacopoeia specifies. But the name has also covered the resin of Dracaena cinnabari from Socotra and Dracaena cochinchinensis from Yunnan and Vietnam — the latter now an official substitute in China — and in the Americas that of Croton lechleri. Which resin reached sixteenth-century Korea cannot be settled from this entry, and the next passage shows the compiler worrying about exactly that question.
但性急, 不可多用, 反能引膿 is the most interesting sentence in the section. Its nature is urgent, it must not be used in quantity, for it will instead draw pus — the book is saying that a drug given to close a wound will, overused, make it suppurate. That is a real observation about resinous powders packed into a wound: an excess of insoluble particulate material in a cavity is a foreign body, it obstructs drainage, and it promotes rather than prevents infection. Modern wound care would say the same thing in different words. It also means the entry contains its own dose limit, which few in this chapter do.
金瘡, a metal wound, is a penetrating or incised traumatic wound; it needs irrigation, exploration, closure where appropriate, tetanus prophylaxis and antibiotics by indication. A haemostatic resin has a place in the field and none in place of that.
譯 1.85.2 Source원문
一名麒麟竭, 乃麒麟樹之津液結成, 色紅. 凢使味微醎甘, 作梔子氣, 嚼之不爛如蠟者佳; 味醎甚作腥氣者非也. 另硏入藥用. 《入門》
Translation영역
One name for it is girin-gal, and it is formed of the congealed exudate of the girin tree, red in colour. Whenever it is used: the kind that is faintly salty-sweet in flavour, that smells of gardenia, and that does not crumble on chewing but is like wax, is the good kind; the kind that is strongly salty and smells rank is not the genuine article. It is ground separately for putting into medicine.
Clinical note임상 주석
This is an adulteration test, and it is a good one — and the counterfeit it describes is worth identifying. Four characters are given for the genuine resin: faintly salty-sweet, a gardenia smell, waxy and not crumbling on the tooth, red. Three of the four are consistent with a true plant resin, which softens rather than powders between the teeth and smells faintly aromatic.
The rejected article is 味醎甚作腥氣, strongly salty and smelling rank or fishy, and 腥 is the word this book uses for animal smells. A strongly saline, animal-smelling red substance sold as dragon's blood points at the obvious substitution: lac, the resinous secretion of the lac insect, or a blood-and-mineral fake. That is a pointed thing for the compiler to warn against three lines before printing 紫礦 — lac — as this section's own leaf, and it shows that the two were being confused in the trade the book was buying from.
另硏, ground separately, is the standing instruction for a resin, which cakes and will not mill with other drugs. 梔 is the transcription's graph for the gardenia of 1.34.
1.85.1 Lac Resin 紫礦
譯 1.85.1.1 Translation영역
It treats damp itching sores, scabies and ringworm.
譯 1.85.1.2 Source원문
亦木脂液結成, 形若爛石. 與血竭同條, 而功效全別. 《入門》
Translation영역
It too is formed of congealed tree-resin exudate, and its form is like crumbled stone. It stands in the same entry as dragon's blood, but its effects are entirely different.
Clinical note임상 주석
Whether this substance is a tree resin or an insect product is a question the Bogam answers one way and later knowledge answers the other, and I cannot settle it from this text — so both are recorded.
The book is explicit: 亦木脂液結成, it too is formed of congealed tree-resin exudate. There is no insect anywhere in the entry. Against that, 紫礦 — also written 紫鉚 and 紫膠 — is in later and current identification lac: the resin secreted by the scale insect Kerria lacca on its host trees, the raw material of shellac and of a red dye. The identification as an insect product is secure outside this book, and the 形若爛石, like crumbled stone, of this passage is a fair description of stick lac broken off the twig.
What makes the disagreement worth recording rather than resolving is that the compiler was not systematically blind to insect origins. Three sections on, at 1.86, the Bogam states plainly that 白蠟 is 虫蠟, insect wax, made by a small insect feeding on the sap of a tree — the same relation, between the same kind of scale insect and the same kind of host, correctly described. So within twenty lines the book gets one insect-on-tree product right and calls the other a tree resin. I take that as evidence that the two substances reached Korea through different channels and with different information attached, and not as evidence of a general blind spot.
與血竭同條, 而功效全別 — it stands in the same entry as dragon's blood but its effects are entirely different — is a sentence worth marking for a reason beyond pharmacology. 同條 occurs exactly once in the whole of the Decoctions chapter, here. It is the book telling the reader, in its own vocabulary, that two names are sharing one 條, one item of the list. That bears on the chapter's count and is set out in the report.
1.86 Insect Wax 白蠟
`무프레나모진` 은 `무프레` + `나모`(나무) + `진`(津)이다. `프 → 푸` 의 원순모음화로 `무프레 → 물푸레` 가 되어 **`물푸레나무 진`** 이고, `물푸레나무` 는 *Fraxinus* 의 우리말 이름이다. **이 향명이 본문과 어긋난다 — 그리고 그 어긋남이 이 절의 자료다.** 入門 구절은 이것을 `一名虫蠟`(한 이름이 벌레 밀) 이라 하고 `冬靑樹上細虫食樹液而成者`(동청나무에 붙은 작은 벌레가 나무 즙을 먹어 이룬 것)라 하여 **벌레가 낸 것**이라 적는데, 향명은 **나무의 진**이라 한다. 어느 쪽이 寶鑑의 말인가 — **둘 다다.** 蟲部 1.1.3 白蠟의 俗方 구절이 `又有白蠟出於兩南及濟州, 乃水靑木脂也. 作燭甚明, 非此白蠟也`(또 兩南과 제주에서 나는 白蠟이 있는데 水靑木의 진이다. 초를 만들면 매우 밝다. 이 白蠟이 아니다)로 적고, `水靑木` 이 바로 물푸레나무이며 `作燭` 과 제주가 이 절의 俗方 구절과 그대로 맞물린다. 곧 **蟲部는 이것을 나무 진으로, 木部는 벌레 밀로 적어 두었고 두 기록이 서로를 가리킨다.** 향명은 우리 쪽 俗方 전통을 담고 있고 入門 구절은 중국 쪽 기록을 담고 있다 — 한쪽으로 못 박지 않는다. --- 전사본은 이 잎(043b) 발에 교감줄 **둘**을 찍고 둘 다 이 절의 것이다 — `모 : 못(초간본)` 은 이 향명의 `나모`(初刊本 `무프레나못진`)이고, 043b 의 한글은 이 향명뿐이므로 **자리잡기가 확실하다.** `淨 : 凈(초간본)` 은 아래 俗方 구절의 `明淨` 에 걸리며 그 구절의 `textual_note` 에 적었다. 같은 잎에 든 1.85 血竭ㆍ 1.85.1 紫礦과 다음 문 玉部의 머리글ㆍ玉屑에는 `모` 도 `淨` 도 없다.
譯 1.86.1 Source원문
生肌止血, 定痛接骨續筋, 補虛止咳, 止㵼潤肺藏, 厚腸胃, 殺勞虫.
Translation영역
It generates flesh and checks bleeding, settles pain, joins bone and knits sinew, supplements vacuity and checks cough, checks diarrhoea and moistens the lung viscus, thickens the intestines and stomach, and kills the taxation worm.
Clinical note임상 주석
The Bogam itself says this is not a plant product, and it says so in the next passage: 一名虫蠟, insect wax. The substance is Chinese insect wax — the hard white wax secreted by the scale insect Ericerus pela on the twigs of its host trees, chiefly Ligustrum lucidum, the 冬靑 of the next passage, and Fraxinus chinensis, which Chinese calls 白蠟樹, the white-wax tree. It is a real and distinct commodity from beeswax: much harder, higher-melting and brittle, and valued for exactly those properties in candles, polishes and as a stiffener for ointments. Sichuan and Yunnan supported a substantial insect-wax industry built on moving the insects between host trees each season.
Why, then, is it in the wood chapter? Because of the tree. The compiler files the wax with the host it is scraped from, exactly as he files 雷丸 at 1.66 with the bamboo its fungus grows on and 桑蠹虫 under the mulberry. The Korean gloss goes a step further and calls the substance the sap of the ash — the vernacular tradition read the white crust on the twigs as an exudate of the tree — and the 俗方 passage of the parallel entry in the insect chapter says the same thing in Chinese, 乃水靑木脂也. The placement in 木部 is therefore not a mistake to be corrected but the record of how the thing was understood, and the material reason for it is on the page.
One name, three substances, and they must not be run together. 白蠟 in the Decoctions chapter names (i) this insect wax of the ash and privet; (ii) the 蟲部 leaf 1.1.3 白蠟, which is bleached beeswax, made by sun-bleaching or water-washing the yellow wax 黃蠟 of 1.1.2; and (iii) the 金部 headword 錫, tin, whose entry says flatly 卽白蠟也 — the pewterer's name for the metal. The insect chapter's compiler saw the collision and disambiguated it in a 俗方 note that reaches across to this very section. A reader of the formulary should be aware of the problem: 白蠟 appears once there as an ingredient, five don of it stiffening the ringworm salve 馬豆膏, and which of the two waxes is meant cannot be decided from the recipe, since an ointment base is a plausible use for either. The record is left unlinked for that reason.
As to what it does: a hard wax applied to a wound is an occlusive dressing, and 生肌, generating flesh, and 定痛 are consistent with that. 殺勞虫, killing the taxation worm, and 補虛止咳 belong to the consumption — tuberculosis — complex, and nothing in this entry touches it; TB is diagnosed on sputum and treated with combination chemotherapy. 接骨續筋, joining bone and knitting sinew, is a claim for a plaster, and a fracture still needs reduction and immobilisation.
譯 1.86.2 Source원문
一名虫蠟. 冬靑樹上細虫食樹液而成者, 屬金, 專禀收歛堅凝之氣, 外科之要藥也. 得合歡皮良, 入長肉膏神效. 《入門》
Translation영역
One name for it is insect wax. It is what a fine insect on the evergreen tree makes by feeding on the tree's sap. It belongs to metal and purely receives the qi of astringing and of hard congealing, and it is an essential drug of external medicine. It goes well with mimosa bark, and put into flesh-growing salves it works marvellously.
Clinical note임상 주석
This is the passage that settles the substance, and it is remarkably accurate. 冬靑樹上細虫食樹液而成者 — made by a fine insect on the evergreen tree feeding on the tree's sap — is a correct account of the life of Ericerus pela: the nymphs settle on the twigs of Ligustrum lucidum or Fraxinus chinensis, feed on the phloem, and secrete the white wax that is scraped off and refined. 冬靑, the evergreen, is Ligustrum lucidum, and the Bogam names the right host.
屬金, 專禀收歛堅凝之氣 is the five-phase rationale, and for once it is doing descriptive work: 收歛, astringing, and 堅凝, hard congealing, are what the wax physically is — hard, high-melting and contracting as it sets — and the metal phase is assigned from those properties. 外科之要藥也, an essential drug of external medicine, is the correct placement of it, and it is the use that survived: insect wax stiffens plasters and gives an ointment body.
得合歡皮良, it goes well with mimosa bark, is a pairing note pointing at 1.54 合歡皮 of this chapter, the bark of Albizia julibrissin, which is itself a wound and fracture drug in this book. 長肉膏, flesh-growing salve, is the class of preparation both belong to. 歛 is the transcription's form of 斂.
譯 1.86.3 Source원문
在處有之, 濟州尤多産. 作燭明淨甚佳, 勝蜜蠟. 《俗方》
Translation영역
It is found wherever one is, and Cheju produces it in especial quantity. Made into candles it is bright and clear and very fine, better than beeswax.
Clinical note임상 주석
This is the passage that makes the Korean half of the record, and it is the one the insect chapter answers. 蟲部 1.1.3, the bleached-beeswax leaf, carries a 俗方 note of its own: 又有白蠟出於兩南及濟州, 乃水靑木脂也. 作燭甚明, 非此白蠟也 — there is also a 白蠟 produced in the two southern provinces and on Cheju, which is the resin of the 水靑木; made into candles it is very bright; it is not this 白蠟. Every element matches this passage — Cheju, the candles, the brightness, the comparison with beeswax — so the two 俗方 notices are a cross-reference between chapters, written by someone who had both entries in front of him and wanted the reader not to confuse them. It is the clearest instance in the Decoctions chapter of the compiler managing a homonym across two parts of his own book.
It also records a divergence the Korean tradition did not resolve. The insect chapter's 俗方 note and this section's Korean gloss both call the Cheju substance a tree resin, 水靑木脂 and 물푸레나무 진; the 入門 passage above calls it insect wax. Whether the thing actually gathered on Cheju and in Jeolla and Gyeongsang was insect wax from Ericerus pela on a Korean ash, or a genuine plant exudate, I cannot settle from these texts, and the report says so.
勝蜜蠟, better than beeswax, is a candle-maker's judgement rather than a physician's, and it is correct: insect wax burns with less smoke and holds its shape in heat far better than beeswax, which is why it was the premium candle material wherever it could be had.
About this translation 凡例
Base text: Donguibogam (東醫寶鑑, 1613 first edition), Decoctions and Medicinals, Volume 3, Woods chapter. The Chinese text follows the Kyujanggak transcription; where the first printing (初刊本) reads differently the transcription's reading is printed and the variant recorded in a textual note. Original character forms are retained, and the sixteenth-century Korean vernacular written inside the Chinese text is printed as the transcription gives it rather than silently dropped. The vernacular names (鄕名) are given in Unicode old Hangul converted from the Hanyang private-use encoding. Terminology follows Wiseman & Feng, A Practical Dictionary of Chinese Medicine. The book distinguishes 樗 from 椿 across three passages of a single entry and gives them different natures, so the two root barks are kept as separate drugs here and the formulas are routed by the graph the text prints. Several entries name drugs whose commercial substitutes have included cardiotoxic or hepatotoxic plants; the clinical notes say so, and say where the book's own grading rule does or does not protect against it. Translation and clinical notes are original to this site. — Eui Young (Justin) Chung, L.Ac., Dipl. O.M.