Formulas · Text · Donguibogam 東醫寶鑑

Jades

Okbu

한글 옥부 · Pinyin Yu Bu

Four stones from the sea and the jade mines, three of them imported

玉部

Four items, and the smallest chapter in the book: jade filings, crystal, coral and pearl. Three of the four carry the mark 唐 — imported, not gathered in Korea — and the one that does not is the pearl, which came from Korean waters. The chapter is where the Bogam's cosmopolitan edge shows: the entry for crystal quotes the Buddhist scriptures on the seven treasures, and the entry for jade gives a recipe for dissolving it into a liquid called jade broth, which it says is what the immortals meant by jade syrup. All four are ground to powder and levigated in water before use. Three of the four are given for the heart — crystal quiets the heart and stops fright palpitations, coral settles the heart and stops startling, pearl calms the heart spirit — while jade filings are for heat in the stomach, panting and fullness, and thirst.

1.1 Jade Filings 玉屑

唐 imported

1.1.1

Source원문

味甘平, 無毒. 除胃中𤍠, 喘息煩滿, 止渴. 屑如麻豆服之.

Translation영역

Sweet in flavour and balanced, without toxicity. It removes heat in the stomach, panting breath with vexing fullness, and stops thirst. Grind it to fragments the size of hemp seed or beans and take it.

Clinical note임상 주석

The 玉部 is four items long and opens with the one of them that is swallowed rather than applied, so the whole section is about getting an insoluble stone into a body. There is no separate 性 clause: 平, the balanced nature, is folded into 味甘平, which is one of the many places in this chapter where the nature is not given in the usual form and no 性味 field could be filled without inventing one.

Boncho 本草

1.1.2

Source원문

玉可以烏米酒及地楡酒化之爲水, 亦可以葱漿水消之. 可餌, 屑如麻豆服, 則滓穢當完出也.

Translation영역

Jade can be transformed into water with black-rice wine or with sanguisorba wine, and it can also be dissolved with scallion-and-rice water. It may be eaten; ground to fragments the size of hemp seed or beans and taken, the dregs and filth come out entire.

Clinical note임상 주석

化之爲水, transformed into water, is the alchemical kitchen rather than pharmacology: nephrite and jadeite are silicates and nothing in rice wine, sanguisorba wine or rice water will dissolve them. The last clause is the honest part of the passage — 滓穢當完出 describes what in fact becomes of a bean-sized mineral fragment that has been swallowed. 滓穢 has been read two ways, as the body's own dregs being cleared out and as the jade itself passing through undigested; the second is what the sentence describes, and the first is what the recipe is meant to promise.

Boncho 本草

1.1.3

Source원문

玉屑一升, 地楡草一升, 稻米一升, 取白露三升, 同置銅器中, 煮米熟, 絞取汁. 玉屑化爲水, 名曰玉液, 所謂神仙玉漿也. 《本草》

Translation영역

Jade filings one seung, sanguisorba herb one seung, rice one seung; take three seung of white dew, put them together in a copper vessel, boil until the rice is cooked, and wring out the liquid. The jade filings have turned to water: it is called jade fluid, what is spoken of as the divine immortals' jade broth.

Clinical note임상 주석

An immortality recipe rather than a treatment. The quantities are kept as the book gives them — one seung each of filings, sanguisorba and rice to three seung of dew. 白露 is dew, which the 水部 gathers as a water in its own right. A copper vessel is specified, where the Preface on Decoctions warns certain drugs away from copper and iron. The jade does not dissolve; what is wrung out is a decoction of rice and sanguisorba, and the filings are still filings.

Boncho 本草

1.2 Rock Crystal 玻瓈

唐 imported

1.2.1

Source원문

性寒一云冷, 味辛, 無毒. 安心, 止驚悸, 明目, 磨瞖障.

Translation영역

Cold in nature one text says chilly, acrid in flavour, without toxicity. It quiets the heart, stops fright palpitations, brightens the eyes and grinds away screens and obstructions of the eye.

Clinical note임상 주석

磨瞖障, to grind away the screen and the obstruction, is corneal opacity and cataract. The verb is worth keeping literal: the drug was a fine abrasive powder and the action attributed to it was mechanical.

Boncho 本草

1.2.2

Source원문

此西國之寳也. 佛經云七寳, 謂金ㆍ銀ㆍ瑠璃ㆍ車渠ㆍ馬腦ㆍ玻瓈ㆍ真珠是也. 《本草》

Translation영역

This is a treasure of the western countries. The Buddhist scriptures speak of the Seven Treasures, namely gold, silver, lapis lazuli, giant clam shell, agate, crystal and pearl.

Clinical note임상 주석

The Seven Treasures (七寶, Sanskrit sapta-ratna). Taken in the order given: 金 gold, 銀 silver, 瑠璃 vaiḍūrya (usually read as lapis lazuli, sometimes as beryl), 車渠 — also written 硨磲 — musāragalva, the shell of the giant clam, 馬腦, also written 瑪瑙, aśmagarbha, agate or carnelian, 玻瓈 sphaṭika, rock crystal, and 真珠 pearl. The list is not fixed across the sūtras, which give different orders and substitute 赤珠 or 玫瑰 for one or another member; the Bencao's version is the one printed here and no attempt is made to assign it to a particular scripture. What matters for this chapter is that four of the seven stand as drug headings in these two 部: 金 and 銀 open the 金部 as 金屑 and 銀屑, and 玻瓈 and 真珠 are the second and fourth items of the 玉部. 瑠璃 and 車渠 have no heading in the Bogam. A Buddhist list of precious things is in a pharmacopoeia because precious things were drugs.

Boncho 本草

1.2.3

Source원문

入藥, 細硏水飛用. 《入門》

Translation영역

For use in medicine, grind it fine and levigate it in water.

Clinical note임상 주석

水飛, levigation, is the standard preparation for every mineral in these two 部 that is to be taken internally: the powder is ground under water, the fines are poured off with the water and dried, and the coarse grit is left behind. It is the step that separates a fine insoluble powder from an abrasive one. Rock crystal is quartz, silicon dioxide, chemically inert and insoluble; nothing is absorbed from it, and whatever the preparation was doing it was not doing it by being taken up.

Immun 入門

1.3 Coral 珊瑚

唐 imported

1.3.1

Source원문

性平, 味甘, 無毒. 鎭心, 止驚, 明目, 去目瞖, 止鼻衂. 製法同上.

Translation영역

Balanced in nature, sweet in flavour, without toxicity. It settles the heart, stops fright, brightens the eyes, removes screens of the eye and stops nosebleed. The method of preparation is the same as above.

Clinical note임상 주석

製法同上 points back to 玻瓈's 細硏水飛 — the Bogam declining to repeat a processing instruction it has just given, which is one reason the four items of the 玉部 have to be read in order rather than consulted singly.

Boncho 本草

1.3.2

Source원문

生大海水底, 有枝幹如樹狀, 色紅潤. 漁人網得之. 《本草》

Translation영역

It grows on the floor of the great sea, with branches and a trunk in the shape of a tree, red and lustrous in colour. Fishermen take it in their nets.

Clinical note임상 주석

Precious coral is the calcium carbonate skeleton of a colonial anthozoan of Corallium and its relatives, not a plant, and the branching red tree the section describes is the skeleton. Pharmacologically it is chalk, and the settling and fright-stopping indications it shares with pearl, crystal and the metals belong to the class logic of heavy mineral drugs rather than to anything coral does. Two practical points for a reader today: red coral stocks are depleted and Corallium is regulated under CITES, and ground coral taken internally supplies nothing that calcium carbonate from any other source would not.

Boncho 本草

1.4 Pearl 真珠

Medicinal entry

1.4.1

Source원문

性寒, 無毒. 鎭安心神, 明目, 駐顔色, 療耳聾, 治手足皮膚逆臚.

Translation영역

Cold in nature, without toxicity. It settles and quiets the heart spirit, brightens the eyes, holds the complexion, treats deafness, and treats hangnails of the skin of the hands and feet.

Clinical note임상 주석

逆臚 is the ragged skin that lifts away at the nail fold — a hangnail. 駐顔色, to hold the complexion where it is, is a cosmetic indication, and pearl powder is still sold on it. No flavour is recorded for this item, only 性寒.

Boncho 本草

1.4.2

Source원문

生於大海蚌蛤之中, 石決明亦有之. 入藥須用新完未經鑚綴者爲佳.

Translation영역

It grows inside the clams and mussels of the great sea, and abalone has them too. For use in medicine it should be new and whole; those not yet drilled and strung are best.

Clinical note임상 주석

未經鑚綴 — not yet drilled and strung. The pharmacy point is that a pearl which has been a bead has been bored, waxed and handled, and the Bogam wants the raw article. 石決明 is abalone shell, which carries nacre and sometimes a blister pearl; it has its own heading in the 蟲部.

Boncho 本草

1.4.3

Source원문

入藥須久硏如粉, 方堪服餌. 《本草》

Translation영역

For use in medicine it must be ground long, to a powder, before it will do to be taken.

Clinical note임상 주석

久硏, ground long, is the whole of this drug's pharmacy. Pearl is aragonite, calcium carbonate laid down in sheets with the protein conchiolin between them; it is hard and insoluble, and grinding is the only thing that can be done to it. Internally it supplies calcium carbonate and a little protein. The point to carry away from this section, though, is the field that is not here: 真珠 is the one item in the 玉部 that is not marked 唐. The other three are all imported, and the absence of the mark here is positive evidence that pearls were had from Korean waters — the 唐 notation read as a map of the sixteenth-century drug trade rather than as a structural oddity.

Boncho 本草

About this translation 凡例

Base text: Donguibogam (東醫寶鑑, 1613 first edition), Decoctions and Medicinals, Volume 3, Jades 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. The sixteenth-century Korean vernacular names (鄕名) are printed as the transcription gives them, in Unicode old Hangul converted from the Hanyang private-use encoding. Terminology follows Wiseman & Feng, A Practical Dictionary of Chinese Medicine. Translation and clinical notes are original to this site. — Eui Young (Justin) Chung, L.Ac., Dipl. O.M.