Formulas · Text · Donguibogam 東醫寶鑑
The largest chapter of the Decoctions, and the one where reading it honestly means saying most often that what it prescribes cannot be used. It opens with the fossil bone and musk, then spends seventeen entries on the ox and eleven on the bear; ivory, two glues, five milks and the sea otter; then the horse in eighteen parts and the four deer the book keeps carefully apart — nok, mi, jang and gi, with antler, fat, bone and flesh as their four separate headwords. Sheep in seventeen, antelope, rhinoceros; the tiger in thirteen and the leopard in six; the leopard cat, the rabbit, the dog in fourteen and the pig in twenty-seven — the two largest single animals in the book. Then wild boar, donkey, mule, fox, otter, badger, raccoon dog, fur seal, dhole, wolf, camel, macaque, hedgehog, three rats, a drum skin, a brush burnt to ash, and the flesh of an animal struck by lightning.
Forty-nine Korean glosses, and they do the identifying the characters cannot. The clearest is 족져비 at 黃鼠: the characters say yellow rat and would file it with the rodents, the gloss makes it a weasel, and the book's own 卽鼠狼也 agrees. 시러손 gives the lynx at 土豹, which the same entry insists is a species of its own and not a leopard that changed. 한새, 놀의ᄲᅧ and 톳긔머리 fix the stork, the roe deer and the rabbit. Where the glosses cannot settle it they are left unsettled, and fourteen entries say so: the badger, raccoon dog and marten invert the Chinese convention and the book concedes the tangle itself — 猯貛貉三種大抵相類而形色差別也, the three kinds are much alike and differ only in form and colour. Two glosses resolve a word and not an animal, and two resolve an animal the word has lost: at 獺肝 the Korean 멍우릐 does not survive into modern Korean, yet the species is certain because the book states it.
This is the most legally fraught chapter in the Donguibogam, and the notes separate crime from scarcity rather than painting the whole door. Tiger bone, rhinoceros horn, musk, bear bile, ivory, leopard, otter, fur seal and macaque are prohibited, and where a substitute exists the note names it, because a refusal without one is useless: synthetic muscone for musk — which is an ingredient in 238 of this corpus's prescriptions — ursodeoxycholic acid for bear bile, water buffalo horn for rhinoceros, and for tiger bone the book's own 虎頭骨或黃犬頭骨, which offers dog bone in its place. For ivory there is nothing to substitute, and saying so is the point: it is dentine, and the splinter it is meant to draw out is a job for ultrasound. Against that, deer antler and its glue, ass-hide glue and the five milks are current pharmacopoeial medicines or food, and the notes say so plainly. Rabies runs through the dog, fox, wolf, dhole and raccoon dog; Taenia solium, Trichinella and hepatitis E through the twenty-seven pig parts; chronic wasting disease through the deer, where the note states what cooking does not do to a prion; Hantaan virus through the three rats, named for the river where it was isolated.
1.1 Dragon Bone 龍骨
`뇽의ᄲᅧ` 는 `뇽`(龍) + 속격 `의` + `ᄲᅧ`(뼈)이고 지금 말 `용의 뼈` 로 그대로 이어진다 — 어두 ㄴ 이 ㅇ 으로 바뀌고(뇽>용) 된소리 첫소리 `ᄲ` 이 `ㅃ` 으로 굳은 것뿐이다. 이 절은 唐材이면서 향명도 있는 다섯(龍骨ㆍ野駝脂ㆍ獮猴ㆍ蝎ㆍ 蘇方木) 가운데 하나다 — 중국에서 들여오는 약인데도 우리말 이름이 붙어 있다. 향명이 한자를 글자대로 옮긴 것이므로 이 이름은 실물에 대해 아무것도 더 말해 주지 않는다. 이 약이 무엇인지는 향명이 아니라 약재표가 말한다(화석 뼈).
譯 1.1.1 Source원문
性平一云微寒, 味甘, 無毒一云小毒. 養精神, 定魂魄, 安五藏, 逐邪氣, 安心神, 止瀉痢, 療夢泄, 治一切失血, 收汗縮尿. 《本草》
Translation영역
Its nature is balanced one says slightly cold, its flavour sweet, and it is without toxicity one says slightly toxic. It nourishes the essence-spirit, settles the ethereal and corporeal souls, quiets the five viscera, expels evil qi, quiets the heart-spirit, checks diarrhoea and dysentery, treats dream emission, treats every kind of blood loss, and gathers in sweat and shrinks the urine.
Clinical note임상 주석
**The chapter opens on a fossil.** 龍骨 is not the bone of any living animal: it is mineralised bone dug out of Pleistocene deposits, and the materia medica of this site records it as Fossilia Ossis Mastodi — mastodon, rhinoceros, deer and other large mammals of the Chinese loess and cave beds. The entry is marked 唐, bought in from China, which is where the deposits are; it is one of only five sections in the whole of the Decoctions chapters that carries both the import mark and a Korean gloss.
The indications fall into two groups that do not sit together comfortably. The first is sedative and spirit-settling — 養精神, 定魂魄, 安心神, 逐邪氣 — and the second is astringent: 止瀉痢 checking diarrhoea, 收汗 gathering in sweat, 縮尿 shrinking the urine, 療夢泄 treating involuntary emission, 治一切失血 treating every kind of blood loss. The fourth passage names the second group outright, 龍骨澁劑也, dragon bone is an astringent, and that is the honest reading of the whole set: everything that leaks is to be stopped.
This is one of the chapter's heavily used drugs — the formulary of this site carries it in sixty prescriptions — and the sochu records a disagreement in both of the opening judgements, 平 against 微寒 for the nature and 無毒 against 小毒 for the toxicity.
**Modern reading.** Chemically this is apatite and calcium carbonate with the organic matrix long gone, which is to say powdered rock. There is no sedative, antidiarrhoeal or haemostatic pharmacology beyond what any calcium salt provides, and mineral drugs of this kind carry a real risk the text could not know about: fossil bone from sedimentary deposits concentrates lead, arsenic, fluoride and aluminium, and there is no standardised limit on a drug dug out of the ground. Two further points belong here. The excavation of fossil bone for the drug trade has destroyed Chinese palaeontological sites on a large scale, and the vertebrate material lost is not recoverable. And the trade in "fossil ivory" and fossil bone is one of the established laundering routes for fresh elephant ivory, which is the subject of 1.5 below — a buyer who accepts fossil provenance without documentation is part of that problem.
For the indications: chronic diarrhoea, night sweats, nocturnal enuresis and abnormal bleeding each need a cause found rather than an astringent, and 治一切失血 — every kind of blood loss — is the kind of blanket claim that delays the diagnosis of a bleeding source.
譯 1.1.2 Source원문
凡入藥, 五色具者良, 黃白色者次, 黑色者下. 《本草》
Translation영역
Whenever it is put into a medicine, the one bearing all five colours is best, the yellow-white is second, and the black is lowest.
Clinical note임상 주석
A grading by colour, and it is a grading of provenance rather than of chemistry: the mottled, many-coloured pieces come from a particular kind of mineralised deposit, and the black ones are stained by the iron and manganese of a different one. The distinction is real in the sense that the buyer could see it, and useless in the sense that it does not track any constituent that acts.
譯 1.1.3 Source원문
作白地錦文, 舐之着舌者良. 《本草》
Translation영역
The good one makes a brocade pattern on a white ground, and sticks to the tongue when licked.
Clinical note임상 주석
**This is a correct test, and it is worth understanding why it works.** Fossil bone keeps the microscopic porosity of the original Haversian canals; when the tongue touches it the pores draw water by capillary action and the piece grips. Rock without that structure, and the modern substitute of plain limestone or plaster, does not stick. The 錦文, brocade pattern, is the sectioned bone structure itself. So the buyer's two tests — the pattern and the tongue — are both reading real histology, which is the one thing in this entry that modern knowledge confirms rather than contradicts. Licking an unknown mineral drug is of course not a test to carry forward: the same porosity holds whatever leached into the deposit.
譯 1.1.4 Source원문
龍骨澁劑也, 澁可去脫而固氣. 《湯液》
Translation영역
Dragon bone is an astringent; astringency can remove falling-out and secure the qi.
Clinical note임상 주석
This is the entry's own summary of itself and it comes from 湯液本草, Wang Haogu's work on drug actions, which is the source this volume is named after. 脫 is prolapse and loss — rectal prolapse, uterine descent, incontinence, leaking of any kind — and 固氣 is securing what is escaping. Classifying the drug by action rather than by indication is the later and more useful habit, and it makes clear that the long list of indications in the first passage is one claim, not twelve.
譯 1.1.5 Source원문
火煆細硏, 或酒煮焙乾用, 採無時. 《本草》
Translation영역
Calcine it in fire and grind it fine, or boil it in wine and bake it dry for use; it may be gathered at any season.
Clinical note임상 주석
火煆, calcination, drives off carbonate and water and leaves a friable mass that will grind; it is the standard processing for a hard mineral drug and it is also, incidentally, the step that would destroy any organic contaminant while concentrating the metallic ones. 採無時, gathered at any season, is the giveaway that this is not a biological material — every plant and animal drug in these chapters carries a season.
1.1.1 Dragon Tooth 齒
譯 1.1.1.1 Source원문
性平一云大寒, 味澁. 鎭心, 安魂魄, 療癲癎驚狂鬼魅. 《本草》
Translation영역
Its nature is balanced one says greatly cold and its flavour astringent. It settles the heart, quiets the ethereal and corporeal souls, and treats withdrawal-epilepsy, fright mania and demon bewitchment.
Clinical note임상 주석
龍齒 is the fossil tooth from the same deposits as the bone and the materia medica of this site records it separately, as Dens Draconis, because the formulary uses the two differently — the bone goes into the astringent prescriptions and the tooth into the spirit-settling ones. The sochu disagreement is wider here than for the bone: 平 against 大寒, balanced against greatly cold, which is as far apart as two readings of one drug get in this book.
癲癎 is epilepsy with the falling fit, 驚狂 is fright mania, and 鬼魅 is bewitchment. The grouping is consistent — everything the tooth treats is a disorder of consciousness and behaviour.
**Modern reading.** This is fossil dentine and enamel, which is to say hydroxyapatite, and the heavy-metal and fluoride caution at 1.1 applies with more force: enamel is the tissue that concentrates fluoride in life and the deposit adds more. Epilepsy is diagnosed on history, EEG and imaging and controlled with anticonvulsants; a first seizure in an adult needs neuroimaging to exclude a structural lesion. Acute agitation with altered consciousness is a presentation that needs infection, metabolic derangement, intoxication and intracranial causes excluded before it is called anything else.
譯 1.1.1.2 Source원문
鎭驚安魂, 治魂飛揚者, 宜用龍齒. 《本事》
Translation영역
For settling fright and quieting the ethereal soul, and for treating the one whose ethereal soul flies upward and scatters, dragon tooth is the one to use.
Clinical note임상 주석
本事方 is Xu Shuwei's Puji benshi fang, and this passage is the reason the tooth has its own entry rather than being folded into the bone. 魂飛揚, the ethereal soul flying up and scattering, is the classical description of the state in which a person cannot hold their attention or their sleep — the startled waking, the racing mind, the dreams that will not stop. Xu Shuwei is making a drug selection, not just adding an indication: of the two fossil drugs, this is the one for that presentation.
1.1.2 Freshwater Sponge 紫梢花
譯 1.1.2.1 Source원문
性温, 味甘. 主陽衰隂痿. 《入門》
Translation영역
Its nature is warm and its flavour sweet. It governs decline of yang and wilting of the yin organ.
Clinical note임상 주석
隂痿 is erectile failure and 陽衰 is the decline of yang that is held to cause it. The whole indication is sexual, and this leaf hangs under 龍骨 for the reason the next passage gives rather than for anything it shares with fossil bone.
**Modern reading.** Erectile dysfunction in a man over forty is a cardiovascular sign before it is a sexual complaint: it is associated with endothelial dysfunction and often precedes a coronary event by several years, so it earns blood pressure, lipids, fasting glucose, a medication review and a conversation about smoking rather than a warming tonic. Of the drug itself, see the next passage.
譯 1.1.2.2 Source원문
龍於水邊遺瀝, 値流楂則粘着, 狀如蒲槌, 色微靑黃, 復似灰色, 號紫梢花. 《本草》
Translation영역
Where the dragon leaves its dripping at the water's edge it meets drifting raft-wood and sticks to it. Its shape is like a cattail mallet, its colour faintly blue-yellow and again resembling ash-grey, and it is called 紫梢花.
Clinical note임상 주석
**This is the entry explaining why the leaf is here, and it is the explanation that has to be read carefully.** The classifier has seen a real object — something greyish green, club-shaped like a cattail head, growing on sunken wood at a river margin — and has accounted for it as the dragon's spilled seed, which is also why the indication is sexual and why the leaf is filed under dragon bone. The object is not in doubt even though the dragon is: the materia medica of this site records 紫梢花 as Spongilla, the freshwater sponge, and the description fits it closely. Freshwater sponges and their overwintering gemmule masses encrust submerged branches and timber, they are grey-green from symbiotic algae, and a colony on a stick is exactly a 蒲槌, a cattail mallet. So the name and the thing diverge — the name says dragon and the thing is an animal colony — and the book's own description is what closes the gap.
**The lesson for the reader is the general one.** Where this book gives a physical description, the description is usually reliable and the aetiology usually is not. The grading tests at 1.1 work; the dragon does not exist. Keep them apart.
**Modern reading.** Sponge skeletons are siliceous spicules in a collagen matrix, and powdered spicules are a mechanical irritant to skin, eye and airway; the historical external uses of this drug for genital application were almost certainly working by counter-irritation. There is no pharmacology for erectile failure here. Not in use; the formulary of this site carries it in a single prescription.
1.2 Musk 麝香
`ᄇᆡᄲᅩᆨ` 은 16세기의 `배꼽` 이고 지금 말로 곧장 이어진다(ᄇᆡ>배, ᄲᅩᆨ>꼽). 본문이 `臍中有香`(배꼽 속에 향이 있다, 1.2.1)이라 하고 `其香正在麝隂莖前皮內` (그 향은 바로 사향노루의 음경 앞 살가죽 안에 있다)라 하므로, 향명이 가리키는 자리는 책이 말하는 자리와 같다 — 참으로 배꼽이 아니라 그 앞의 사향낭이지만 겉에서 보이는 자리는 배꼽 어름이다.
첫 낱말 `국놀` 은 **다 풀리지 않는다.** `놀` 이 `노루`(옛말 `노로`ㆍ`노ᄅᆞ`)의 compound 안에서 줄어든 꼴인 것은 또렷하고, 짐승이 사향노루인 것도 본문 (`麝形似獐`, 1.2.1)으로 확실하다. 다만 첫 음절 `국` 이 지금 말 `궁노루` 의 `궁` 에 맞닿는 꼴인지가 **확실하지 않다** — ㄱ/ㅇ 종성이 전사에서 흔들리는 자리이기는 하나, 그 흔들림을 내가 전사본에서 따로 확인하지는 못했다. `hyangmyeong_mod` 는 `궁노루의 배꼽` 으로 적었으나 첫 음절은 그만큼 확실하지 않다는 것을 여기 적어 둔다. 종(Moschus)은 본문이 가려 주므로 비우지 않았다.
譯 1.2.1 Source원문
性温, 味辛苦, 無毒. 主辟惡氣, 鎭心安神, 療温瘧蠱毒癎痓中惡心腹痛, 去目中膚瞖, 能蝕一切癕瘡膿, 治婦人産難墮胎, 小兒驚癎客忤. 《本草》
Translation영역
Its nature is warm, its flavour acrid and bitter, and it is without toxicity. It governs the warding off of malign qi, settles the heart and quiets the spirit, and treats warm malaria, gu toxin, epilepsy with tetanic reversal, malign strike, and pain of the heart and abdomen; it removes membranous screening in the eye, can eat away the pus of every welling-abscess and sore, treats difficult delivery in women and casts out the fetus, and treats fright epilepsy and visitation-offence in a small child.
Clinical note임상 주석
**This is the most legally serious entry in the chapter and the statement has to come before the pharmacology.**
**Musk comes from the preputial gland of the male musk deer, the animal is obtained by killing it, and the trade is prohibited.** All seven species of Moschus are listed under CITES: the populations of Afghanistan, Bhutan, India, Myanmar, Nepal and Pakistan stand on Appendix I, and all other populations on Appendix II, so no commercial international trade in wild musk is lawful from the Appendix I range and the rest is permit-controlled. In Korea the musk deer Moschus moschiferus is a Class I endangered wild species under the Wildlife Protection and Management Act and is Natural Monument No. 216; killing one or possessing its parts is a criminal offence, not a procurement difficulty. The IUCN assesses the species as Vulnerable and the Himalayan and Chinese species as Endangered. The animal has been hunted for this gland for well over a thousand years and the snare lines set for it kill males and females indifferently, because the trapper cannot tell them apart before the animal is in the noose.
**And there is a complete substitute, which makes this the clearest case in the chapter.** The odorant that defines musk is muscone, (R)-3-methylcyclopentadecanone, and it has been synthesised since the 1920s; synthetic muscone and the compounded 人工麝香 (artificial musk) have been approved and in use in China since 1994 and carry the Chinese pharmacopoeial indications in place of the animal product. A practitioner who needs the drug's claimed action in a formula has somewhere to go. A practitioner who is offered wild musk has been offered a wildlife crime.
**Why this matters more here than anywhere else in the chapter: the formulary of this site uses 麝香 in two hundred and thirty-eight prescriptions.** It is not a curiosity at the back of the materia medica — it is built into 蘇合香元, the 牛黃 pills, the resuscitation and orifice-opening formulas, and the paediatric fright prescriptions. Any serious reading of this book's therapeutics runs into it, which is exactly why the substitution answer has to be given rather than a refusal.
**One indication in this passage is a hard contraindication and the book states it as a use.** 治婦人産難墮胎 — treats difficult delivery and casts out the fetus — means the drug was used deliberately as an abortifacient and ecbolic, and that is consistent with what is known of musk's uterine activity. It follows without qualification that musk is contraindicated in pregnancy, and the text itself is the evidence. 産難, obstructed labour, is an obstetric emergency resolved by assessment of presentation and by assisted or operative delivery; nothing taken by mouth resolves it and the delay is the danger.
Of the rest: 温瘧 is malaria with fever predominating, diagnosed on a blood film and cured with artemisinin combination therapy; 癎痓 is seizure with tetanic arching; 目中膚瞖 is corneal opacity or pterygium, which is surgical; 癕瘡膿 is abscess, which is drained; 小兒驚癎 is the febrile or epileptic seizure of childhood, which needs the cause of the fever found. 蠱毒 and 中惡 and 客忤 belong to the possession register rather than the pharmacological one.
譯 1.2.2 Source원문
除百邪鬼魅, 殺三䖝. 《本草》
Translation영역
It removes the hundred evils and demon bewitchment, and kills the three worms.
Clinical note임상 주석
三䖝, the three worms, belongs to the parasitological rather than the demonic half of this sentence even though the two share a line. Intestinal helminths are identified on stool microscopy or antigen testing and treated with albendazole, mebendazole or praziquantel according to the organism; the cure rates are high and the drugs are cheap, and this is one of the places where the gap between the old therapeutics and the new is widest in favour of the new.
譯 1.2.3 Translation영역
Musk enters the spleen and treats the flesh.
Clinical note임상 주석
One of a set of channel-entry assignments that the 綱目 runs through this chapter, pairing a drug with a viscus and with the tissue that viscus governs — the spleen governs the flesh, so the drug that enters the spleen treats the flesh. 牛黃 at 1.3 gets the same treatment, entering the liver and treating the sinews. They are classificatory statements and should be read as the system tidying itself rather than as clinical observations.
譯 1.2.4 Source원문
麝雖温, 然性屬隂, 能化陽, 通腠理. 《直指小兒》
Translation영역
Although musk is warm, its nature belongs to yin; it can transform yang and free the interstices.
Clinical note임상 주석
A genuine difficulty being worked out in public: the drug is classed warm, which is yang, but what it does — scattering, opening, moving outward through the 腠理, the interstices of flesh and skin — is read as yin in action. 能化陽 is the resolution offered. The passage matters as an instance of the book preserving an argument instead of a conclusion.
譯 1.2.5 Source원문
麝香通關透竅, 上達肌膚, 內入骨髓, 與龍腦相同, 而香竄過之. 《入門》
Translation영역
Musk frees the gates and pierces the orifices, reaching outward to the flesh and skin and inward into the bone marrow; it is the same as borneol in this, but it surpasses it in aromatic penetration.
Clinical note임상 주석
通關透竅 is the action that puts this drug into the resuscitation formulas: the patient who cannot be roused is held to have closed orifices, and musk is the opener. 龍腦 is borneol, the camphoraceous terpene of Dryobalanops, and the comparison is apt in the one sense the compilers could check — both are small, volatile, intensely penetrating-smelling molecules. That is also the modern reading of what the category 香竄 is tracking: lipophilic volatiles that cross membranes readily. It does not follow that they reach the bone marrow or do anything useful there.
**This passage is the one to hold on to for substitution.** If the claimed action is aromatic penetration, then the aromatic is what is wanted, and synthetic muscone is that aromatic. Nothing in 通關透竅 requires a dead deer.
譯 1.2.6 Translation영역
Musk can lead the other drugs through and bring them to their destination.
Clinical note임상 주석
This is the carrier or messenger role, and it is why musk appears in such small quantities in so many formulas — a few 分 in a prescription weighing several 兩. It is the same reasoning that puts a small dose of 薄荷 or 細辛 into a decoction aimed elsewhere. In a modern frame the claim is a bioavailability claim, and it is not established; what is established is that the quantity is small, which is worth knowing because it makes the substitution at the head of this section easier rather than harder.
譯 1.2.7 Source원문
春分取之, 生者益良. 其香正在麝隂莖前皮內, 別有膜褁之. 《本草》
Translation영역
It is taken at the spring equinox, and the fresh one is better still. The fragrance lies exactly inside the skin in front of the musk deer's penis, with a separate membrane wrapping it.
Clinical note임상 주석
**This is an anatomically exact description and it identifies the drug beyond argument.** The musk pod is a preputial gland in the male only, sited between the navel and the prepuce, wrapped in its own capsule — 別有膜褁之, a separate membrane wraps it — and the text has it right. The practical consequences are the ones the entry does not state: the gland is in the male alone, so half of every animal killed is wasted from the trapper's point of view, and the gland is taken by killing the animal. Live extraction from farmed deer exists and has been practised in China since the 1950s, which removes the killing without removing the confinement; the farmed yield has never come close to supplying the demand, and the shortfall is met by poaching.
譯 1.2.8 Source원문
麝有三種. 第一生香, 麝子夏食蛇䖝多, 至寒則香滿, 入春急痛, 自以爪剔出之, 落處遠近草木皆焦黃, 此極難得. 今人帶眞香過園中, 苽果皆不實, 此其驗也. 其次臍香, 乃捕得殺取者. 其次心結香, 乃被逐狂走而自斃者. 《本草》
Translation영역
There are three kinds of musk. First is live musk: the musk deer eats many snakes and insects in summer, by the cold season the fragrance is full, and on entering spring the pain becomes urgent, so the animal scratches it out itself with its claws, and for some distance around the place where it falls the grasses and trees all scorch yellow. This kind is extremely hard to get. People today, carrying genuine musk through a garden, find that the melons and fruits all fail to set, and this is the proof of it. Next is navel musk, taken by catching and killing the animal. Next is heart-knotted musk, from an animal that has been driven until it ran mad and died of itself.
Clinical note임상 주석
**This passage is worth the whole section to a reader thinking about the trade, because it grades the three sources and puts the one that does not kill the animal first.** 生香 is musk the deer has shed itself; 臍香 is cut from a killed animal; 心結香 is from an animal run to death in the chase. The hierarchy is aesthetic and pharmacological in the text's own terms, not ethical — but it happens to rank them in exactly the order a modern reader would, and 此極難得, extremely hard to get, is the text admitting that the acceptable grade is the one almost nobody has. That is the structure of the problem still: the ethically obtainable supply is a fraction of the demand.
The natural history is wrong in an instructive way. The musk deer is a small browsing ruminant and does not eat snakes or insects; the claim is there to explain the drug's power against toxin, and the same logic reappears at 1.2.1 below. The scorched vegetation and the fruit that fails to set are the drug's reputed 香竄 potency written onto the landscape — a 驗, a proof, that is a story. Nothing is being observed here.
Note what the third grade implies about method. 被逐狂走而自斃 describes an animal pursued until it collapsed, which is a hunting technique and not an accident.
譯 1.2.9 Source원문
麝香多僞. 破看一片毛共在褁中者爲勝. 且燒當門子, 沸良久者卽好. 破看麝內有顆子者, 卽當門子也. 《本草》
Translation영역
Musk is much counterfeited. Break it open and look: the one in which a piece of hair is there together inside the wrapping is the better. Also burn the gate-grain; the one that bubbles for a good long while is good. Break it open and look, and the grains inside the musk are the gate-grains.
Clinical note임상 주석
**The authentication tests are the most informative thing in the section, because they are evidence that the market was already saturated with fakes in 1613.** 當門子 are the dark resinous granules in a mature pod, and the three tests are: hair from the animal incorporated in the pod wall, which a forger working from a sewn bladder would have to add deliberately; the granules present at all; and the burn behaviour, bubbling long rather than flaring, which reads the fat and protein content. Every one of them is a test a buyer could do and none of them is hard to defeat. Modern authentication uses gas chromatography for muscone and DNA barcoding of the pod tissue, and it is routinely used by customs rather than by practitioners, which tells you where the drug now turns up.
For a practitioner today the practical conclusion is short: musk offered for sale is either illegal or fake, and usually both, and the synthetic article named at the head of this section is neither.
譯 1.2.10 Source원문
凡用麝香, 並以子日開之, 不用苦細研, 只篩用. 《本草》
Translation영역
Whenever musk is used, it is opened on a 子 day, and it need not be ground very fine — only sifted for use.
Clinical note임상 주석
子日, the rat day of the sexagenary cycle, is calendrical and has no bearing on the material. 不用苦細研, 只篩用 — do not grind it hard, only sift — is good practice for a reason the text does not give: the active odorant is volatile and grinding in a hot mortar drives it off. The instruction preserves what it is for, which is the kind of processing detail worth recording even when the drug is not to be used.
譯 1.2.11 Translation영역
One name for musk is 四味臭, the four-flavoured stink.
Clinical note임상 주석
A name that admits the smell. Raw musk at concentration is faecal and animalic rather than pleasant, and it is only on dilution that it becomes the odour perfumery took it for; the name is an honest piece of nomenclature in a book that is usually flattering about its drugs.
1.2.1 Musk Deer's Flesh 麝肉
譯 1.2.1.1 Source원문
麝形似獐, 其肉食之似獐肉而腥氣. 麝啖蛇, 故能療蛇毒. 臍中有香, 除百病. 《本草》
Translation영역
The musk deer's form resembles the water deer, and its flesh, eaten, is like the flesh of the water deer but with a rank smell. The musk deer devours snakes, and therefore it can treat snake toxin. In its navel there is the fragrance, which removes the hundred diseases.
Clinical note임상 주석
麝形似獐, resembling the 獐 — the Korean water deer Hydropotes inermis — is a good comparison: both are small, hornless, tusked deer of the same size class, and a reader who had seen one would recognise the other from it. 腥氣, the rank smell, is the musk itself permeating the carcass.
**麝啖蛇, 故能療蛇毒 is the clearest statement of the signature logic in this chapter and it should be read as logic, not observation.** The animal is said to eat snakes, therefore it masters snake venom, therefore its flesh treats snakebite. The premise is false — the musk deer is a browser, taking leaves, lichens, moss and shoots, and does not eat snakes — and it appears in this book only because the conclusion was wanted. The same construction supplies the summer snake diet at 1.2 above.
**Modern reading. The animal is protected and may not be taken; see 1.2. For the indication: snakebite is treated with antivenom.** In Korea the medically important snakes are the pit vipers Gloydius and the Japanese keelback Rhabdophis tigrinus; management is immobilisation of the limb, transport to a facility that stocks antivenom, and no incision, suction, tourniquet or ingested remedy, because the delay those cause is the measurable harm. 除百病, removing the hundred diseases, is the kind of claim that identifies a drug as prestigious rather than effective.
1.2.2 Water Musk 水麝
譯 1.2.2.1 Source원문
臍中惟水, 瀝一滴於斗水中, 用瀝衣直至敗, 其香不歇. 每取, 以鍼刺之, 捻雄黃則合, 香氣倍於肉麝. 《本草》
Translation영역
In its navel there is only water. Let one drop of it fall into a 斗 of water and use that to sprinkle clothing, and right up until the cloth wears out the fragrance will not fade. Each time it is taken, prick it with a needle; rub in realgar and it closes again. Its fragrance is twice that of the flesh musk.
Clinical note임상 주석
水麝 is reported as a separate animal whose pod holds liquid rather than granular musk, and the Bogam prints the report without endorsing it. Whether any such animal existed is open; what the passage describes well is the extraordinary dilution at which musk remains perceptible, which is real — muscone has one of the lowest odour thresholds of any natural product, and one drop in a 斗 of water scenting cloth until it wears out is hyperbole built on a true observation.
**Two things here are worth a practitioner's attention.** The first is that 每取, 以鍼刺之 describes repeated tapping of the gland of a living animal, which is live extraction, the practice named at 1.2 — so the technique the twentieth-century deer farms adopted is already in this text. The second is 捻雄黃則合: realgar, arsenic disulfide, is rubbed into the puncture to close it. **Realgar is an arsenic sulfide and it is toxic**; applying it to an open wound on a living animal, as here, or to a human one, as other entries in this volume do, is arsenic exposure through a breached barrier. Arsenic from realgar-containing traditional medicines has caused measurable poisoning and it is the reason those preparations are restricted.
譯 1.2.2.2 Source원문
本國麝香, 出於咸鏡平安兩地者爲好, 然不及於㺚子地方出者. 《俗方》
Translation영역
As for the musk of this country, that coming out of the two provinces of Hamgyeong and Pyeongan is good; it does not, however, match what comes out of the Tatar territory.
Clinical note임상 주석
**A 俗方 passage, which is to say Heo Jun's own country's practice rather than a Chinese source, and it is a piece of trade geography that cannot be reconstructed from anywhere else.** 咸鏡 and 平安 are the two northern provinces along the Chinese and Manchurian frontier, which is the Korean range of the musk deer; 㺚子 is the Tatar or Jurchen country north of the border. The judgement is that Korean musk was good and imported northern musk better, and the comparison is only possible because both were on the market in Seoul around 1613.
It also locates the drug on the map of the 鄕藥 policy that the 唐 mark elsewhere in these chapters records. Musk is one of the drugs Korea could supply domestically and did, from the two provinces where the deer lived — which is the same range from which the species has now been almost entirely extirpated. The entry is, read forward, a record of what was there to be lost.
1.3 Cattle Gallstone 牛黃
이 향명은 **이름이 아니라 뜻풀이**다 — 水部ㆍ土部 꼴이 獸部에 나온 자리다. `ᄉᆈ` 는 `소` 의 속격 `쇠`(쇠고기ㆍ쇠젖의 그 쇠), `속애` 는 `속에`, `난` 은 `난`(나다), `우황` 은 한자 표제어 牛黃을 우리말 음으로 적은 것이다. 곧 「쇠 속에 난 우황」이고, 향명이 표제어를 되풀이하면서 **그것이 소의 몸 안에서 생긴 것**이라는 한 가지를 보탠다. 본문의 `今皆出屠肆於牛肝膽中得之`(이제는 다 도살장에서 소의 간과 쓸개 속에서 얻는다)가 그 말을 받는다.
잎 042a 의 발에 향명 교감줄 하나가 붙는다 — `속애 : 소개(초간본)`. 042a 에 `속애` 가 나오는 자리는 이 향명 하나뿐이므로 걸릴 글자가 또렷하다. 初刊本은 `소개` 로 적으니 처격이 `-애` 가 아니라 `-개` 로 보이는 꼴인데, 이는 `속`+`애` 의 연철(소개)과 분철(속애) 차이로 읽는 것이 자연스럽다. 전사본의 읽기를 싣고 初刊本의 읽기를 여기 적어 둔다. 국어사 쪽에서는 한 낱말의 연철ㆍ분철이 판본마다 갈린 자리로 값이 있다.
譯 1.3.1 Source원문
性平一云凉, 味苦一云其, 有小毒一云無毒. 安魂定魄, 除邪逐鬼, 主狂癲驚悸及中惡, 療小兒百病. 《本草》
Translation영역
Its nature is balanced one says cool, its flavour bitter one says 其, and it has slight toxicity one says without toxicity. It quiets the ethereal soul and settles the corporeal soul, removes evil and expels demons, governs mania and withdrawal, fright palpitation and malign strike, and treats the hundred diseases of small children.
Clinical note임상 주석
**牛黃 is a gallstone, and the ox dies of its own accord or at the slaughterhouse rather than for the drug — so unlike the three sections around it, nothing here is prohibited.** The animal is domestic cattle, the material is a biliary calculus from the gallbladder or bile duct, and the materia medica of this site records it as Bovis Calculus. It is one of the heavily used drugs in the book: the formulary of this site carries it in forty-six prescriptions, among them the 牛黃 pills for which it is named.
The sochu carries disagreement at all three of the opening judgements, and the toxicity disagreement — 有小毒 against 一云無毒 — is the substantive one. The flavour disagreement is a textual problem rather than a medical one and is dealt with in the note above.
The indications are of two kinds and the division matters. 狂癲, mania and withdrawal-epilepsy, and 驚悸, fright palpitation, are disorders of consciousness; 除邪逐鬼 and 中惡 are the possession register; 療小兒百病, treating the hundred diseases of small children, is the claim that put this drug into the paediatric formulary and it is the one to be most careful with.
**Modern reading.** Bovine gallstones are mostly bilirubin and its calcium salts with cholesterol and the bile acids — cholic, deoxycholic and taurocholic acid. Bilirubin and bile acids are real molecules with real activity, which is more than can be said for most of this chapter, and that is precisely why the honest account has to be careful: having constituents is not having an indication. There is no evidence that bezoar controls seizures, and a child with a seizure needs the cause of the seizure found. **In a child, a seizure with fever means the source of the fever must be identified and meningitis and encephalitis excluded; a seizure without fever needs glucose, electrolytes, and neuroimaging.** Mania in an adult is a psychiatric emergency when it is severe, and it is treated.
One zoonotic point attaches to the whole ox group that follows rather than to this item in particular, and it is set out at 1.3.4: bovine spongiform encephalopathy made certain bovine tissues legally excluded from the food chain, and biliary calculi are not among them, but ox brain and spinal cord are.
譯 1.3.2 Source원문
於牛得之, 隂乾百日, 使時燥, 無令見日月光. 《本草》
Translation영역
It is got from the ox; dry it in the shade for a hundred days, keeping it dry all the while, and do not let it see the light of sun or moon.
Clinical note임상 주석
隂乾, shade-drying, with light excluded, is the standard handling for a pigment-bearing material, and here it is doing real work: bilirubin is photolabile and bleaches on exposure, which is the same chemistry that underlies phototherapy for neonatal jaundice. The instruction preserves the colour on which the authenticity tests below depend. Whether the compilers knew why is another question; the practice is correct either way.
譯 1.3.3 Translation영역
Cattle gallstone enters the liver and treats the sinews.
Clinical note임상 주석
The companion to 麝香入脾, 治肉 at 1.2 — the same 綱目 scheme, drug to viscus to tissue, the liver governing the sinews. It is classification rather than observation, but it is not arbitrary: a biliary stone entering the liver is the one assignment in the set that an anatomist would also make.
譯 1.3.4 Source원문
牛有黃者, 皮毛光澤, 眼如血色, 時復鳴吼, 又好照水. 人以盆水承之, 伺其吐出, 乃喝迫, 卽墮落水中. 一箇如雞子黃大, 重疊可揭析, 輕虛而芬香者佳. 《本草》
Translation영역
An ox that has the yellow has glossy hide and hair, eyes the colour of blood, bellows from time to time, and is fond of looking at its reflection in water. People hold a basin of water under it and watch for it to spit the stone out, then shout and startle it, and it drops straight into the water. One piece is the size of a hen's egg yolk, layered so that it can be lifted apart, and the light, hollow, fragrant one is best.
Clinical note임상 주석
**The description of the stone is accurate and the method of getting it is not.** 重疊可揭析, layered so it can be lifted apart, is exactly right — biliary calculi are concentrically laminated and a mature bezoar splits into shells — and 輕虛, light and hollow, 如雞子黃大, the size of an egg yolk, and the fragrance all match the genuine article. That part is a buyer's description written by someone who had handled many.
The acquisition is folklore. Cattle do not regurgitate gallstones and cannot: the stone sits in the gallbladder or the bile duct, on the far side of the stomachs from the mouth. The signs listed — the glossy coat, the bloodshot eye, the bellowing — are a diagnostic story for picking out an animal worth buying, and it has no basis. The last passage of the section says what actually happened, and says it plainly.
This is also where 伺其吐出 stands, the second 其 on leaf 042a, and the reason the leaf's 其 : 甘 collation line belongs to the first passage and not to this one.
譯 1.3.5 Source원문
此物多僞. 試法, 揩摩爪甲上, 以透甲黃者爲眞. 《本草》
Translation영역
This article is much counterfeited. The test: rub it on the fingernail, and the one whose yellow penetrates the nail is genuine.
Clinical note임상 주석
The nail test is the classical authentication for bezoar and it is still described in the Chinese materia medica as 透甲. What it reads is real: bilirubin is lipophilic and stains keratin, so genuine bezoar leaves a yellow that soaks in and cannot be wiped off, while the common adulterants — turmeric, ochre, egg yolk and lime, bone meal — either wash away or do not stain at all. As with the musk tests at 1.2, the striking thing is that the test exists, because tests are written for markets full of fakes. Genuine ox bezoar remains one of the scarcest and most adulterated articles in the trade, and the cultivated and artificial substitutes 培植牛黃 and 人工牛黃 were developed for exactly that reason.
譯 1.3.6 Source원문
喝迫得者, 名生黃, 最難得. 今皆出屠肆, 於牛肝膽中得之. 《本草》
Translation영역
What is got by shouting and startling the animal is called live yellow, and it is the hardest of all to get. Nowadays it all comes out of the butcher's shop, got from inside the ox's liver and gall.
Clinical note임상 주석
**This is the book correcting itself two passages later, and it should be read as the authoritative one.** The reflection-and-shouting method yields 生黃, live yellow, 最難得 — hardest of all to get, which is this book's way of saying nobody has it. 今皆出屠肆, nowadays it all comes out of the butcher's shop, 於牛肝膽中得之, got from inside the liver and gall: the drug is a slaughterhouse by-product found on evisceration, which is both the truth and the reason this section carries no legal problem. The same structure appears at 1.2, where the acceptable grade of musk is also the one 極難得, and the difference is that for musk the fallback is killing a protected animal while here the fallback is the abattoir that was going to run anyway.
For a reader working through the chapter, the pairing of this passage with the fourth is a small lesson in how to read the book: where two passages conflict, the one that describes a market is usually closer to the practice than the one that describes a wonder.
1.3.1 Beef 牛肉
譯 1.3.1.1 Source원문
性平一云温, 味甘, 無毒一云微毒. 養脾胃, 止吐泄, 治消渴, 消水腫, 令人強筋骨, 補益腰脚. 《本草》
Translation영역
Its nature is balanced one says warm, its flavour sweet, and it is without toxicity one says slightly toxic. It nourishes the spleen and stomach, checks vomiting and diarrhoea, treats dispersion-thirst, disperses water swelling, makes a person's sinews and bones strong, and supplements the lower back and legs.
Clinical note임상 주석
Beef, and the indications are nutritional rather than pharmacological — 養脾胃 nourishing the digestion, 強筋骨 strengthening sinew and bone, 補益腰脚 supplementing the lower back and legs. Read as food advice for a sixteenth-century patient who was probably short of protein and iron, most of it is sound. 消渴, dispersion-thirst, is the polyuric and polydipsic syndrome covering diabetes mellitus and diabetes insipidus, and here the claim is not sound: beef is not a treatment for diabetes, and a presentation of thirst with polyuria needs a blood glucose before it needs a diet.
**Modern reading, and it is about the handling rather than the meat.** Properly cooked beef is food. Raw and undercooked beef carries E. coli O157:H7 and other Shiga toxin-producing strains, whose complication in children is haemolytic uraemic syndrome, and Taenia saginata, the beef tapeworm. Unpasteurised exposure to cattle products more broadly carries Brucella abortus and Mycobacterium bovis, and those two run through this whole ox group — see 1.8 for the milk. The BSE question belongs to the nervous tissue and is dealt with at 1.3.4.
譯 1.3.1.2 Source원문
食品黃牛爲佳. 用乳及屎尿去病者, 黑牛强於黃牛. 《本草》
Translation영역
For eating, the yellow ox is the better. For using the milk and the dung and urine to drive out disease, the black ox is stronger than the yellow.
Clinical note임상 주석
A split that the book keeps consistently: yellow cattle for the table, black cattle for the medicinal excretions. It recurs at 1.8 in the same words and it bears on how the leaves 1.3.16 and 1.3.17 should be linked to the materia medica, which is set out there. There is no reason to think coat colour changes the composition of milk, urine or dung; what the rule records is a real market distinction between two types of cattle, which were different animals in size, use and price.
譯 1.3.1.3 Source원문
自死肉不可食, 必生疔瘡. 《俗方》
Translation영역
The flesh of an animal that has died of itself must not be eaten; it will certainly raise a 疔 sore.
Clinical note임상 주석
**This is a 俗方 passage — Korean practice, not a Chinese citation — and it is one of the soundest sentences in the chapter.** Do not eat an animal that died on its own. 疔瘡 is the deep, hard, rapidly spreading furuncle with a core, the kind that goes on to cellulitis and septicaemia, and attributing it to meat from a fallen animal is causally close to right: an animal that dies unslaughtered has died of something, it is not bled, and the carcass is colonised before anyone reaches it. Anthrax is the specific disease behind this rule in cattle — Bacillus anthracis kills ruminants suddenly in the field, cutaneous anthrax follows handling the carcass, and it presents as exactly the lesion 疔瘡 describes. The modern veterinary rule is the same rule and is stricter: a bovine found dead without explanation is not opened in the field, and the carcass is not eaten.
The same sentence recurs under 馬肉 later in this chapter, which is outside this portion.
1.3.2 Ox Horn Core 牛角䚡
낱말마다 지금 말로 이어진다 — `ᄉᆈ`>쇠, `ᄲᅳᆯ`>뿔, `고긔`>고기(ㅢ>ㅣ), `양`>양. 그래서 `hyangmyeong_mod` 를 비우지 않았다. **다만 그 뜻이 확실하지 않다.** 가장 그럴듯한 읽기는 「쇠뿔 안의 고기 같은 양(䑋)」이다 — `양` 은 바로 아래 잎 1.3.8 肚에서 책이 스스로 `俗名䑋` 이라 풀어 주는 그 낱말이고(소의 첫째 위, 벌집처럼 켜가 진 조직), 牛角䚡의 䚡는 뿔 속의 켜가 진 심이므로 「뿔 속의 양 같은 것」이 실물에 잘 맞는다. 그러나 이 읽기는 **내 추론이고 책이 말한 것이 아니다.** 다른 읽기(`고긔양` 을 한 낱말로 보는 것, `양` 을 樣으로 보아 「고기 모양」으로 읽는 것)도 배제할 수 없다. `hyangmyeong_en` 에는 실물(horn core)만 적고 글자대로의 뜻을 괄호에 넣어 두었다. 어느 쪽인지 **못 가린다**.
譯 1.3.2.1 Source원문
性澁, 味苦甘, 無毒. 止血崩赤白帶下, 療腸風瀉血及血痢.
Translation영역
Its nature is astringent, its flavour bitter and sweet, and it is without toxicity. It checks flooding and red and white vaginal discharge, and treats intestinal wind with bloody stool, and bloody dysentery.
Clinical note임상 주석
䚡 is the bony core inside the horn sheath, a laminated outgrowth of the frontal bone, and the Korean gloss is reaching for that laminated texture. The source label for this passage stands at the end of the next one and is carried back across the pair, which is this book's ordinary habit.
Every indication is bleeding — 血崩 flooding, 赤白帶下 discharge, 腸風瀉血 bloody stool, 血痢 bloody dysentery — and the nature given is 澁, astringent. The reasoning is the same as at 1.1: what leaks is to be stopped.
**Modern reading. Each of these is a presentation that needs its source found, and three of them are red flags.** Heavy or intermenstrual uterine bleeding requires structural causes, anovulation, coagulopathy, pregnancy complications and endometrial malignancy to be excluded. Rectal bleeding in an adult over forty is investigated for colorectal cancer before anything else. Bloody diarrhoea is either infective — Shigella, Campylobacter, Shiga toxin-producing E. coli, Entamoeba — or inflammatory bowel disease, and the first of those needs a stool culture and the second a colonoscopy. An astringent that quiets the bleeding without addressing any of this is worse than nothing because it buys time the patient does not have. The material itself is calcined bone, that is calcium phosphate, with no haemostatic action.
譯 1.3.2.2 Source원문
糞土中爛白者, 燒存性用. 《本草》
Translation영역
Take the one that has rotted white in dunged earth, and burn it preserving its nature for use.
Clinical note임상 주석
A processing instruction with a long time constant: the horn core is left buried in manured ground until the organic matrix has rotted away and the piece has gone chalky white, then calcined. 燒存性, burning while preserving the nature, is the standard formula for a controlled calcination that chars rather than ashes. The product is a porous calcium phosphate.
**It is also a route for tetanus and that has to be said where the material is burial in dung.** Clostridium tetani spores are abundant in manured soil and survive long burial; they are destroyed by the calcination that follows, so the finished drug is not the hazard — the handling is. The same point arises more sharply at 1.3.17.
1.3.3 Ox Head and Hooves 頭蹄
譯 1.3.3.1 Translation영역
It brings down heat-wind.
Clinical note임상 주석
The shortest entry in this portion, and the headword couples two materials — the head and the hooves — under one indication, a habit of this book that leaves it unclear whether they were used together or interchangeably. 熱風 is the hot wind pattern: fever with the restlessness, itching and migrating discomfort that wind supplies.
Ox head and ox foot are food, and in Korea they are the basis of 우족탕 and 소머리국밥 — gelatinous, long-boiled, and unremarkable. There is no reason to think they bring down a fever.
**Modern reading.** Nothing here is in use and nothing here is dangerous, with one exception that belongs to the head rather than the feet: the skull contains brain, and bovine brain and spinal cord are specified risk material. See 1.3.4. 牛頭 is not in the materia medica of this site and does not appear as an ingredient anywhere in the formulary — the apparent matches are all 黑牽牛頭末, the first-grind powder of morning-glory seed, which is a wholly different drug and a trap for anyone matching by characters.
1.3.4 Ox Brain 腦
譯 1.3.4.1 Translation영역
It governs dispersion-thirst and wind dizziness.
Clinical note임상 주석
**This is the entry at which the modern note has to be unambiguous, and it is not about efficacy.**
**Bovine brain is specified risk material and must not be eaten.** Bovine spongiform encephalopathy is a prion disease of cattle, the agent concentrates in the central nervous system, and transmission to humans causes variant Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, which is untreatable and fatal. Following the epidemic of the 1980s and 1990s the brain, spinal cord, skull, eyes, tonsils and parts of the intestine of cattle over a specified age were designated specified risk material and excluded by law from the human food chain and from animal feed across the European Union and the United Kingdom, with parallel rules in the United States, Japan and Korea. Prions are not destroyed by cooking, by drying, by the hundred days of shade-drying this chapter prescribes for the bezoar, or by ordinary sterilisation. **There is no preparation that makes this material safe and no indication that would justify the attempt.**
The materia medica of this site does carry 牛腦髓, ox brain, as Bovis Cerebrum — an entry inherited from the structure of the drug table rather than from use, and the formulary does not call for it in a single prescription. This section is therefore left unlinked and the pairing reported rather than asserted; the reason is set out with the other unlinked leaves.
For the indications: 消渴 needs a blood glucose, as at 1.3.1. 風眩, wind dizziness, covers vertigo and presyncope, and the distinction between them is the whole of the diagnosis — benign paroxysmal positional vertigo, vestibular neuritis and Ménière's disease on one side, orthostatic hypotension, arrhythmia and anaemia on the other, with posterior circulation stroke to be excluded when it is sudden and accompanied by other neurological signs.
1.3.5 Ox Teeth 齒
譯 1.3.5.1 Translation영역
It governs fright epilepsy in small children.
Clinical note임상 주석
The third tooth in this portion — 龍齒 at 1.1.1, this one, and nothing else — and the same indication attaches to all of them, which shows the reasoning is about the material class rather than the animal. A tooth is hard, white, fixed and does not move, and the child's disorder is convulsive movement; the drug is chosen to settle.
**Modern reading. Not in use, and the indication is the serious part.** 小兒驚癎 covers the febrile seizure, which is common and usually benign, and epilepsy, which is not, and bacterial meningitis, which kills. The clinical rule is the one at 1.3: in a convulsing child the task is to find the cause of the fever and to exclude meningitis and encephalitis, and a child with a seizure who does not return to normal alertness, or who has a rash, neck stiffness or a bulging fontanelle, needs a hospital immediately. Ground tooth is calcium phosphate and does nothing. 牛齒 is not in the materia medica of this site and appears in no prescription in the formulary.
1.3.6 Wax from the Ox's Ear 耳中垢
譯 1.3.6.1 Translation영역
It governs snake injury and the injury of a malign caterpillar.
Clinical note임상 주석
蛓 is the stinging caterpillar, the processionary and tussock larvae whose urticating hairs raise a weal, and 蛇傷 is snakebite. The logic for using earwax is not stated; it belongs with the chapter's other greasy applications and probably with the idea that what is bitter and foul drives out poison.
**Modern reading. This must not be done, and the objection is the wound.** A snakebite or a sting is a breach in the skin, and packing it with animal secretion inoculates it — cattle earwax carries the skin and ear flora of the animal, and the bite itself is already a contaminated wound. For snakebite the management is the one at 1.2.1: immobilise, transport, antivenom, and no incision, suction or applied remedy. For urticating caterpillar hairs the treatment is to lift the hairs off with adhesive tape rather than rubbing them in, then a topical corticosteroid and an oral antihistamine; rubbing anything into the site drives the hairs deeper and is the commonest way the reaction is made worse. 耳中垢 is in no prescription in the formulary and is not in the materia medica of this site.
1.3.7 The Ox's Five Viscera 牛五藏
譯 1.3.7.1 Translation영역
They govern the five viscera of a person.
Clinical note임상 주석
**The organ-for-organ principle stated as a heading, with the five assignments following one to a passage.** The ox's liver for the person's liver, heart for heart, spleen for spleen, lung for lung, kidney for kidney. It is the clearest instance of like-treats-like in the chapter and the five passages below work it out mechanically. The source label for the whole group stands at the end of the last passage and is carried back across all six.
譯 1.3.7.2 Translation영역
The liver governs brightening the eyes, and treats dysentery.
Clinical note임상 주석
**Of the five correspondences this is the one that is pharmacologically right, and it is right for a reason the scheme did not know.** Ox liver is among the richest dietary sources of preformed vitamin A — retinol, by orders of magnitude more than any plant food — and vitamin A deficiency causes night blindness, conjunctival and corneal xerosis, Bitot's spots and ultimately keratomalacia and irreversible blindness. Eating liver genuinely corrects it, and quickly. This correspondence was arrived at by analogy and happens to land on a true nutritional fact; that coincidence is worth naming precisely because the other four do not.
Two cautions follow from the same chemistry. Preformed vitamin A is toxic in excess — acute hypervitaminosis A from a single enormous dose, chronic toxicity with liver injury, bone pain and raised intracranial pressure from sustained intake — and it is **teratogenic**, so liver is specifically restricted in pregnancy. And liver is the organ in which cadmium, copper and lipophilic organic contaminants concentrate. The useful modern form of this entry is a vitamin A supplement at a measured dose, which is the standard public-health intervention for deficiency.
治痢, treating dysentery, does not follow and is not supported.
譯 1.3.7.3 Translation영역
The heart governs vacuity forgetfulness.
Clinical note임상 주석
虛忘 is forgetfulness from depletion, the vague failing of memory attributed to a weak heart, and the heart is the seat of the spirit in this system — hence a heart for the forgetting. Ox heart is lean muscle and is food.
**Modern reading.** New or progressive memory impairment in an adult is a presentation, not a diagnosis, and the reversible causes are the ones worth finding first: hypothyroidism, B12 deficiency, depression, obstructive sleep apnoea, alcohol, anticholinergic medication, and normal pressure hydrocephalus. After those, cognitive assessment and imaging. Nothing eaten addresses it.
譯 1.3.7.4 Translation영역
The spleen treats piles.
Clinical note임상 주석
The weakest link in the set: the spleen is paired with haemorrhoids by way of the spleen's governance of raising and holding up, prolapse being a failure of that. Ox spleen is food of a sort, and iron-rich.
**Modern reading.** Haemorrhoids are managed with fibre, fluid, avoidance of straining, topical agents and, when that fails, banding or surgery — and the one rule that matters is that rectal bleeding is never assumed to be haemorrhoidal in an adult over forty until the colon has been looked at. See 1.3.2.
譯 1.3.7.5 Translation영역
The lung treats cough.
Clinical note임상 주석
A lung for a cough. The materia medica of this site carries 羊肺, sheep's lung, as a drug on the same principle, so the pairing was used rather than merely stated.
**Modern reading.** A cough lasting more than eight weeks needs a cause: in an adult the common ones are upper airway cough syndrome, asthma, reflux and an ACE inhibitor, and the ones that must not be missed are tuberculosis, lung cancer and interstitial disease — and in this chapter's own context, Mycobacterium bovis acquired from cattle or unpasteurised milk presents exactly this way. A chest radiograph comes before anything else. Ox lung as food is unremarkable; as a drug it does nothing, and offal lung carries the airway's load of inhaled particulate and infection.
譯 1.3.7.6 Translation영역
The kidney supplements the kidney.
Clinical note임상 주석
The principle at its most naked — the kidney supplements the kidney — and it closes the set. The materia medica of this site carries 牛腎 as Bovis Ren, along with 羊腎, 猪腎 and 猪腰子, so this family of drugs was in real use; the composite headword 牛五藏 is not itself a drug and is left unlinked for that reason.
**Modern reading.** 補腎 in this book spans a wide territory — lumbar weakness, impotence, tinnitus, failing hearing, scanty or excessive urine, infertility — and no part of it is addressed by eating kidney. Two specific points: organ meats are high in purines and raise urate, so they are restricted in gout, and the kidney concentrates cadmium, so bovine kidney carries a measurable cadmium load and is subject to monitoring limits in food law. Reduced kidney function is found on a blood test and a urine protein measurement, and it is managed by treating blood pressure, glucose and the underlying cause.
1.3.8 Ox Tripe 肚
한 음절 향명이고 지금 말과 글자가 같다 — `양` 은 오늘도 소의 첫째 위를 가리키는 우리말이다(양곱창의 그 양). **이 자리의 값은 책이 스스로 그 말을 풀어 준다는 것이다** — 본문이 `卽胃也俗名䑋`(곧 위이고 속명은 䑋이다)라 하여 한자 `䚡`ㆍ`䑋` 와 우리말 `양` 을 맞세워 준다. 그러므로 이 향명은 짐작이 아니라 책의 대답이다. 바로 아래 잎 1.3.9 百葉의 향명 `쳔엽` 과 짝을 이루어, 16세기에도 소의 위를 부위별로 갈라 이름 부르고 있었음을 보여 준다.
譯 1.3.8.1 Source원문
卽胃也, 俗名䑋. 補五藏, 益脾胃, 止消渴. 《本草》
Translation영역
This is the stomach; its common name is 䑋. It supplements the five viscera, boosts the spleen and stomach, and checks dispersion-thirst.
Clinical note임상 주석
**卽胃也, 俗名䑋 is the book glossing its own headword, and it is also the book recording a Korean word inside a Chinese sentence.** 䑋 is the character written for 양, which is still the ordinary Korean word for the rumen, and the gloss ties the three together: the Chinese headword 肚, the character 䑋, and the vernacular 양 of the gloss field. Where the book defines its own term the definition outranks any later standard name, and this is a clean example.
The indications are digestive and nutritional — 益脾胃, boosting the spleen and stomach, is a stomach for the stomach, the same principle as 1.3.7 — with 止消渴 appended, as it is to half the ox leaves in this section.
**Modern reading. This is food and it is good food.** Tripe is lean, high in protein and collagen, and low in fat; it needs long cooking and thorough cleaning, which is what it gets. It is not a treatment for diabetes. The one caution is the general offal one: thorough cooking, because the rumen contents are the animal's gut flora.
1.3.9 Ox Omasum 百葉
`쳔엽`>`천엽` 은 구개음화 뒤의 단모음화(ㅕ>ㅓ 아닌, ㅊㅕ>ㅊㅓ)만 거친 꼴이고 지금도 쓰이는 낱말이다. **이 향명은 한자 표제어와 숫자가 어긋나 재미있다** — 표제어 `百葉` 은 「백 겹」이고 향명 `쳔엽` 은 千葉, 「천 겹」이다. 같은 기관을 두고 한자는 백, 우리말은 천으로 세는 것이니 향명이 한자의 음역이 아니라 따로 선 우리 이름임을 보여 준다(쳔엽이 百葉의 음일 수는 없다). 바로 위 1.3.8 肚의 `양` 과 함께 소의 위를 부위별로 가른 16세기 우리말 두 짝이다.
譯 1.3.9.1 Source원문
主熱氣水氣, 解酒勞幷痢. 《本草》
Translation영역
It governs heat qi and water qi, and resolves drink-exhaustion together with dysentery.
Clinical note임상 주석
百葉 is the omasum, the third stomach, whose lining is folded into the hundreds of laminae both names are counting. 解酒勞 is resolving the exhaustion that follows drinking — the hangover and the longer depletion of habitual drinking — and it is the reason tripe soup is still eaten for that purpose in Korea.
**Modern reading. Food, and the hangover claim is worth answering properly rather than dismissing.** There is no food that resolves alcohol intoxication or its aftermath; what helps is fluid, salt, carbohydrate, time and not drinking, and a hot savoury soup delivers the first three, which is probably the whole of the observation behind 解酒勞. The important part is the one the entry cannot reach: 酒勞 as habitual drinking is a presentation that needs the drinking addressed, and alcohol use disorder is treatable. For 痢, see 1.3.2 — bloody diarrhoea needs a stool culture.
1.3.10 Ox Gall 膽
譯 1.3.10.1 Source원문
性大寒, 味苦, 無毒. 明目, 止消渴. 《本草》
Translation영역
Its nature is greatly cold, its flavour bitter, and it is without toxicity. It brightens the eyes and checks dispersion-thirst.
Clinical note임상 주석
The materia medica of this site carries this as 牛膽汁, ox bile, and the formulary uses it in seven prescriptions, usually as the medium in which another drug is steeped or as the coating of a pill — 牛膽 appears in the source text of some fifty-seven places in the formulary once the preparation instructions are counted. It is a working drug of the book rather than a curiosity.
性大寒, greatly cold, and 味苦, bitter, are both as a taster would report them, and the pairing of a bitter cold drug with eye disease and thirst is the ordinary heat-clearing logic.
**Modern reading, and this one divides into a real pharmacology and a dangerous application.** Ox bile is bile acids, phospholipid and bilirubin, and purified ox bile extract has a genuine place: bile acid preparations are used in bile acid deficiency and as digestive aids, and the bile acids of this material are the chemical family that includes the ursodeoxycholic acid discussed at 1.4.2 below. So the drug is not inert.
**The application that must not be carried forward is 明目.** Animal bile instilled into the eye causes chemical keratitis — bile salts are detergents and strip the corneal epithelium — and it introduces bacteria and fungi onto a surface that has just been injured, which is how a corneal ulcer and a loss of vision happen. This has been a documented cause of blindness where the practice persists. Failing vision has findable causes: refractive error, cataract, glaucoma, diabetic retinopathy and macular disease, all identified on examination and most treatable.
1.3.11 Ox Muzzle 鼻
譯 1.3.11.1 Translation영역
It checks dispersion-thirst and brings down the milk.
Clinical note임상 주석
下乳汁, bringing down the milk, is a galactagogue claim, and the choice of the ox's muzzle for it is not explained. The most likely reasoning is the one that runs through this chapter: the muzzle is gelatinous and the long-boiled broth is rich and white, and what resembles milk makes milk.
**Modern reading.** Insufficient milk supply is overwhelmingly a problem of frequency and effectiveness of milk removal rather than of maternal nutrition, and the intervention that works is attention to latch, feeding frequency and breast emptying, with lactation support; the galactagogue drugs have modest and contested effect and are second-line. Rich broths do no harm. 止消渴 is the eighth appearance of dispersion-thirst in this section and the answer is the same: a blood glucose. 牛鼻 is in no prescription in the formulary and is not in the materia medica of this site.
1.3.12 Drool from the Ox's Mouth 口中涎
譯 1.3.12.1 Translation영역
It checks stomach reflux with vomiting, and treats choking blockage.
Clinical note임상 주석
反胃 is the vomiting of food taken earlier — gastric outlet obstruction and gastroparesis in modern terms — and 噎 is the blockage at the throat or gullet at which food will not go down. The source label for the pair stands at the end of the next passage.
**Modern reading, and 噎 is the red flag in this chapter.** Progressive difficulty swallowing solids is the presenting symptom of oesophageal carcinoma, and it is also how achalasia, a peptic stricture and an oesophageal ring present. **Dysphagia in an adult requires endoscopy, and the delay caused by treating it as a functional complaint is what makes the cancer inoperable.** Vomiting of retained food points to gastric outlet obstruction, which again is structural until proved otherwise. Nothing in this entry addresses any of it.
On the material: bovine saliva is a route for Mycobacterium bovis, and handling the mouth of a live ox to collect it brings a person's hands to the animal's oral and nasal secretions. 牛涎 is in no prescription in the formulary and is not in the materia medica of this site.
譯 1.3.12.2 Translation영역
The drool-froth of an old ox governs choking blockage.
Clinical note임상 주석
老牛, an old ox, is specified, and the specification is the kind of detail that marks a real practice rather than a copied one — somebody was choosing the animal. 涎沫 is the ropy foam at the mouth of a ruminant, which an ox produces copiously and continuously, being a prodigious salivator.
The modern reading is at the passage above: 噎 is dysphagia and dysphagia is endoscoped.
1.3.13 Cud from the Ox's Mouth 口中齝草
譯 1.3.13.1 Translation영역
It governs choking blockage.
Clinical note임상 주석
The cud — the bolus an ox brings back up to chew — for the blockage at which a person's food will not go down. The reasoning is as direct as it looks: the ox is the animal that can bring food back up and send it down again at will, and the patient cannot. It is the same figure as the heart for forgetfulness at 1.3.7.
**Modern reading. Not in use, and see 1.3.12: 噎 is dysphagia and it needs endoscopy.** The material is partly digested rumen contents, which is to say a dense inoculum of the animal's gut flora; eating it raw is a direct faecal-oral exposure.
譯 1.3.13.2 Translation영역
齝 the sound is 丑之 run together
Clinical note임상 주석
A pronunciation gloss, not a source label, and worth keeping for what it is: 丑之切 is a 反切 fanqie, the traditional device that gives a character's reading by taking the initial of one character and the rhyme of another — 丑 supplies the initial and 之 the rhyme, yielding the reading recorded in Korean as 치. The compilers glossed it because 齝, to chew the cud, is a rare character their readers would not have known. The whole passage is three characters and one of this book's smallest, and it is a reminder that these chapters were edited for readers who had to be helped with the writing as well as the medicine.
1.3.14 Ox Bone 骨
譯 1.3.14.1 Source원문
性温, 無毒. 主一切失血諸疾, 燒存性用. 《本草》
Translation영역
Its nature is warm and it is without toxicity. It governs all the diseases of blood loss; burn it preserving its nature for use.
Clinical note임상 주석
Calcined ox bone for every kind of bleeding, prepared by the same 燒存性 charring as the horn core at 1.3.2 and acting on the same astringent reasoning.
**A note on the materia medica link, because this one is deliberately left open.** The drug table of this site carries 牛骨髓 (Bovis Medulla, ox bone marrow) and 牛髓 (ox leg marrow) as separate entries, and the formulary uses the marrow in two prescriptions — 熟牛骨內髓 一椀, a bowl of cooked marrow from inside the ox bone. **Marrow and calcined bone are not the same drug**, any more than tin and tin ash are, and linking this section to the marrow entry would put two different materials under one identifier. Plain 牛骨, the calcined bone of this section, appears in no prescription in the formulary at all. So the link is left empty and the position reported rather than forced.
**Modern reading.** Calcined bone is calcium phosphate and has no haemostatic action. 一切失血諸疾, all the diseases of blood loss, is a category and not a diagnosis: bleeding has a site and a mechanism, and the work is to find them — a bleeding source on endoscopy or imaging, a platelet count, a coagulation screen, a drug history that includes anticoagulants and antiplatelets. The point made at 1.3.2 applies here with more force because the claim is broader.
One further caution: bone is adjacent to marrow and marrow is haematopoietic tissue, not nervous tissue, so the specified-risk-material rule of 1.3.4 does not reach it — but vertebral bone does carry spinal cord, and that is why mechanically separated meat from bovine vertebrae is restricted.
1.3.15 Bull's Pizzle 特牛莖
譯 1.3.15.1 Source원문
主婦人漏下赤白無子, 卽牛隂莖也. 《本草》
Translation영역
It governs spotting with red and white discharge and childlessness in women; this is the ox's penis.
Clinical note임상 주석
特牛 is the bull, the uncastrated male, and the book glosses its own headword at the end of the sentence — 卽牛隂莖也, this is the ox's penis — which removes any doubt about the material. The materia medica of this site carries the parallel drugs 白馬莖 at 1.10 of this chapter, which is outside this portion, and 黃狗外腎, so the class was in use.
The reasoning is the signature logic at its most literal, and it runs in a direction worth noticing: a male organ is given to a woman for infertility and abnormal bleeding, on the ground that what generates supplies generation. The same construction produces 鹿茸 and the other reproductive-organ tonics of this chapter.
**Modern reading.** Nothing here is in use. **Infertility is a diagnosis made in a couple, not in a woman**, and the first steps are a semen analysis, confirmation of ovulation, and assessment of tubal patency; roughly a third of cases are male-factor and that third is missed entirely by any approach that treats the woman alone. 漏下赤白 — intermenstrual bleeding with discharge — needs a speculum examination, cervical screening, and exclusion of endometrial and cervical pathology, and it is one of the presentations in which delay is measurable in outcome. 特牛莖 is in no prescription in the formulary and is not in the materia medica of this site.
1.3.16 Ox Urine 尿
譯 1.3.16.1 Source원문
性寒, 味苦辛, 無毒. 主消渴黃疸水腫腹脹脚滿, 小便不通
Translation영역
Its nature is cold, its flavour bitter and acrid, and it is without toxicity. It governs dispersion-thirst, jaundice, water swelling, abdominal distension and fullness of the legs, and urine that will not pass.
Clinical note임상 주석
The source label for this pair stands at the end of the next passage. The indications are all of fluid and of the yellow — 水腫 oedema, 腹脹 abdominal distension, 脚滿 swollen legs, 黃疸 jaundice, 小便不通 retention — and giving urine for a failure to pass urine is the organ-for-function version of the principle at 1.3.7.
**Modern reading, and the combination of signs listed here is the whole point.** Jaundice with ascites and leg oedema is decompensated liver disease, and the full set — 黃疸 + 腹脹 + 脚滿 — is cirrhosis with portal hypertension until proved otherwise. It is diagnosed on liver function tests, imaging and often ascitic tap, and it is managed with salt restriction, diuretics, treatment of the cause and surveillance for varices, encephalopathy and hepatocellular carcinoma. **Painless jaundice in an older adult is pancreatic or biliary malignancy until excluded, and it is one of the few presentations where a week matters.** 小便不通, acute retention, is a urological emergency relieved by catheterisation. None of these waits for a diuretic drink.
**On the material: animal urine is the transmission route for leptospirosis**, and Leptospira is shed in the urine of cattle, pigs, rodents and dogs, entering through mucous membranes or broken skin; Weil's disease is the severe form with jaundice and renal failure, which is a grim irony given the indications above. Cattle urine also carries Brucella and, where the herd is infected, M. bovis. Drinking it is not a therapy and the practice should be named as a hazard.
譯 1.3.16.2 Translation영역
The urine of a black ox is the good one.
Clinical note임상 주석
**This passage is the one that decides how this section attaches to the materia medica.** The drug table of this site carries 烏牛尿, black ox urine, as Bovis Urina, and the book names that very article here — 烏牛尿佳 — so the identification is the book's own rather than an inference. It is the same yellow-ox-for-the-table, black-ox-for-the-excretions rule stated at 1.3.1 and again at 1.8. The section is nevertheless left unlinked because the drug table's headword carries the colour and the section's headword does not, and the pairing is reported for the alias table rather than asserted here; that choice and its reason are set out in the report.
Note that the table's 烏牛尿 appears in no prescription in the formulary — it is an entry the drug table carries without the formulary calling for it, which is an ordinary situation in a table that grew over years and is not a reason to disturb it.
1.3.17 Ox Dung 糞
譯 1.3.17.1 Source원문
主水腫及霍亂, 塗門戶辟惡氣, 燒之亦辟惡
Translation영역
It governs water swelling and sudden turmoil; smeared on the gate and door it wards off malign qi, and burning it also wards off the malign.
Clinical note임상 주석
Three uses in one sentence and only the first is medical. 水腫 is oedema and 霍亂 is the sudden violent vomiting and purging that covers cholera and severe gastroenteritis. The other two are apotropaic: dung smeared on the doorway and dung burnt as a fumigant, both to keep the malign out of the house. The source label for the group stands at the end of the next passage.
Burning dried dung as a household fumigant and fuel is a practice of most pastoral societies and it does something — the smoke repels insects — which is probably the observation underneath 辟惡氣.
**Modern reading. 霍亂 is the dangerous one and it is dangerous quickly.** Profuse vomiting and watery diarrhoea kills by dehydration, and the intervention that saves lives is oral rehydration solution, with intravenous fluid when the patient cannot keep up; in cholera an antibiotic shortens the illness but the fluid is what matters. A child or an older adult with sunken eyes, no urine and poor skin turgor needs fluid immediately. Giving dung by mouth in this situation adds an enteric pathogen load to a gut that is already failing.
Household smoke is itself a hazard: biomass and dung smoke indoors is a leading cause of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease and of childhood pneumonia worldwide, and it is a carcinogen exposure. The fumigation here is not neutral.
譯 1.3.17.2 Translation영역
The ash of the dung governs a moxa sore that has long failed to heal.
Clinical note임상 주석
A 灸瘡 is the burn left by moxibustion, deliberately kept open in some protocols, and 久不差, long failing to heal, is a chronic ulcer. Dung ash is wood-ash chemistry — alkaline potassium and calcium salts — and a strong alkali on an open ulcer is a chemical burn, not a dressing. That said, the ash has been through a fire, which matters a great deal for the next passage: calcination destroys the spores that raw dung carries.
**Modern reading.** A wound that has not healed in a month is investigated rather than dressed: the questions are arterial supply, venous insufficiency, pressure, diabetes with neuropathy, infection including osteomyelitis, and — in a non-healing lesion of long standing — malignant change. Treatment follows the answer. An alkaline ash preparation has no place in it.
譯 1.3.17.3 Source원문
新生犢子臍中屎, 主人九竅出血, 燒灰服. 《本草》
Translation영역
The dung in the navel of a newborn calf governs bleeding from the nine orifices in a person; burn it to ash and take it.
Clinical note임상 주석
**This is the most hazardous instruction in the ox group and it has to be named exactly.** The material is the soiling of a newborn calf's umbilicus, and the practice it belongs to — applying dung to an umbilical stump — is the classical cause of neonatal tetanus. Clostridium tetani spores are abundant in cattle dung and in manured soil; they germinate in the anaerobic conditions of a cut cord or a deep wound; and umbilical dressing with dung, ash or soil remains one of the identified risk practices behind neonatal tetanus in the regions where it persists. Tetanus is essentially one hundred per cent fatal untreated and still kills a substantial proportion of those treated, and the only reliable protection is vaccination — maternal tetanus toxoid in pregnancy prevents neonatal tetanus, which is why it is a core antenatal intervention.
The calcination 燒灰 would destroy the spores in the dose that is swallowed, so the swallowed ash is not itself the tetanus risk; **the risk is in collecting and handling the material, and in the wider practice this entry belongs to.** Raw cattle dung also carries Shiga toxin-producing E. coli, Salmonella, Cryptosporidium and Giardia.
For the indication: 九竅出血, bleeding from the nine orifices, means bleeding from several sites at once, and that is not a symptom to be treated — it is disseminated intravascular coagulation, severe thrombocytopenia, a haemorrhagic fever or anticoagulant excess, and it is a medical emergency requiring a coagulation screen and a platelet count within the hour.
**On the materia medica link.** The drug table of this site carries 黃牛糞, the dung of a yellow ox, as Bovis Faeces, and the formulary uses it in two prescriptions — one of them specifying 深山黃牛糞, the dung of a deep-mountain yellow ox. But this section's headword is plain 糞, and the book says at 1.3.1 and again at 1.8 that for the excretions **the black ox is stronger than the yellow**, which is the opposite of the table's headword. The book therefore disagrees with the table's specification, and this is not a disagreement to resolve by fiat; the section is left unlinked and the pairing reported with that conflict stated.
1.4 Bear Fat 熊脂
`곰의기름` 은 음절마다 지금 말과 같다 — `곰`+속격 `의`+`기름`. 옛 글자가 한 자도 없고 한양 PUA 도 안 쓰인 자리이며, 이 묶음의 향명 열셋 가운데 가장 투명하다. 향명이 한자 `熊脂` 를 글자대로 옮긴 것이므로 짐승을 가리는 데 쓸모는 없으나, 거꾸로 **16세기에 `곰` 과 `기름` 이 이미 지금 꼴이었음**을 보여 주는 자료가 된다. 이 잎 묶음(1.4 와 잎 여섯)은 향명이 어미에만 붙고 잎에는 하나도 붙지 않는다.
譯 1.4.1 Source원문
性微寒一云凉, 味甘一云甘滑, 無毒. 治風, 補虛, 強心, 殺勞䖝. 《本草》
Translation영역
Its nature is slightly cold one says cool, its flavour sweet one says sweet and slippery, and it is without toxicity. It treats wind, supplements vacuity, strengthens the heart, and kills the consumption worm.
Clinical note임상 주석
**The bear sections and their six leaves are legally the second heaviest group in this portion, after musk, and the statement comes first.**
**Bears are protected and the trade in their parts is prohibited.** The Asiatic black bear Ursus thibetanus, which is the bear of this text, stands on CITES Appendix I, and the brown bear U. arctos is on Appendix I in several of its populations and Appendix II elsewhere; all international commercial trade in Appendix I bears and their derivatives is barred. In Korea the Asiatic black bear 반달가슴곰 is a Class I endangered wild species and Natural Monument No. 329, having been reduced to a remnant population and reintroduced into Jirisan; taking one or dealing in its parts is a criminal offence. **This is not scarcity. It is crime.**
The second thing to say about bears is distinct from the law and is the reason this group is discussed in animal welfare rather than only in conservation: **bear bile farming**, in which bears are confined for years with a permanent fistula or catheter in the gallbladder so that bile can be drained repeatedly. That practice is the subject of 1.4.2 below, where it belongs with the substitute that makes it unnecessary.
殺勞䖝, killing the consumption worm, is the one indication here that names a disease the modern reader should pick up: 勞 is consumptive wasting with cough and fever, which is largely tuberculosis, and the 勞䖝 is the agent the tradition posited for it. There is nothing wrong with the inference that something living caused it. There is everything wrong with treating it with fat: tuberculosis is diagnosed on sputum molecular testing and culture and is cured by six months of combination chemotherapy, and it is still one of the world's leading infectious causes of death.
**Modern reading of the material.** Bear fat is adipose tissue — triglycerides, with the lipophilic contaminants of a long-lived omnivore concentrated in it. Rendered fat as an emollient is as good or bad as any other animal fat. There is no pharmacology for wind, vacuity or the heart.
譯 1.4.2 Source원문
去面上䵟𪒟及瘡頭瘍白秃. 《本草》
Translation영역
It removes blemishes and dark spots on the face, and sores on the head with running lesions and white baldness.
Clinical note임상 주석
䵟𪒟 are the facial blemishes — freckling, melasma, the dark patches — and 瘡頭瘍白秃 is the scalp disease with scaling and patchy baldness. The transcription writes 白秃 here with the form 秃, and on the next leaf at 1.4.3 writes the same word 白禿 with the form 禿, which is why the collation line recorded at 1.4.3 exists; the two graphs are variants of one character.
**Modern reading. 白禿 is tinea capitis and it does not respond to anything applied.** Scalp ringworm is a dermatophyte infection of the hair shaft itself — Microsporum and Trichophyton species — and because the fungus lives inside the hair, topical agents cannot reach it: it requires oral griseofulvin or terbinafine for several weeks, and untreated it causes scarring alopecia that does not grow back. It is also contagious between children, so household contacts are checked. Greasing the scalp with fat does nothing except occlude it.
For the facial pigmentation: melasma is driven by ultraviolet exposure and hormones and is managed with rigorous photoprotection, topical tyrosinase inhibitors and patience; it recurs with sun. Greasy occlusive applications can provoke acne and, in some formulations, a post-inflammatory darkening that makes the problem worse.
譯 1.4.3 Source원문
○熊脂謂之熊白, 寒月則有, 夏月則無, 十一月取之, 須其背上者. 《本草》
Translation영역
Bear fat is called bear white. In the cold months it is there and in the summer months it is not; it is taken in the eleventh month, and it must be the fat from the animal's back.
Clinical note임상 주석
**This is accurate natural history and it is worth saying so.** 熊白, bear white, is the dense white subcutaneous back fat that a bear lays down before hibernation; it is present in the cold months and gone by summer, exactly as the passage says, because the animal metabolises it through the winter dormancy. 十一月取之, taken in the eleventh month, is the point of maximum deposition. The description is good enough that it could only come from people who handled bears seasonally.
Read forward, the same sentence is a description of how the hunt was timed, and the eleventh month is when the animal is denning and least able to escape. The observation that makes the drug attractive is the observation that makes the animal vulnerable.
譯 1.4.4 Source원문
○熊惡𥂁, 食之則死. 《本草》
Translation영역
The bear hates salt; if it eats salt it dies.
Clinical note임상 주석
This is false. Bears are omnivores with ordinary mammalian sodium physiology and salt does not kill them; captive bears are fed salted foods without incident, and wild bears seek out mineral licks. The belief is of the kind that attaches to a feared animal — a secret weakness, a thing that undoes it — and it is recorded here because the chapter's own errors are part of the record and because the pattern matters: this is the fourth claim in two sections that was arrived at by reasoning rather than looking, after the musk deer's snake diet at 1.2, the scorched vegetation at 1.2, and the regurgitated gallstone at 1.3.
1.4.1 Bear's Flesh 肉
譯 1.4.1.1 Source원문
性平, 味甘, 無毒. 主風痺筋骨不仁
Translation영역
Its nature is balanced, its flavour sweet, and it is without toxicity. It governs wind impediment and numbness of sinew and bone.
Clinical note임상 주석
風痺 is the wind impediment pattern — the aching, migrating joint and limb disorder — and 筋骨不仁 is loss of sensation in sinew and bone. The source label stands at the end of the next passage.
**Modern reading, and the risk here is specific and serious. Bear meat is the leading source of human trichinellosis from wild game.** Trichinella nativa and related species encyst in bear muscle, the larvae are **freeze-resistant** — so the usual advice to freeze wild meat does not work for bear — and outbreaks from bear meat are reported regularly from the circumpolar north, including from meat that was dried, smoked or cured rather than cooked through. Trichinellosis gives fever, periorbital oedema, myositis and eosinophilia and can involve the heart and central nervous system. **The only reliable protection is cooking to a core temperature that kills the larvae; freezing, smoking, drying and curing do not.** Bear meat also carries Toxoplasma and, like any wild carnivore, is a rabies consideration for anyone butchering it.
It is also illegal to take; see 1.4. For the indication: numbness in a limb needs the lesion localised — nerve root, peripheral nerve, cord or brain — and a polyneuropathy needs diabetes, B12 deficiency, alcohol, thyroid disease and drug causes looked for.
譯 1.4.1.2 Source원문
○有痼疾者一云積聚寒熱不可食熊肉, 終身不除愈. 《本草》
Translation영역
A person with a chronic complaint one says with accumulations and gatherings and alternating cold and heat may not eat bear's flesh; it will not be got rid of or cured for the rest of their life.
Clinical note임상 주석
**The chapter contradicting the indication it has just given, in the next breath, and the prohibition is the stronger half.** The flesh treats wind impediment and numbness — and anyone with a 痼疾, an entrenched chronic illness, must not eat it, or the illness will never leave them for the whole of their life. The sochu specifies what kind of chronic illness: 積聚寒熱, accumulations and gatherings with alternating cold and heat, which is the palpable abdominal mass with intermittent fever.
This kind of self-reversal is the most valuable material in these chapters, and the 禽部 chapter's stork bone is the other instance — 無毒 and then 有小毒 two lines apart. What the compilers have preserved is a real disagreement in their sources rather than a tidied consensus, and the prohibition side is the one that was arrived at by someone watching an outcome.
**It is also, read forward, a correct observation badly explained.** A chronic wasting illness with intermittent fever and an abdominal mass, made permanently worse by eating bear meat, describes trichinellosis acquired on top of existing disease as well as it describes anything; and 終身不除愈 — never got rid of for the whole of life — is what encysted larvae in muscle actually do. The reasoning in the text is humoral and the observation underneath it may well have been of a parasitic infection.
1.4.2 Bear's Gall 膽
譯 1.4.2.1 Source원문
性寒, 味苦, 無毒. 主熱病黃疸久痢疳𧏾心痛疰忤, 及小兒五疳, 殺䖝, 治惡瘡. 《本草》
Translation영역
Its nature is cold, its flavour bitter, and it is without toxicity. It governs heat disease, jaundice, enduring dysentery, gan erosion, heart pain and malign visitation, and the five gan conditions of small children; it kills worms and treats malign sores.
Clinical note임상 주석
**This is the most important entry in the chapter for a practising clinician, because it is the one case where the prohibited animal drug has a licensed pharmaceutical substitute that contains the identical active molecule.**
**The active constituent of 熊膽 is ursodeoxycholic acid, and ursodeoxycholic acid is on the pharmacy shelf.** It was isolated from bear bile — the name records it, ursus — and bear bile is unusual among mammalian biles in containing it in quantity, up to a third or more of the bile acids where other species have traces. It is manufactured semi-synthetically from cholic acid and is licensed as ursodiol for primary biliary cholangitis, for the dissolution of cholesterol gallstones, and it is used in intrahepatic cholestasis of pregnancy and in several paediatric cholestatic conditions. **So there is nothing a practitioner could want from bear bile that is not better obtained from a tablet with a known dose and a known purity.** Where a substitute exists, naming the substitute is the most useful thing a clinical note can do, and here the substitute is not an analogue — it is the same compound.
**Against that: bear bile farming.** Bears are kept for years in cages with a surgically created gallbladder fistula, a catheter or a free-dripping opening, and bile is drained repeatedly; the animals develop peritonitis, biliary infection, abdominal hernias and hepatic tumours, and the bile that comes out is frequently purulent. The practice exists because demand for this drug exists. **In the Republic of Korea bear farming for bile was legislated out: a 2022 agreement among government, farmers and civil society and the subsequent law provide for the end of bear farming and the ban on slaughtering bears for bile, with the remaining farmed bears moved to sanctuaries. Possessing or trading bear bile in Korea is an offence under the Wildlife Protection and Management Act and the CITES implementing law.** The useful clinical position is therefore simple and complete: the material is illegal, the practice that produces it is cruel, and the molecule is available by prescription.
Of the indications: 黃疸 is jaundice, and this is the one indication with a real connection to the constituent, since ursodeoxycholic acid genuinely acts in cholestatic liver disease — the tradition had found something. 久痢 is chronic dysentery, 疳𧏾 is the eroding ulceration of childhood malnutrition, 小兒五疳 the five gan patterns, and 殺䖝 the worm claim answered at 1.2. 心痛 of recent onset gets an electrocardiogram before it gets anything else.
譯 1.4.2.2 Translation영역
Dropped into the eye it removes the film and opens blindness.
Clinical note임상 주석
**This must not be done and the reason is at 1.3.10.** Bile instilled in the eye is a detergent on the corneal epithelium: it strips it, and the stripped cornea is then open to the bacteria and fungi the preparation carries. The outcome is microbial keratitis, and in the eye that means a scar across the visual axis or the loss of the eye. 開盲, opening blindness, is the claim that makes this dangerous rather than merely useless, because it is addressed to people who have little sight left to lose.
瞖 is the film or opacity — pterygium, corneal scar, mature cataract — and all of these are surgical. Cataract surgery is one of the most effective operations in medicine and is the answer to most of what this passage is aimed at.
譯 1.4.2.3 Source원문
○取之隂乾, 然亦多僞. 欲試之, 取粟顆許投温水中, 一道若線不散者爲眞. 《本草》
Translation영역
Take it and dry it in the shade; it is, however, much counterfeited. To test it, take a piece the size of a millet grain and drop it into warm water: the one that runs in a single thread like a line and does not disperse is genuine.
Clinical note임상 주석
**The third authentication test in this portion, after musk at 1.2 and bezoar at 1.3, and the third piece of evidence that the trade in expensive animal drugs was already mostly fraudulent in 1613.** The test is a good one and it reads a real property: dried bear bile is a concentrated resinous mass of bile salts that dissolves slowly from the surface, so a grain dropped in warm water trails a single coherent filament of yellow before it breaks up, while pig or ox bile adulterated with starch or gum clouds and disperses at once. Modern authentication measures the tauroursodeoxycholic acid fraction by chromatography, which is also how illegal product is identified at borders.
多僞, much counterfeited, has one consequence worth stating plainly to anyone who might be offered this drug: the probability that a given sample is either illegal or fake is close to one, and the two are not alternatives — most of what is sold as bear bile is pig bile, which means the purchase funds the trade without even delivering the molecule.
1.4.3 Bear's Brain 腦
譯 1.4.3.1 Source원문
腦髓去頭上白禿風屑, 幷髮落, 作油摩之 ○又療諸聾. 《本草》
Translation영역
The brain marrow removes white baldness and wind-scurf on the head, together with hair fall; make it into an oil and rub it in. It also treats deafness of every kind.
Clinical note임상 주석
腦髓, brain marrow, with the whole brain rendered into an oil and rubbed on the scalp. The indications are the scalp ones from 1.4 — 白禿 tinea capitis, 風屑 scurf, 髮落 hair fall — plus deafness.
**Modern reading. Brain is the tissue not to eat or handle, and in this case the reasons are different from the bovine one.** The specified-risk-material rule at 1.3.4 is about cattle and bovine spongiform encephalopathy, and no prion disease is known in bears, so it would be wrong to import that argument here. The objections that do apply are the general ones and they are enough: brain is where lipophilic contaminants and any neurotropic infectious agent concentrate, it autolyses within hours, it is handled raw, and in a wild carnivore it is the tissue of greatest concern for rabies — rabies virus is concentrated in nervous tissue and handling the brain of a wild mammal is the classic laboratory and butchering exposure. Rabies is **effectively one hundred per cent fatal once symptoms appear**, and the only answer is post-exposure prophylaxis given before they do: wound washing, rabies immunoglobulin and vaccine. Anyone who has handled the brain of a wild carnivore with broken skin needs that assessment, not reassurance.
For the indications: 白禿 is answered at 1.4 — oral antifungals, not applied oil. 風屑 is seborrhoeic dermatitis or dandruff, treated with ketoconazole or zinc pyrithione shampoo. 髮落 as androgenetic alopecia has two treatments with evidence, topical minoxidil and oral finasteride in men, and neither is an oil. **諸聾, deafness of every kind, is the claim to reject most firmly, and nothing should ever be instilled into an ear for it**: sudden sensorineural hearing loss is an emergency in which oral corticosteroids given within days change the outcome, and conductive loss has findable causes — wax, effusion, otosclerosis, perforation — identified by looking in the ear and by audiometry. Oil poured into an ear with a perforated drum reaches the middle ear.
1.4.4 Bear's Bone 骨
譯 1.4.4.1 Source원문
主歷節風及小兒客忤, 並煮湯浴. 《本草》
Translation영역
It governs joint-running wind and visitation-offence in small children; in both cases boil it into a decoction and bathe in it.
Clinical note임상 주석
歷節風 is the migrating, severely painful arthritis of the classical literature, covering what would now be acute gout, acute rheumatic arthritis and the other acute polyarthritides. 客忤, visitation-offence, is the sudden distress of an infant attributed to an encounter with something malign. 煮湯浴, boiled into a bath rather than taken internally, is the route for both, which at least removes the ingestion hazard.
**Modern reading. Illegal to obtain; see 1.4.** The bone of a protected bear is a prohibited wildlife product in the same way tiger bone is, and the tiger-bone trade's displacement onto other large carnivores is well documented — when one species becomes unobtainable the demand moves, and bear bone has been one of the destinations. Buying it sustains that substitution.
For the indication: **acute monoarthritis is septic arthritis until proved otherwise**, and the joint is aspirated — a hot swollen joint with fever is an emergency, because an untreated septic joint is destroyed in days. Where it is gout, the crystals are seen in the aspirate and the attack is treated with an anti-inflammatory or colchicine, with urate lowering afterwards. A bath does nothing for any of it. And in an infant, persistent inconsolable distress needs a cause found: intussusception, incarcerated hernia, urinary infection, occult fracture and meningitis all present that way.
1.4.5 Bear's Blood 血
譯 1.4.5.1 Translation영역
It treats visitation-offence in small children.
Clinical note임상 주석
**Raw blood from a wild carnivore, given to an infant, is the worst combination of material and patient in this portion.**
The hazards are the ones at 1.4.1 and 1.4.3 concentrated: Trichinella, which is freeze-resistant in bear tissue; Toxoplasma, which in a young child or an immunocompromised person causes disseminated disease; and **rabies, for which blood is a lower-risk tissue than brain or saliva but for which the whole act of slaughtering and bleeding a wild carnivore is the exposure.** Add the bacterial load of raw blood handled without refrigeration. An infant has neither the immune reserve nor the body mass to absorb any of this.
It is also illegal to obtain; see 1.4.
For the indication, see 1.4.4: persistent inconsolable crying in an infant is a presentation that needs examination, not a remedy, and the diagnoses that must not be missed are surgical and infective.
1.4.6 Bear's Paw 掌
譯 1.4.6.1 Source원문
食之可禦風寒, 此是八珍之數 ○足蹯爲食珍之貴, 古人最重之, 然胹之難熟 ○熊掌得酒醋水三件煮熟, 卽嗔大如皮毬. 《本草》
Translation영역
Eaten, it can fend off wind and cold; it is one of the eight precious things. The paw is prized among the delicacies of the table and the ancients valued it most highly, yet it is hard to bring to tenderness by stewing. Bear's paw, boiled with wine, vinegar and water, the three together, swells up as big as a leather ball.
Clinical note임상 주석
**This is a food entry rather than a drug entry and it is one of the most damaging items in the chapter, because a luxury food market is harder to extinguish than a medical one.** 八珍, the eight precious things, is the canonical list of banquet delicacies, and bear paw stands in it beside camel hump and leopard foetus. The paw is not being prescribed for anything specific — 禦風寒, fending off wind and cold, is as close as it comes to an indication — it is being eaten because it is rare and expensive.
**Bear paw is a principal driver of bear poaching and its trade is prohibited.** Paws are the part most often seized at borders after gallbladders, they are taken from animals killed for the purpose, and the demand is for the dish rather than for a therapy, which means the substitution argument that works for bile at 1.4.2 has no purchase here. There is nothing to replace: the thing wanted is the status of having eaten it. The honest clinical note is that this is not medicine, that it is illegal, and that a practitioner asked about it should decline to dress it as treatment.
The cookery is accurately observed. 胹之難熟, hard to bring to tenderness by stewing, is correct — the paw is dense connective tissue and tendon — and the swelling 大如皮毬, as big as a leather ball, is collagen gelatinising and taking up water, which is exactly what prolonged acidulated braising does to a tendon-rich cut. The wine and vinegar are not flavourings here; the acid accelerates collagen hydrolysis. It is a real piece of culinary chemistry.
譯 1.4.6.2 Source원문
○此物能引氣不食, 自舐其掌, 故美在其掌. 《入門》
Translation영역
This animal can draw in its qi and not eat, licking its own paws, and therefore the goodness is in its paws.
Clinical note임상 주석
**An accurate observation with the causation inverted.** Bears do go months without eating and they do lick their paws during denning, and 能引氣不食 — drawing in the qi and not eating — is a fair sixteenth-century description of hibernation, in which the animal neither feeds, drinks, urinates nor defecates while metabolising its own stored fat, the 熊白 of 1.4. What the passage then does is read the paw-licking as the cause of the paw's quality: the nourishment is held to collect where the animal's attention goes.
The real reason bears lick their paws in the den is that they shed and regrow the footpad epidermis during dormancy. The passage is a good example of the chapter's characteristic move — look carefully, then explain backwards — and it is the same structure as the scorched grass at 1.2 and the salt at 1.4.
譯 1.4.6.3 Source원문
○熊壽五百歲, 能化爲狐狸. 《入門》
Translation영역
A bear lives five hundred years and can transform into a fox or a raccoon-dog.
Clinical note임상 주석
Legend, and the Bogam prints it from 醫學入門 without comment. Bears live around twenty-five years in the wild and up to about thirty-five in captivity, and they do not transform into anything. The transformation motif belongs to the same family as the swallow becoming a shellfish and the sparrow becoming a 黃褐侯 that the 禽部 chapter carries, and the compilers' habit of printing it alongside the cookery and the anatomy is worth noticing rather than editing away: the chapter does not sort its knowledge into reliable and unreliable, and the modern reader has to do that sorting themselves. This passage is the easy case. The hard cases are the authentication tests, which look equally old-fashioned and happen to be correct.
1.5 Elephant Ivory 象牙
譯 1.5.1 Source원문
性平一云寒, 無毒. 主諸鐵及竹木刺入肉不出 ○笏及梳作屑用之. 《本草》
Translation영역
Its nature is balanced one says cold and it is without toxicity. It governs every kind of iron, bamboo or wood splinter that has entered the flesh and will not come out. Filings are made from a court tablet or a comb for use.
Clinical note임상 주석
**Ivory comes from a CITES Appendix I animal and its trade is prohibited. This is the plainest statement needed in this portion after musk, and it is simpler than musk because there is no substitute to discuss — there is no pharmacological action to replace.**
The Asian elephant Elephas maximus has been on CITES Appendix I since the convention entered into force, and the African elephant has been on Appendix I since 1990 with certain populations on Appendix II; international commercial trade in ivory is barred. Domestic markets have been closed in succession — China in 2018, the United Kingdom under the Ivory Act 2018, Hong Kong, Taiwan, and with restrictions in the United States under the African Elephant Conservation Act and state law. The Asian elephant is assessed Endangered by the IUCN and its population has fallen by at least half over three generations. **Buying, selling, importing or possessing ivory without the narrow documented exemptions is a criminal offence in most jurisdictions, and this is the drug most likely to be offered to a practitioner as an heirloom or an antique, which is precisely the channel the laundering runs through.** Fossil and mammoth ivory documentation is one of the established routes for passing fresh elephant tusk, which connects this section to the fossil bone at 1.1 — a buyer who accepts a provenance story without papers is part of that trade whatever they believe about the piece.
**This section carries no link to the materia medica of this site and that is a gap rather than a decision.** 象牙 is not in the drug table, yet the formulary uses it as a named ingredient in four prescriptions — 象牙丸, the Ivory Pill, which is named after it and calls for 象牙 三錢; a second 象牙丸 with 象牙 五錢; the 漏瘡 prescription that adds 象牙 一兩 once the deer antler is withdrawn; and the 下疳瘡 powder that takes it 各等分 with nine other drugs. Three separate earlier workers have each written into those formula records that ivory "has no entry in the herb list and is left out of the ingredient list." A formula named for a drug is the clearest case there is for the drug having its own entry, and it is proposed in the report.
The entry is marked 唐, bought in from China, which is correct — the elephant is not a Korean animal and the ivory reached Seoul through the Chinese trade.
**On the material and the claim.** Ivory is dentine: type I collagen mineralised with hydroxyapatite, which is to say the same substance as a human tooth, and chemically indistinguishable from it. There is no constituent with an action. The claimed indication — drawing out a splinter of iron, bamboo or wood lodged in flesh — is a drawing or extracting claim of the kind this chapter also makes for the black cock's flesh and for several resins, and it rests on sympathy rather than chemistry: ivory is the hard thing that emerges from the flesh of the living animal, so it brings out what is embedded.
**Modern reading of the indication.** A retained foreign body is found and removed, not drawn out. Metal is radiopaque and shows on plain radiography; **wood and bamboo are radiolucent and are missed on plain films**, which is the commonest reason a retained organic splinter becomes a chronic infection — they are found on ultrasound, which is the appropriate first imaging for a suspected wooden foreign body, or on CT or MRI. The material matters for the urgency, too: organic foreign bodies carry soil and plant organisms and reliably cause granuloma, cellulitis and tenosynovitis if left, whereas a sterile metal fragment may be tolerated. Removal is surgical, under direct vision, and tetanus status is checked. A poultice over a retained splinter closes the track over an inoculum.
**笏及梳作屑用之 is the most interesting sentence in the entry and it says something about the supply.** The drug was not made from fresh tusk: it was filed from a 笏, the ivory tablet an official held at court, or from a comb. The material came out of the household's existing worked objects, which is a recycling economy rather than a hunting one, and it is the historical reason ivory appears in a Korean materia medica at all — Korea had no elephants and no ivory trade of its own, but it had Chinese-made ivory articles. This changes nothing about the law today, since the modern trade is in fresh tusk, and it is worth recording because it explains the odd smallness of the doses.
1.6 Deer Antler Glue 白膠
**이 향명은 우리말 이름이 아니라 한자어를 한글로 적은 것이다** — `녹각교` 는 鹿角膠의 우리 음이다. 그러므로 `hyangmyeong_mod` 는 글자가 같다(지금도 `녹각교` 로 쓴다). 꼴이 우리말 이름(`곰의기름`ㆍ`갓플`)과 다르므로 향명 열셋 가운데 이런 꼴 다섯(`녹각교`ㆍ`양`ㆍ`쳔엽`ㆍ`타락`ㆍ`수유`)을 따로 세어 보고에 적었다 — 그 가운데 `양`ㆍ`쳔엽`ㆍ`타락` 은 한자어라도 우리말로 굳은 낱말이고, `녹각교`ㆍ`수유` 는 한자어의 음 그대로다.
**값은 이 향명이 표제어를 바꿔 준다는 것이다.** 표제어는 `白膠` 인데 향명은 `녹각교` 이고, 본문이 곧 `一名鹿角膠` 라 한다. 곧 향명과 본문이 함께 「이 절은 鹿角膠다」라고 말하므로, 약재표의 `nokgakgyo 鹿角膠` 로 이어야 할 근거가 짐작이 아니라 책의 말이다. 자(`yakchk`)의 이름 맞대기가 `白膠`↔`鹿角膠` 를 받지 못하므로 `herb:` 는 비우고 짝을 보고한다.
譯 1.6.1 Source원문
性平温, 味甘, 無毒. 主男子腎藏氣衰, 虛損腰痛羸瘦, 婦人服之令有子, 能安胎, 治赤白漏下及吐血下血. 《本草》
Translation영역
Its nature is balanced and warm, its flavour sweet, and it is without toxicity. It governs decline of the kidney-viscus qi in men, with vacuity damage, lumbar pain and emaciation; taken by a woman it makes her able to have a child; it can quiet the fetus, and it treats red and white spotting, and the vomiting of blood and the passing of blood.
Clinical note임상 주석
**This is the first entry in this portion that can be carried forward without qualification, and the contrast with the three sections before it is the point of putting it plainly.** 鹿角膠, deer-antler glue, is a current pharmacopoeial drug. It is produced by prolonged boiling of the ossified antler of farmed deer — Cervus elaphus and C. nippon — and it is in the Korean and Chinese pharmacopoeias, available, legal, and in ordinary clinical use. Deer are farmed livestock, antler is a renewable annual growth, and nothing about this drug raises a conservation question. The formulary of this site uses it in eleven prescriptions.
**A chapter that painted everything prohibited would be useless, and this section and the next two are why.** Of the forty-two items in this portion, the ones to refuse are musk, ivory, the bear group and the sea otter; the ones in current legitimate use are this, the antler residue below it, and ejiao at 1.7. The distinction a practitioner needs is not between old and new but between lawful and criminal, and it runs through the middle of this chapter.
The indications are the standard kidney-supplementing set — 腎藏氣衰, 虛損腰痛, 羸瘦 — plus fertility, securing a pregnancy, and the bleeding indications that the whole gelatin class carries.
**Modern reading.** Chemically this is hydrolysed collagen: gelatin, that is, a mixture of peptides rich in glycine, proline and hydroxyproline, with the calcium and phosphate of the antler. There is no haemostatic, haematinic or gonadotrophic action, and the claims for fertility and for preventing miscarriage should be read against what those presentations actually need. **Recurrent miscarriage is investigated — parental karyotype, antiphospholipid antibodies, thyroid function, uterine anatomy — and the one intervention with clear benefit is aspirin with heparin in antiphospholipid syndrome; nothing taken as a tonic reduces the risk, and the belief that it does carries its own harm, because a woman who miscarries while taking it is left thinking she failed to take enough.** 吐血 is upper gastrointestinal haemorrhage and is endoscoped; 下血 and 漏下 are at 1.3.2.
譯 1.6.2 Source원문
○一名鹿角膠, 一名黃明膠, 煮鹿角作之
Translation영역
One name for it is deer-antler glue and one name is yellow clear glue; it is made by boiling deer antler.
Clinical note임상 주석
**The book is telling us what its own headword is, and the identification it gives is what this section is linked by.** 白膠, white glue, is the old name; 鹿角膠, deer-antler glue, is the name that survived and is in the pharmacopoeias; 煮鹿角作之, made by boiling deer antler, settles the material. The Korean gloss at the head of the section says the same thing in Korean, 녹각교, so the vernacular and the Chinese agree. Where the book defines its own term the definition outranks any later standard name, and here there is nothing to weigh against it.
**The second name, 黃明膠, is a genuine problem, and it is the book's own contradiction rather than ours.** Here 黃明膠 is given as another name for a glue made by boiling **deer antler**. At 1.7 below, in the ejiao section, the book writes 寧用黃明牛皮膠 — better to use yellow clear **ox-hide** glue — where the same name plainly means a glue boiled from cattle hide. The two statements cannot both be narrow descriptions of one material. The drug table of this site carries 明膠 as a separate entry, Gelatinum, and the formulary uses it in two prescriptions. **Both readings are recorded here and neither is adopted as the resolution**, because the disagreement belongs to the Bogam: 黃明 is most likely describing the appearance of a clarified glue — yellow and translucent — rather than its animal source, which would make it a grade name applicable to both, but the text does not say so and it should not be made to.
This section is left unlinked in the data for a mechanical reason set out in the Korean gloss note: the project's name check cannot match the headword 白膠 to the table's 鹿角膠, and forcing the link would register as a mismatch. The pairing is reported for the alias table instead. A separate trap should be flagged: the formulary's many occurrences of 白膠香 are **sweetgum resin**, a plant drug of the 木部 chapter, and have nothing to do with this section. Plain 白膠 appears in the formulary not once.
譯 1.6.3 Translation영역
For the method of boiling, see in full the Miscellaneous Formulas.
Clinical note임상 주석
A cross-reference to the 雜方門, the Miscellaneous Formulas chapter, where the glue-boiling method is given at length. The Bogam habitually puts a process in one place and points to it from everywhere it is needed, and this is one of those pointers — worth preserving because it is evidence of the book's editorial architecture rather than of anything pharmacological. The method is the long reduction of ossified antler in water until the extract sets on cooling, which is gelatin extraction.
1.6.1 Deer Antler Residue 鹿角霜
譯 1.6.1.1 Source원문
性温, 味醎, 無毒. 治勞傷羸瘦, 補腎益氣, 固精壯陽, 強骨髓, 止夢泄. 《入門》
Translation영역
Its nature is warm, its flavour salty, and it is without toxicity. It treats taxation damage with emaciation, supplements the kidney and boosts the qi, secures the essence and invigorates yang, strengthens the bone marrow, and checks dream emission.
Clinical note임상 주석
鹿角霜 is what is left in the pot after the glue of 1.6 has been boiled out — the degelatinated antler, hence the materia medica's Cervi Cornu Degelatinatum. The pair is one of the neatest things in the chapter: one raw material yields two drugs with different natures and different uses, the extract and the residue, and the book files them as mother and leaf accordingly. **Like its mother it is a current pharmacopoeial drug, lawful and in use**, and the formulary of this site carries it in nine prescriptions.
The indications are the kidney-securing set, with 固精 and 止夢泄 — securing the essence, checking involuntary emission — foregrounded, which is the usual division of labour between the two: the glue for the blood and the bleeding, the residue for the essence and the leaking.
**Modern reading.** With the collagen extracted, what remains is predominantly calcium phosphate and carbonate with some residual protein, so this is effectively a mineral calcium preparation. It is harmless at ordinary doses. **There is no evidence for any of the sexual or seminal indications, and the one that deserves an answer is 壯陽: erectile dysfunction in a man over forty is a cardiovascular marker and earns a cardiovascular workup**, as at 1.1.2. 勞傷羸瘦 — wasting with exhaustion — is a presentation whose causes have to be found: unintentional weight loss of more than five per cent in six months warrants investigation for malignancy, tuberculosis, thyroid disease, diabetes, malabsorption, depression and HIV, and it is not a tonic deficiency.
The 1.6 and 1.6.1 pair is left without a 部 link between them in the data because the mother section's own link is withheld for the reason given there; the page's numbering carries the relation.
1.7 Hide Glue (Ejiao) 阿膠
`갓플`>`갖풀` 은 종성 ㅅ>ㅈ 과 `플`>`풀`(ㅍ 뒤 ㅡ>ㅜ 원순모음화)만 거친 꼴이고, `갖풀` 은 오늘도 「가죽을 고아 만든 아교」를 가리키는 표준어다. 그러므로 이 향명은 **참으로 우리말 이름**이고(1.6 의 `녹각교` 처럼 한자음을 적은 것이 아니다) 지금 말로 깨끗이 이어진다.
향명이 뜻으로도 한 가지를 가려 준다 — `갖풀` 의 `갖` 은 **가죽**이므로 우리말 이름은 이 약을 「가죽을 고아 만든 것」으로 보고 있고, 본문의 `煮牛皮作之` (소가죽을 고아 만든다)와 맞는다. 곧 책의 첫 구절과 향명이 **나귀가죽이 아니라 소가죽** 쪽을 함께 가리킨다. 뒤에 `驢皮膠主風爲最` 가 와서 나귀가죽 것을 가장 좋다 하므로, 이 절이 어느 가죽의 아교인지는 책 안에서 한쪽으로 정해지지 않는다. 향명은 그 가운데 가죽 일반을 말할 뿐이다.
譯 1.7.1 Source원문
性平微温, 味甘一云甘辛, 無毒. 主虛勞羸瘦, 腰腹痛, 四肢痠疼, 療風, 補虛, 養肝氣, 止泄痢咳嗽, 女子下血, 安胎. 《本草》
Translation영역
Its nature is balanced and slightly warm, its flavour sweet one says sweet and acrid, and it is without toxicity. It governs vacuity taxation with emaciation, pain of the lower back and abdomen, and aching soreness of the four limbs; it treats wind, supplements vacuity, nourishes the liver qi, checks diarrhoea and dysentery and cough, treats bleeding in women, and quiets the fetus.
Clinical note임상 주석
**阿膠 is one of the most heavily used drugs in the whole of this book and it is in current legitimate use, so the note has to do two different jobs: give the pharmacology honestly, and give the supply-chain problem honestly, because they are not the same problem as the ones at 1.2 to 1.5.** The formulary of this site carries it in eighty-one prescriptions and the raw name appears in over a hundred places — it is in the blood-nourishing and bleeding formulas throughout, and in 膠艾湯, 黃連阿膠湯 and the cough and dysentery prescriptions.
**The legal position: ejiao is a pharmacopoeial drug and there is no wildlife law against it.** It is in the Chinese Pharmacopoeia as Asini Corii Colla, the donkey is domestic livestock, and nothing in CITES touches it. A practitioner may use it.
**The ethical position is a real one and it is not a conservation one.** Demand for ejiao has risen far beyond what Chinese donkey stocks can supply, and the shortfall has been met by a global trade in donkey hides that has fallen hardest on working animals in Africa, Central Asia and South America: documented hide-theft from subsistence households whose donkey was their transport and livelihood, slaughter outside regulated facilities, and welfare conditions in collection and transport that have been repeatedly recorded. The African Union adopted a continent-wide moratorium on donkey slaughter for skins in 2024, and several national bans preceded it. **This is a drug a clinician can use lawfully and should source carefully, asking where the hide came from — which is a different kind of conversation from the one at 1.2, and it is worth being clear that the two are different rather than collapsing them into one refusal.**
**Modern reading of the material.** Ejiao is hydrolysed collagen — gelatin — from hide: glycine, proline, hydroxyproline and the rest, with trace minerals. **It is not a haematinic. Iron-deficiency anaemia requires iron, and the reason this matters clinically is that ejiao's reputation is precisely as a blood-building drug given to pale, tired, heavily menstruating women — which is the exact population in whom iron deficiency is common, correctable, and worth correcting, and in whom heavy bleeding needs a cause found.** A full blood count and ferritin answer the question in a day. 吐血 and 下血 are at 1.6; 咳嗽 of more than eight weeks is at 1.3.7; 安胎 is at 1.6.
譯 1.7.2 Source원문
○煮牛皮作之. 驢皮膠主風爲最, 出東阿, 故名阿膠. 《本草》
Translation영역
It is made by boiling ox hide. Donkey-hide glue is best for wind; it comes out of Dong'e, and hence the name 阿膠.
Clinical note임상 주석
**Two sentences that make the headword ambiguous, and the ambiguity is the book's.** The first says the drug is made by boiling **ox** hide; the second says **donkey**-hide glue is the best for wind. The Korean gloss 갖풀, from 갖 meaning hide, agrees with the first and specifies no animal. So the Bogam's 阿膠 is hide glue generally, with ox hide as the default and donkey hide as the superior grade — whereas the modern pharmacopoeial 阿膠 is specifically donkey. A reader going from this chapter to a modern label should know that the identity narrowed over time, and this passage is where that is visible.
出東阿, 故名阿膠 is the toponym: Dong'e county in Shandong, from which the drug takes its name, and the appellation is still used commercially.
譯 1.7.3 Source원문
○阿縣城北井水作者爲眞, 阿水是濟水, 性淸趨下, 故治濁痰逆上, 入手太隂足少隂厥隂, 久嗽久痢並宜. 《入門》
Translation영역
The genuine one is made with the well water north of the wall of A county. The A water is the Ji river water: its nature is clear and tends downward, and therefore it treats turbid phlegm counterflowing upward. It enters the hand greater yin and the foot lesser yin and reverting yin, and is suitable for both enduring cough and enduring dysentery.
Clinical note임상 주석
**A terroir argument, and it is the clearest one in these chapters.** The water of a particular well is held to carry the character of the Ji river — 性淸趨下, clear in nature and tending downward — and the drug made with it therefore acts downward on phlegm that is going the wrong way. The reasoning transfers a physical property of the water to the physiological direction of the drug, and it is the same move as the terroir claims attached to the mineral waters of the 水部 chapter.
There is something underneath it, though not what is claimed. Water hardness genuinely affects gelatin extraction: calcium and magnesium content changes the gel strength and clarity of the finished glue, so a specific well really could give a recognisably different product. The observation may have been of a difference in the article; the explanation is the correspondence system.
入手太隂足少隂厥隂 assigns the drug to the lung, kidney and liver channels, which matches the indications — cough for the lung, 久痢 for the kidney and liver.
譯 1.7.4 Source원문
○眞膠極難得, 寧用黃明牛皮膠, 蚌粉炒用. 《入門》
Translation영역
Genuine glue is extremely hard to get; better to use yellow clear ox-hide glue, parched with mussel-shell powder.
Clinical note임상 주석
**This is the book offering a substitution itself, and it is the only place in this portion where it does so.** 眞膠極難得, genuine glue is extremely hard to get — the same formula used of the acceptable grade of musk at 1.2 and of live bezoar at 1.3 — and here the response is not to insist on the real article but to name a replacement: 黃明牛皮膠, yellow clear ox-hide glue, which is cheaper and available. That is the pattern this site's clinical notes follow throughout the chapter, and it is useful to be able to show that the pattern is not a modern imposition on the text.
It is also the second half of the 黃明膠 tangle discussed at 1.6: here the name unmistakably means an ox-hide glue, and at 1.6 it is given as another name for a glue boiled from deer antler. The drug table of this site carries 明膠 separately. **The contradiction is the Bogam's and is left standing.**
蚌粉炒 is parching in hot mussel-shell powder, the same heat-transfer technique the 蟲部 chapter uses for pangolin scale: the shell powder acts as a sand bath, the gelatin puffs and beads, and the beaded form can be powdered and will dissolve. It is still the standard processing for 阿膠珠.
1.8 Cow's Milk 牛乳
`ᄉᆈ졋` = `ᄉᆈ`(쇠, 소의 속격) + `졋`(젖) 이고 지금 말 `쇠젖` 으로 그대로 이어진다 — `졋`>`젖` 은 종성 ㅅ>ㅈ 이고 1.7 의 `갓플`>`갖풀` 과 같은 꼴이다. `ᄉᆈ` 는 한양 PUA 한 자(U+E920)로 적혀 있어 **먼저 풀지 않으면 향명이 `졋` 한 자로 잘린다**; 같은 글자가 이 묶음에서 1.3 牛黃ㆍ1.3.2 牛角䚡ㆍ 1.8 牛乳 셋에 쓰인다.
이 묶음의 소 관련 향명 넷(`ᄉᆈ속애난우황`ㆍ`ᄉᆈᄲᅳᆯ고긔양`ㆍ`ᄉᆈ졋`ㆍ그리고 책이 풀어 준 `양`ㆍ`쳔엽`)이 모두 `ᄉᆈ`-를 쓰거나 부위 이름을 우리말로 두는 것은, 16세기에 소의 부위가 우리말 이름 체계를 이미 갖추고 있었다는 뜻이다 — 이 문에서 향명이 가장 촘촘히 붙은 짐승이 소다.
譯 1.8.1 Source원문
性微寒一云冷, 味甘, 無毒. 補虛羸, 止煩渴, 潤皮膚, 養心肺, 解熱毒. 《本草》
Translation영역
Its nature is slightly cold one says cold, its flavour sweet, and it is without toxicity. It supplements vacuity and emaciation, checks vexation and thirst, moistens the skin, nourishes the heart and lung, and resolves heat toxin.
Clinical note임상 주석
The milk group — 1.8 and its five leaves — is the last group in this portion and it is the one with a single hazard running through all six items, which the next passage states better than any modern note could.
The indications here are nutritional and they are largely sound as nutrition: 補虛羸, supplementing vacuity and emaciation, is what milk does for an underfed patient, being a complete protein with calcium, B12 and fat. The formulary of this site uses 牛乳 in eight prescriptions, usually as the liquid in which something else is prepared.
譯 1.8.2 Source원문
○凡服乳, 必煮一二沸, 停冷啜之. 生飮令人痢, 熱食卽壅, 又不欲頓服, 欲得漸消. 《本草》
Translation영역
Whenever milk is taken it must be boiled once or twice, left to cool, and sipped. Drunk raw it gives a person dysentery; taken hot it causes blockage at once; and it should not be gulped down all at once, but should be allowed to be digested gradually.
Clinical note임상 주석
**This is the best passage in the chapter and it should be read before the warnings, because the book gets it right.** 凡服乳, 必煮一二沸 — milk must always be boiled once or twice — and 生飮令人痢, drunk raw it gives a person dysentery. **That is pasteurisation, arrived at empirically in or before 1613, and the modern rule is the same rule.**
Raw milk is one of the best-characterised vehicles of foodborne infection there is. It transmits Brucella abortus and B. melitensis, Mycobacterium bovis — which caused a large share of childhood tuberculosis, much of it extrapulmonary, before milk was heat-treated — Listeria monocytogenes, which in pregnancy causes stillbirth and neonatal sepsis, Campylobacter, Salmonella, Shiga toxin-producing E. coli with its risk of haemolytic uraemic syndrome in children, Coxiella burnetii, Yersinia and tick-borne encephalitis virus. **Boiling, or commercial pasteurisation, removes essentially all of it, and this entry's instruction is therefore the one piece of advice in the portion that can be passed to a patient unchanged.**
The rest of the passage is also observant. 又不欲頓服, 欲得漸消 — do not gulp it, let it be digested gradually — is sensible advice for a population in which adult lactase non-persistence is close to universal; **lactose intolerance is the rule rather than the exception in Korean adults, and the symptom of a large bolus of milk is exactly the 痢 of the sentence before.** Whether the compilers were seeing infection or seeing lactose malabsorption in the 生飮令人痢 observation cannot be told apart from the text, and both are real.
譯 1.8.3 Source원문
○乳及尿屎去病, 黑牛勝黃牛. 《本草》
Translation영역
For using the milk and the urine and dung to drive out disease, the black ox surpasses the yellow.
Clinical note임상 주석
The same rule as at 1.3.1, repeated here with the three excretions named together — milk, urine, dung. It is the statement that bears on the materia medica links at 1.3.16 and 1.3.17, and the reason the dung link in particular is left open: the drug table's headword there is 黃牛糞, the yellow ox's dung, and this sentence says the black ox is the stronger for exactly that use. Coat colour does not change the composition of milk; what the rule records is a market distinction between two kinds of cattle.
譯 1.8.4 Translation영역
Milk and curds are in all cases opposed to sour things.
Clinical note임상 주석
**A correct observation of food chemistry stated as a humoral incompatibility.** Acid curdles milk — casein aggregates below about pH 4.6 — and anyone who has put milk and vinegar or milk and unripe fruit in the same vessel has seen it. The classification 相反, mutually opposed, is the category this book uses for drug and food incompatibilities generally, and here the category happens to be carrying a real physical fact.
It has no clinical consequence: curdled milk is digested normally, and the cheese and yoghurt of the next leaves are made by doing this deliberately.
1.8.1 Sheep's Milk 羊乳
譯 1.8.1.1 Source원문
性温, 味甘, 無毒. 潤心肺, 止消渴. 《本草》
Translation영역
Its nature is warm, its flavour sweet, and it is without toxicity. It moistens the heart and lung and checks dispersion-thirst.
Clinical note임상 주석
Sheep's milk, classed warm against the cow's slightly cold, which is the usual way this book differentiates the same material from different animals. The formulary of this site uses it once.
**Modern reading, and the specific hazard here is worse than for cow's milk.** All the raw-milk organisms at 1.8 apply, and one of them is a sheep and goat organism in particular: Brucella melitensis, which is the most virulent Brucella for humans and is acquired above all from unpasteurised small-ruminant milk and its fresh cheeses. Brucellosis gives undulant fever, drenching sweats, joint and back pain and profound fatigue, and it is notoriously protracted and relapsing; it needs weeks of combination antibiotics. **Sheep and goat milk must be pasteurised or boiled, exactly as 1.8 instructs for cow's milk.** Sheep's milk is also not a safe substitute in cow's-milk protein allergy, since the proteins cross-react.
消渴 for the ninth time: a blood glucose.
1.8.2 Mare's Milk 馬乳
譯 1.8.2.1 Source원문
性冷, 味甘, 無毒. 止渴 ○驢乳性同, 冷利. 《本草》
Translation영역
Its nature is cold, its flavour sweet, and it is without toxicity. It checks thirst. Donkey's milk is the same in nature, cold and disinhibiting.
Clinical note임상 주석
Mare's milk, with donkey's milk appended in the same breath — the two are grouped as cold and 冷利, cold and loosening the bowels, against the warmth of sheep's milk and the near-neutrality of cow's. The judgement is not arbitrary: equine milk is markedly higher in lactose and much lower in fat and casein than ruminant milk, which makes it thin, sweet and genuinely laxative in quantity, and 冷利 describes that accurately. This is the kind of place where the book's temperature categories are tracking something real.
It also sits on a cultural boundary. Mare's milk is a staple of the steppe and not of Korea, and its presence here with the fermented 酪 of the next leaf is a trace of the Mongol period in the Korean materia medica.
**Modern reading.** Raw equine milk carries the same obligation as every other item in this group: boil it. See 1.8. Donkey's milk is marketed today as a hypoallergenic alternative in cow's-milk protein allergy and there is some basis for that in its protein profile, but it is nutritionally inadequate as a sole feed for an infant, who needs breast milk or an appropriate formula. 馬乳 is in no prescription in the formulary and is not in the materia medica of this site.
1.8.3 Fermented Milk 酪
`타락` 은 글자가 지금 말과 같고 오늘도 쓰는 낱말이다(`타락죽`). **다만 이것은 우리말 어근이 아니라 들온말이다** — 駝酪 으로 적히는 몽골 계통 낱말로 보며, 고려 말 원 간섭기에 들어온 유제품 말씨의 흔적이다. 이 잎 묶음(牛乳 아래의 羊乳ㆍ馬乳ㆍ酪ㆍ酥ㆍ醍醐)에 `타락`ㆍ`수유` 두 들온말이 나란히 붙어 있고, 바로 위 1.8.2 馬乳가 말젖을 싣는 것과 함께 보면 이 묶음 전체가 **북방 유제품 문화가 우리 약재 전통에 들어온 자리**임을 향명 쪽에서도 보여 준다. 그러므로 `hyangmyeong_mod` 를 글자 그대로 둔 것은 못 풀어서가 아니라 낱말이 그대로 살아 있기 때문이다.
譯 1.8.3.1 Source원문
性寒一云冷, 味甘酸, 無毒. 止煩渴熱悶, 心膈熱痛. 《本草》
Translation영역
Its nature is cold one says cold, its flavour sweet and sour, and it is without toxicity. It checks vexing thirst and heat oppression, and heat pain of the heart and diaphragm.
Clinical note임상 주석
味甘酸, sweet and sour, is the fermentation — lactic acid from the bacterial conversion of lactose — and the book's classing of the product as colder than the milk it came from follows the sourness. The materia medica of this site records it as Lac Fermentatum and glosses it as kumis, which fits the Mongol-derived vernacular name; the alias table already carries 牛酪 against the same entry.
**Modern reading. Fermentation reduces the raw-milk risk but does not remove it, and that is the point worth making.** Lactic fermentation drops the pH and lowers lactose, which is why fermented dairy is tolerated by people who cannot drink milk and is a genuine and useful observation hiding behind this entry. But **Brucella survives for weeks in soft fermented dairy and fresh cheese made from unpasteurised milk, and Listeria tolerates acid and cold and grows under refrigeration**; outbreaks of both are repeatedly traced to artisanal products from raw milk. The rule is the one at 1.8: the milk is boiled or pasteurised **before** it is fermented, not instead. Pregnant women, infants, older adults and the immunocompromised should not eat soft unpasteurised dairy at all.
譯 1.8.3.2 Translation영역
It treats heat sores and flesh sores on the body and face.
Clinical note임상 주석
Soured milk applied to inflamed skin, which is a cooling wet application and will feel like one. 熱瘡 covers the hot inflamed eruption generally, including herpes simplex in the classical usage, and 肌瘡 the superficial flesh sore.
**Modern reading.** A cool compress is a legitimate symptomatic measure for inflamed skin and plain water does it as well. Applying fermented dairy to broken skin adds a bacterial inoculum to a breached barrier, which is the objection that applies to most of this chapter's topical animal products. An impetiginous or rapidly spreading facial lesion needs antibiotics, and a painful vesicular eruption needs to be recognised as herpes simplex or zoster, which have antivirals that work best started early.
1.8.4 Clarified Butter 酥
`수유` 는 酥油의 우리 음이고(1.6 `녹각교` 와 같은 꼴) 글자가 지금 말과 같다. 약재표가 이 약의 별칭으로 `酥油` 를 이미 쥐고 있어 향명과 맞는다. **전사본이 이 자리에만 표제어와 향명 사이에 공백을 하나 넣었다** — `酥 수유性微寒…` 으로 찍혀 있고(044b), 이 묶음의 다른 열두 자리는 붙여 찍는다. 그 공백은 뜻을 바꾸지 않으므로 향명 칸에는 `수유` 만 담았다.
잎 044b 의 발에 향명 교감줄 하나가 붙는다 — `수 : 소(초간본)`. 044b 의 한글은 이 `수유` 와 1.9 海獺의 `바닷반달피` 둘뿐이고 뒤엣것에는 `수` 가 없으므로, **걸릴 자리가 이 향명 하나로 정해진다.** 初刊本은 `소유` 로 읽으니 酥의 음을 `소` 로 적은 것이고(약재표의 `jinso 眞酥` 가 그 음을 쓴다), 전사본은 `수` 로 적는다 — 한 한자의 음이 판본마다 갈린 자리다. 전사본의 읽기를 싣고 初刊本의 읽기를 여기 적어 둔다.
譯 1.8.4.1 Source원문
性微寒一云凉, 味甘, 無毒. 益心肺, 止渴嗽, 潤毛髮, 除肺痿心熱, 幷吐血, 補五藏, 利腸胃. 《本草》
Translation영역
Its nature is slightly cold one says cool, its flavour sweet, and it is without toxicity. It boosts the heart and lung, checks thirst and cough, moistens the hair, removes lung wilting and heart heat, and also the vomiting of blood; it supplements the five viscera and disinhibits the stomach and intestines.
Clinical note임상 주석
酥 is clarified butter, and the materia medica of this site carries it as 眞酥, Butyrum, with 酥 and 酥油 already in the alias table; the formulary uses it in three prescriptions and 眞酥油 in the preparation instructions of others. This is ghee, essentially.
肺痿, lung wilting, is the wasting cough with thin sputum and emaciation, which largely means chronic pulmonary tuberculosis and bronchiectasis. 潤毛髮, moistening the hair, is an external use.
**Modern reading. This is food and it is the safest item in the milk group.** Clarification is a heat treatment and a water removal in one: the butter is melted and held until the water boils off and the milk solids separate, which both kills vegetative pathogens and leaves a product of very low water activity that keeps for months unrefrigerated. So the raw-milk warning at 1.8 applies least here, and ghee's keeping quality is the reason it travelled. It is close to pure butterfat, which means it is energy-dense and high in saturated fat — relevant to a modern patient with cardiovascular risk and irrelevant to the undernourished one the entry was written for.
Of the indications: 吐血, haematemesis, is an emergency and is endoscoped. **肺痿 read as tuberculosis is the serious one: a chronic productive cough with weight loss and night sweats needs sputum molecular testing and a chest radiograph, and the disease is curable with six months of combination therapy.** Butter is not a treatment for it, though it is reasonable nutrition alongside one.
譯 1.8.4.2 Source원문
○酥搯酪作之, 其性猶異. 《本草》
Translation영역
Butter is made by churning the curds, and its nature is nonetheless different.
Clinical note임상 주석
**The observation is right and it is a real piece of food chemistry: the same milk, differently processed, gives products that behave differently.** 搯酪, working or churning the 酪 of the previous leaf, inverts the emulsion and separates the fat from the aqueous phase — so butter is the lipid fraction of what was a whole milk product, and 其性猶異, its nature is nonetheless different, is the compilers noticing that a derivative is not its parent. The hierarchy in the next passage is built on this.
譯 1.8.4.3 Source원문
○酥酪醍醐乳腐, 乃牛乳羊乳馬乳, 或各或合爲之. 四種中, 牛乳爲上, 羊乳次之, 馬乳又次之. 《入門》
Translation영역
Butter, curds, butter-essence and milk curd are made from cow's milk, sheep's milk and mare's milk, either each alone or blended. Of the four kinds, cow's milk is the best, sheep's milk next, and mare's milk after that.
Clinical note임상 주석
**The passage that organises the whole group, and it belongs in the mother's note as much as here.** Four products — 酥 butter, 酪 curds, 醍醐 butter-essence, 乳腐 milk curd or cheese — made from three milks, alone or in combination, and the three milks ranked. The ranking is of the milks as raw material and it puts cow first, which matches the group's structure: 牛乳 is the headword at 1.8 and the other milks hang beneath it as leaves.
乳腐 is the fourth product and it is the one the Bogam does **not** give a headword to in this chapter. That is worth noting as an absence: curd cheese was known and named and did not become a drug, which tells you the four were not equally medicalised.
For a reader reconstructing the dairy technology, the sequence is complete and in the right order: milk, soured curd, churned butter, and the fraction skimmed from the butter, which is 1.8.5.
1.8.5 Butter Essence 醍醐
譯 1.8.5.1 Source원문
性平, 味甘, 無毒. 治一切肺病咳嗽, 膿血, 皮膚瘙痒, 通潤骨髓, 明目, 補虛, 功優於酥. 《本草》
Translation영역
Its nature is balanced, its flavour sweet, and it is without toxicity. It treats all lung diseases with cough, and pus and blood, and itching of the skin; it freely moistens the bone marrow, brightens the eyes, supplements vacuity, and in efficacy it surpasses butter.
Clinical note임상 주석
醍醐 is the fraction skimmed from clarified butter, and 功優於酥, surpassing butter in efficacy, places it at the top of the dairy hierarchy of 1.8.4 — which is where the word went on to live metaphorically, 醍醐灌頂 being the figure for a sudden illumination.
**Modern reading.** This is butter oil, the most refined and the most purely lipid of the five dairy items, and it is food. 一切肺病咳嗽, 膿血 — all lung disease with cough and purulent bloody sputum — is the presentation of bronchiectasis, lung abscess and tuberculosis, and **haemoptysis in an adult, particularly a smoker, requires imaging for lung cancer; cough with purulent sputum and weight loss requires tuberculosis to be excluded.** 皮膚瘙痒 as generalised itch without rash has its own differential that is worth knowing: iron deficiency, cholestasis, chronic kidney disease, thyroid disease, lymphoma and drug reaction. An emollient relieves dry skin and does not address any of those. 明目 is at 1.3.10.
**On the materia medica: 醍醐 is not in the drug table of this site and should not be added.** The word appears in the formulary twice and both occurrences are the **name** of a prescription, 醍醐湯, with a note about what the name means — it is not called for as an ingredient anywhere. A name occurring is not a material being used, and this is a clean example of that trap.
譯 1.8.5.2 Source원문
○乳成酪, 酪成酥, 酥成醍醐. 《本草》
Translation영역
Milk becomes curds, curds become butter, butter becomes butter-essence.
Clinical note임상 주석
The whole dairy sequence in eight characters, and it is correct as process: milk soured to curd, curd churned to butter, butter clarified and its finest fraction skimmed. Each step concentrates the fat and removes water, which is why the series also runs from most perishable to most durable. The compilers have the order and the dependency right, and the chain is what justifies filing all five as leaves of one mother.
譯 1.8.5.3 Source원문
○醍醐生酥中, 酥之精液也. 好酥一石, 有三四升醍醐. 熟抨貯器中待凝, 穿中至底便津出得之. 性滑, 以物盛之皆透, 惟雞子殼及葫蘆盛之不出. 《本草》
Translation영역
Butter-essence is born within the butter; it is the refined fluid of the butter. A 石 of good butter holds three or four 升 of butter-essence. Churn it well and store it in a vessel and wait for it to set; bore through the middle to the bottom and it will seep out and be obtained. Its nature is slippery, and whatever it is held in it passes through — only an eggshell or a gourd will hold it without leaking.
Clinical note임상 주석
**This is an exact and reproducible description of a real physical separation, and it is the best piece of observational technology in this portion.** Butterfat is a mixture of triglycerides with a wide range of melting points. Held at a temperature at which most of it has crystallised, the lower-melting fraction — the more unsaturated and shorter-chain glycerides — remains liquid and is trapped between the crystals; bore a hole to the bottom of the set mass and it drains out. That is fractional crystallisation, and the yield the text gives, three or four 升 from a 石, is three or four per cent, which is the right order of magnitude for a liquid fraction drained without pressing.
性滑, 以物盛之皆透 — its nature is slippery and it passes through whatever holds it — is the observation that a thin oil wicks through unglazed earthenware and wood, while an eggshell and a gourd, both of which have a continuous waxy membrane or cuticle, do not. The compilers have identified two non-porous containers available to a sixteenth-century kitchen and they were right about both.
譯 1.8.5.4 Source원문
○在酥中, 盛冬不凝, 盛夏不融者, 是也. 《本草》
Translation영역
What is in the butter and neither sets in the depth of winter nor melts in the depth of summer — that is it.
Clinical note임상 주석
**The identifying test, and the first half of it is sound physics while the second half is not.** 盛冬不凝, not setting in the depth of winter, is exactly the property that defines the fraction — it is the part of the butterfat that stays liquid at low temperature, which is why it can be drained from the set mass at all. **盛夏不融, not melting in the depth of summer, cannot be true of the same material**: a substance liquid in winter is liquid in summer. What the compilers are reaching for is a claim of stability — that this is the fraction whose state does not change with the season — and they have expressed it as a pair of opposites in the symmetrical way this book likes. The first half is a test somebody performed; the second is rhetoric.
譯 1.8.5.5 Source원문
○作酪時, 上一重凝者爲酪面, 酪面上其色如油者爲醍醐, 熬之卽出, 不可多得, 極甘美, 惟潤養瘡痂最相宜. 《本草》
Translation영역
When the curds are being made, the one layer that sets on top is the curd-face; what lies on the curd-face with a colour like oil is the butter-essence. Render it and it comes out at once. It cannot be had in quantity. It is extremely sweet and delicious, and for moistening and nourishing a scab on a sore it is the most suitable of all.
Clinical note임상 주석
A second and different route to the same product: skim the oily film from the top of setting curd and render it, rather than draining it from set butter. Both are real and both yield a liquid butterfat fraction, and the Bogam prints the two without choosing — which is this chapter's habit and is usually a sign that it is reporting more than one working practice rather than one text.
不可多得, it cannot be had in quantity, closes the entry on the same note as musk at 1.2, bezoar at 1.3 and ejiao at 1.7: the best grade of everything in this chapter is the grade nobody has. Here that is harmless, because what is scarce is a cooking fat.
**Modern reading.** 潤養瘡痂, moistening and nourishing a scab, is an emollient use and it is the one indication in this section that is approximately right: a dry healing wound does better moist than dry, and modern wound care is built on that principle. Butter oil is not a sterile dressing and should not be put on an open or infected wound, but on intact healing skin and a drying scab it is an occlusive emollient and will behave like one. Of all forty-two items in this portion this is the mildest claim, and it is a reasonable place for the chapter's milk group to end.
1.9 Sea Otter 海獺
바닷반달피 sea otter
**이 묶음에서 `hyangmyeong_mod` 를 비운 하나뿐인 자리이고, 비운 까닭을 적어 둔다.** 낱말을 나누어 보면 두 토막은 풀린다 — `바닷` 은 `바다의` (사이시옷이 든 속격)이고, `달피` 는 수달을 가리키는 옛 낱말로 `수달피` 의 `달피` 이며 獺皮에서 온 말로 본다. 그러나 가운데 `반` 이 **어느 읽기로도 풀리지 않는다.** 두 가지를 생각해 보았다 — ⑴ `반달피` 를 한 낱말로 보는 것 (지금 말에 그런 낱말이 없다), ⑵ `반`(半)으로 읽어 「바다의 반쪽 달피」, 곧 본문의 `似獺`(수달을 닮았다)을 우리말로 옮긴 것으로 보는 것. ⑵ 가 본문과 맞아 그럴듯하지만 **내 추론이고 책이 말한 것이 아니므로** 현대어 칸은 비웠다. 글자를 고쳐 `수달피` 로 읽는 길은 **가지 않았다** — 전사본은 `반`(U+BC18)을 또렷이 찍고 있고 한양 PUA 도 아니다(전사본 글자를 확인했다).
잎 044b 의 향명 교감줄 `수 : 소(초간본)` 는 이 향명이 아니라 1.8.4 酥의 `수유` 에 걸린다 — `바닷반달피` 에는 `수` 가 없다. 거기 적어 두었다. `hyangmyeong_en` 에는 실물(sea otter)만 적었다. 종은 본문이 가려 준다.
譯 1.9.1 Source원문
味醎, 無毒. 主人食魚中毒, 魚骨傷人及喉鯁不下者
Translation영역
Its flavour is salty and it is without toxicity. It governs a person poisoned by eating fish, injury to a person from a fish bone, and a bone caught in the throat that will not go down.
Clinical note임상 주석
The source label for this pair stands at the end of the next passage. Note that the entry gives a flavour but no 性, no nature — one of the many sections in these chapters that has no 性味 pair, which is why this project does not carry a 性味 field and leaves the text where the book put it.
**Modern reading, and 喉鯁不下 is an emergency.** An impacted fish bone in the pharynx or oesophagus is removed under direct vision — laryngoscopy for the pharynx, flexible or rigid endoscopy below it — and it is removed promptly, because a retained sharp foreign body can perforate the oesophagus and cause mediastinitis, which has a high mortality. **The traditional manoeuvres for pushing it down — swallowing rice balls, bread, or anything else to drive the bone through — are specifically what not to do, because they impact it deeper and can convert a lodged bone into a perforation.** This entry is one of those manoeuvres. If a bone will not come up with a cough, the patient goes to a facility that can look.
食魚中毒, poisoning from eating fish, covers several distinct things that are worth separating. Scombroid poisoning is histamine formed by bacterial action in badly chilled dark-fleshed fish and gives flushing, headache and palpitations within an hour, responding to antihistamines. Ciguatera, from reef fish, gives gastrointestinal symptoms followed by the characteristic cold allodynia and a neuropathy that can last months. Tetrodotoxin from pufferfish is a paralytic emergency with no antidote and is managed by ventilatory support, and it is the one most relevant in Korea. Anisakis from raw marine fish gives acute abdominal pain and is found and removed at endoscopy. None of these has a traditional antidote and the distinction between them changes what is done.
譯 1.9.2 Source원문
○似獺, 大如犬, 毛着水不濡, 生海中. 《本草》
Translation영역
It resembles the otter, is as big as a dog, its fur does not wet on contact with water, and it lives in the sea.
Clinical note임상 주석
**Four details in one sentence, and all four are accurate, which makes this identification about as secure as anything in the chapter.** 似獺, resembling the otter; 大如犬, as big as a dog; 生海中, living in the sea; and 毛着水不濡, the fur not wetting on contact with water. The last is the diagnostic one: **the sea otter Enhydra lutris has the densest fur of any mammal, up to about a million hairs per square centimetre, and it traps a layer of air so that the skin genuinely does not wet** — the animal has no blubber and depends entirely on that fur for insulation. A sixteenth-century compiler could only have got this from someone who had handled a pelt, and it is the single observation that separates the sea otter from a seal.
The Korean gloss points the same way — 달피 is the old word for otter — and the chapter keeps the pinnipeds separate: 膃肭臍, the fur seal, has its own headword later in this chapter, outside this portion. So the book is distinguishing a sea otter from a seal and from the river otter 獺, whose own section, 獺肝, also comes later.
**Modern reading, and the legal and conservation position has to be stated.** The sea otter is listed under CITES — the southern or Californian subspecies Enhydra lutris nereis on Appendix I and the species otherwise on Appendix II — and the IUCN assesses the species as Endangered. In the United States it is protected under the Marine Mammal Protection Act, with the southern population also listed as threatened under the Endangered Species Act. **Taking a sea otter or trading its parts is prohibited.**
The history behind that listing is the reason this entry reads the way it does. The maritime fur trade hunted the sea otter from about 1741 to 1911 for the pelt whose quality this passage is describing, reducing a population that had stretched in a continuous arc from northern Japan around to Baja California to perhaps a thousand or two thousand animals in a handful of remnant colonies; the hunt was stopped by the North Pacific Fur Seal Convention of 1911. **The species is now effectively absent from Korean and from most Japanese waters.** It is also a keystone species: by preying on sea urchins it keeps kelp forests standing, and its removal converted large stretches of coast to urchin barrens, which is one of the best-documented trophic cascades in ecology.
So this section records an animal that was once reachable from Korean shores, that was hunted to near-extinction for exactly the property the passage admires, and that cannot be obtained now either lawfully or practically. **It is not in the materia medica of this site and should not be added: the name appears nowhere in the formulary, and the river otter's 獺肉 and 獺膽, which are in the drug table, are a different animal and must not be used to stand in for it.**
1.10 White Horse's Penis 白馬莖
흰ᄆᆞᆯ음ᄀᆡᆼ 흰 말 음경 a white horse's penis
The gloss is a definition and not a name: 흰 'white' + ᄆᆞᆯ 'horse' + 음ᄀᆡᆼ, the Sino-Korean 陰莖, penis. It is one of the places where the vernacular adds nothing to the characters except the reading, and it is recorded because the colour word is doing work — see the note to the first passage.
譯 1.10.1 Source원문
性平, 味醎甘, 無毒. 主男子隂痿不起, 令堅長, 強志益精, 肥徤生子. 《本草》
Translation영역
Its nature is balanced, its flavour salty and sweet, and it is without toxicity. It governs a man's yin wilting that will not rise, makes it firm and long, strengthens the will and boosts essence, and makes him stout and strong and able to beget children.
Clinical note임상 주석
**The chapter gives the horse one headword and hangs seventeen parts on it, and the headword names the colour of the animal.** 白馬 is a white horse and 赤馬 a chestnut; the division is not decorative, and it runs through the whole group. The penis, the fat, the urine and the dung are specified white (白馬脂 at 1.10.6, 屎及尿以白馬爲良 at 1.10.17); the hide is specified chestnut (赤馬皮 at 1.10.5); and at 1.10.12 the hoof splits both ways, the white horse's hoof for white discharge and the chestnut horse's for red. The reasoning in this last is sympathetic — like colour to like colour — and the reasoning here is stated outright in the fourth passage: white is 金之正色, the true colour of metal, and metal is the phase of the Lung and of contraction and firmness. **Keep the colour. Flattening 白馬 and 赤馬 into "horse" loses the only thing that distinguishes several of these leaves from each other.**
隂痿不起 is erectile failure. 強志 is strengthening the will, 益精 boosting essence; 肥徤 is to become stout and strong.
**Modern reading. This is not a drug and no pharmacopoeia carries it.** Horse penis is sold in some markets as a virility food, and the pharmacology is the same as that of every other animal-genital preparation: there is none. Erectile dysfunction is treatable and is also a sentinel sign — it is an early marker of endothelial dysfunction and predicts cardiovascular events, so a man presenting with it needs blood pressure, lipids, glucose and a medication review before anything else, and phosphodiesterase-5 inhibitors work in the majority. The specific danger of this class of product is adulteration: animal "virility" preparations sold for this indication are among the most frequently found to be spiked with undeclared sildenafil or tadalafil analogues, which is lethal in a man taking nitrates.
The Bogam uses 白馬莖 in no formula. It appears once elsewhere in the book, in the preparation rules of the 湯液序例 — 白馬莖以銅刀劈破忌犯鐵, split it with a copper knife and avoid letting iron touch it — which is the same instruction as the third passage here and is a processing rule, not a prescription.
譯 1.10.2 Source원문
要馬無病肥嫰, 身如銀, 春收者最妙, 隂乾百日用. 《本草》
Translation영역
The horse should be free of disease, fat and tender, its body like silver; one gathered in spring is best. Dry it in the shade for a hundred days before use.
Clinical note임상 주석
身如銀, a body like silver, is the white coat again, and 春收 ties the gathering to spring. 無病 — free of disease — is the one line in the group that reads as a sanitary criterion rather than a pharmacological one, and it is the right instinct: the hazard of any raw animal tissue is what the animal was carrying.
譯 1.10.3 Source원문
銅刀劈作七片, 以羊血拌蒸半日, 晒乾剉用. 《本草》
Translation영역
Split it with a copper knife into seven pieces, mix with sheep's blood and steam for half a day, dry in the sun, and chop for use.
Clinical note임상 주석
A copper knife rather than iron, which is the avoidance repeated in the 湯液序例 for this drug and for several others; the 寶鑑 treats iron contact as spoiling certain materials. Steaming in sheep's blood is a 法製 step of the kind used to direct a drug to the blood. The procedure is recorded because it is what the entry says, not because it should be carried out.
譯 1.10.4 Source원문
入藥用白者爲勝, 得金之正色也. 《入門》
Translation영역
For medicinal use the white one is superior, because it has the true colour of metal.
Clinical note임상 주석
**This is the book explaining its own headword, and it is why the colour is in the title.** 金之正色 — white is the correct colour of the Metal phase. The Yixue rumen is reasoning from five-phase correspondence, not from any observed difference between horses, and the same logic generates the white-for-white and red-for-red hoof pairing at 1.10.12. It is worth setting out plainly because a reader who does not see the mechanism will take the colour for a varietal or breed distinction, which it is not.
1.10.1 Horse Flesh 肉
譯 1.10.1.1 Source원문
性冷, 味辛苦, 有小毒一云大毒. 長筋骨, 強腰脊, 令人壯徤. 《本草》
Translation영역
Its nature is cold, its flavour acrid and bitter, and it has slight toxicity one says great toxicity. It lengthens the sinews and bones, strengthens the lumbus and spine, and makes a person robust and strong.
Clinical note임상 주석
**The sochu is the important thing in this passage: 有小毒 with a minority reading of 一云大毒, slight toxicity against great toxicity.** The book will not resolve it, and the next three passages are all about handling the hazard — wash the blood out, cook it to falling-apart, do not eat an animal that died by itself. Read together, these four passages are a food-safety instruction set rather than a materia medica entry, and that is how the horse differs from the deer at 1.11, where the flesh is simply food.
**Modern reading. Horse is eaten and is a legitimate food — in Korea mostly on Jeju, in Japan as basashi, in parts of Europe as a butcher's meat — but it carries two hazards that are specific to it and that the entry's own cautions happen to track.** The first is Trichinella. Horse meat has caused the largest trichinellosis outbreaks recorded in Western Europe, in France and Italy in the 1970s to 1990s, with hundreds of cases per outbreak from a single imported carcass; horses are herbivores and were long thought not to be at risk, which is exactly why the meat was eaten raw or lightly cooked and why the outbreaks were large. The second is Sarcocystis fayeri, the cause of the acute vomiting-and-diarrhoea food poisoning identified in Japan in raw horse meat, which is why that country now requires freezing of basashi. Both are inactivated by thorough cooking, which is what the second passage below prescribes. Add Salmonella and the general bacterial load of any raw red meat.
譯 1.10.1.2 Source원문
着水浸洗三五遍, 去血盡, 煮得爛熟, 方可食. 《本草》
Translation영역
Steep and wash it in water three to five times until the blood is wholly gone, boil it until it is soft-cooked through, and only then may it be eaten.
Clinical note임상 주석
煮得爛熟方可食 — boiled until falling apart, and only then may it be eaten. **This is the most useful line in the horse group and it is correct for the reason the book did not know**: thorough cooking is what inactivates Trichinella larvae and Sarcocystis sporocysts in horse muscle. Repeated washing to remove the blood is a culinary step and does nothing for either parasite.
譯 1.10.1.3 Source원문
食馬肉中毒心悶, 飮美酒卽解. 一云飮淸酒卽解, 濁酒卽加. 《本草》
Translation영역
When one is poisoned by eating horse flesh and the heart is oppressed, drinking good wine resolves it at once. One account says that clear wine resolves it and cloudy wine makes it worse.
Clinical note임상 주석
心悶 is oppression and stifling in the chest. The entry records an antidote and then records a disagreement about which wine — 淸酒 the clear, filtered wine against 濁酒 the cloudy — which is the kind of detail that shows the remedy was in actual use.
**Modern reading. Alcohol is not an antidote to foodborne illness and this must not be followed.** Acute trichinellosis presents a week to a month after the meal with fever, periorbital oedema, myalgia and eosinophilia and is treated with albendazole or mebendazole, with corticosteroids for the inflammatory phase; Sarcocystis food poisoning is a matter of hours and is self-limiting with rehydration. Alcohol in either setting adds dehydration and masks the picture. A person with chest oppression after a meal also needs cardiac causes excluded before the meal is blamed.
譯 1.10.1.4 Source원문
自死肉不可食, 生疔瘡. 《本草》
Translation영역
The flesh of an animal that died of itself may not be eaten; it produces a jeong sore.
Clinical note임상 주석
**This is the book getting something exactly right, and it is the single most important line in the horse group.** 自死肉 is the carcass of an animal that died on its own rather than being slaughtered — carrion. The same sentence stands under cattle at 1.3.1 (自死肉不可食必生疔瘡《俗方》), so the compiler is applying it as a general rule about livestock found dead.
疔瘡 is the hard, black-centred, rapidly spreading sore with a necrotic core, and this project has met it before: the Sores chapter's own sub-heading 食疫死牛馬禽獸肉生疔 — the jeong that arises from eating the flesh of cattle, horses, fowl and beasts dead of pestilence — describes **cutaneous anthrax**, whose lesion is a painless papule that ulcerates to a black eschar with marked oedema. Bacillus anthracis survives as spores in soil for decades, kills grazing livestock suddenly, and infects people who butcher, skin or handle the carcass; the cutaneous form accounts for most human cases and the portal is broken skin on the hands and forearms, which is precisely what butchering a dead horse involves. The Bogam's prohibition is therefore sound advice given for the wrong reason, and it should be carried forward unchanged.
**Modern reading.** Anthrax is a notifiable disease and a potential agent of deliberate release; cutaneous anthrax is treated with ciprofloxacin or doxycycline and has low mortality treated, high untreated, and the gastrointestinal form acquired from eating the meat is far more lethal. Livestock found dead are not to be opened, moved or eaten, and a sudden unexplained death in grazing stock should be reported, not butchered. Beyond anthrax, any carcass of unknown cause carries clostridia, Salmonella and the whole decomposition flora.
1.10.2 Horse's Heart 心
譯 1.10.2.1 Translation영역
It governs forgetfulness.
Clinical note임상 주석
喜忘 is "apt to forget" — the habitual forgetfulness of the 神門 chapter, not an acute confusion. The reasoning is organ-for-organ: the Heart stores the spirit, the spirit governs memory, so a heart treats a failing memory. The same logic puts a black cock's heart against the five evils at 1.3.2 of this volume's Birds chapter.
**Modern reading. Not in use, and the symptom is the part that matters.** New or progressing forgetfulness needs a cause looked for rather than a tonic: depression, thyroid disease, B12 and folate deficiency, obstructive sleep apnoea, alcohol, anticholinergic medication load, and the neurodegenerative dementias all present this way, and several of them are reversible. Cardiac muscle as food is unobjectionable but has no effect on cognition.
1.10.3 Horse's Lung 肺
譯 1.10.3.1 Translation영역
It governs cold and heat.
Clinical note임상 주석
寒熱 is alternating chills and fever. Organ-for-organ again, the Lung for the exterior pattern.
**Modern reading. Not in use, and lung is the tissue of an animal that should least be handled raw.** The respiratory tract is where Burkholderia mallei (glanders) and Streptococcus equi localise in the horse, and glanders is transmissible to humans through mucous membranes and broken skin with a high case fatality untreated; it has been eradicated from most of the world but persists in parts of Asia, Africa and South America and is a recognised laboratory and occupational hazard. Alternating fever and chills is a presentation that needs a diagnosis — malaria, tuberculosis, lymphoma, endocarditis, abscess — and not a food.
1.10.4 Horse's Liver 肝
譯 1.10.4.1 Translation영역
It is toxic; eating it kills.
Clinical note임상 주석
**This is one of the flattest prohibitions in the materia medica and it must be kept exactly as it stands.** The leaf has no indication at all — the whole entry is the warning. Among seventeen horse parts the book lists one that it says will kill you, and it lists it rather than leaving it out, which is the editorial habit this project keeps pointing at: the 寶鑑 prints the thing it is against.
Note what this does to the group. 肉 immediately above carries 有小毒 with a minority reading of 大毒 and four passages of handling instructions; 肝 carries 有毒食之殺人 and nothing else. The compiler is grading the hazard of parts of the same animal, and the liver sits at the top.
**Modern reading. Do not eat it, and the book's conclusion holds even though its reason is unstated.** Liver concentrates what the animal was exposed to: retinol to the point of acute hypervitaminosis A in some species, copper, cadmium, and veterinary drug residues, horses being routinely treated with phenylbutazone and other agents not permitted in food animals — which is the reason horse meat entering the food chain is a regulatory problem in its own right. Liver is also a parasite and bacterial target organ. There is no indication for which any animal liver is a treatment, and the fat-soluble vitamin load makes it specifically unsafe in pregnancy.
1.10.5 Chestnut Horse's Hide 赤馬皮
譯 1.10.5.1 Source원문
臨産鋪之, 令産母坐上, 催生. 《本草》
Translation영역
At the onset of labour it is spread out and the mother is made to sit on it, to hasten the birth.
Clinical note임상 주석
赤馬 is the chestnut or bay horse, and this is the one leaf in the group that specifies the red animal — the other colour-marked leaves are all white. 催生 is hastening the delivery, a whole class of 寶鑑 remedies. The hide is not taken internally and not applied: it is spread on the floor and sat on, which makes this a procedural and apotropaic record rather than a pharmacological one.
**Modern reading. Nothing here is a treatment and the danger is the delay.** A labour that is not progressing is assessed — presentation, lie, cervical dilatation, fetal heart rate, maternal observations — and managed by augmentation, instrumental delivery or caesarean section as the findings dictate. Obstructed labour remains a leading cause of maternal death where that assessment is unavailable, and the time spent on a measure of this kind is the harm. An untanned animal hide in a birth room is also a source of tetanus spores and of the general carcass flora, and neonatal and maternal tetanus is exactly the infection that contact between birth surfaces and animal material produces.
1.10.6 White Horse's Fat 白馬脂
譯 1.10.6.1 Translation영역
It governs white bald sores.
Clinical note임상 주석
白秃瘡 is the scaly, scarring bald patch of the scalp, which is tinea capitis — a dermatophyte infection, in Korea historically Microsporum and Trichophyton species. The same indication appears at 1.10.16 below, where horse urine is used to wash the scalp, so the chapter offers a fat and a wash for one condition.
**Modern reading. Tinea capitis requires oral antifungal treatment and a topical alone will not cure it.** The hair shaft is invaded, so terbinafine or griseofulvin by mouth for several weeks is the treatment, with a topical such as ketoconazole shampoo as an adjunct to reduce shedding and household spread; untreated it scars and the hair does not return. An occlusive animal fat on an infected, broken scalp makes a dermatophyte infection worse and adds bacterial superinfection. The condition is contagious, mostly in children, and household and pet contacts need checking.
1.10.7 Mane-root Grease 鬐頭膏
譯 1.10.7.1 Translation영역
It governs the growing of hair.
Clinical note임상 주석
鬐 is the mane and the withers, the ridge along the top of the neck; 鬐頭膏 is the grease from the root of the mane, and the two hair leaves at 1.10.14 and 1.10.15 come from the same region. The logic is as plain as it gets: fat from the place where the horse's hair grows thickest, used to make hair grow. 生髮 is a standing 寶鑑 indication with its own section in the 外形篇.
**Modern reading. No topical animal fat grows hair.** Androgenetic alopecia responds to topical minoxidil and to oral finasteride or dutasteride in men; alopecia areata is autoimmune and is treated with intralesional corticosteroid or, in extensive disease, with JAK inhibitors; scarring alopecias are permanent and need the diagnosis made early, because the window for arresting them closes. Telogen effluvium after illness, childbirth, thyroid disease or iron deficiency resolves when the cause is corrected. What matters clinically is sorting these, and a greasy occlusive on the scalp produces folliculitis.
1.10.8 Horse's Skull 頭骨
譯 1.10.8.1 Source원문
性微寒. 療頭耳瘡, 枕之令人不睡. 《本草》
Translation영역
Its nature is slightly cold. It treats sores of the head and ear, and used as a pillow it keeps a person from sleeping.
Clinical note임상 주석
**枕之令人不睡 is not an indication, it is a warning dressed as a property** — sleep on it and you will not sleep. The 寶鑑 does occasionally record a drug's unwanted effect in the indication line, and this is one; the same material is elsewhere used the other way about, to wake a sleeper who cannot be roused. Taken with the entry's own 性微寒 it reads as a cooling, spirit-disturbing material.
**Modern reading. Not in use.** Sores of the head and ear are infections and dermatoses with specific treatments — impetigo, otitis externa, seborrhoeic dermatitis, tinea — and an animal skull is not a topical. If a patient is using this or anything like it for insomnia, the useful intervention is the opposite one: cognitive behavioural therapy for insomnia is first-line and outperforms hypnotics at follow-up. Handling the cranium of a large animal is also the one preparation in this group that opens central nervous tissue, which is the tissue to leave alone in any species — see the note at 1.11.6 on the deer's head.
1.10.9 Horse's Shin Bone 脛骨
譯 1.10.9.1 Source원문
性寒, 味甘. 補隂瀉火, 可代芩連用. 《入門》
Translation영역
Its nature is cold and its flavour sweet. It supplements yin and drains fire, and may be used in place of hwanggeum and hwangnyeon.
Clinical note임상 주석
**可代芩連用 — it may be used in place of 黃芩 and 黃連 — is a substitution claim, and substitution claims are the most testable thing in a materia medica.** 芩連 is the standing abbreviation for the pair Scutellariae Radix and Coptidis Rhizoma, the two bitter cold fire-draining drugs of the first rank, and the Yixue rumen is offering a calcined bone as their equivalent. The claim is of a piece with the 寶鑑's general readiness to put a cheap local material in the place of a bought-in one, and this is one of the few 入門 citations in the horse group.
**Modern reading. The substitution does not hold and there is no need for it.** Bone is calcium hydroxyapatite with collagen; 黃芩 and 黃連 owe their effects to baicalin and baicalein and to berberine respectively, alkaloids and flavonoids with no counterpart in bone, and both herbs are cheap and universally available so that no substitute is called for. Berberine's clinical literature — glycaemic and lipid effects, and its potent inhibition of CYP2D6, CYP3A4 and P-glycoprotein with the drug interactions that follow — is a reason to prescribe 黃連 carefully, not a reason to replace it with bone. There is nothing to carry forward here except the historical fact of the claim.
1.10.10 Horse's Teeth 齒
譯 1.10.10.1 Source원문
療丁腫, 主小兒驚癎. 《本草》
Translation영역
It treats jeong swellings and governs fright epilepsy in children.
Clinical note임상 주석
丁腫 is 疔腫, the hard necrotic-cored boil of 1.10.1's warning; 驚癎 is the convulsion of childhood, which in this book covers febrile seizures, epilepsy and the convulsions of acute infection together.
**A note on searching for this drug.** 馬齒 occurs eight times in the Bogam's formulary and **not once is it this material**: every occurrence is 馬齒莧, purslane, which is Portulaca oleracea and belongs to the Vegetables chapter, or the 馬齒膏 built from it. A search on the characters alone would have put horse teeth into eight prescriptions they have nothing to do with.
**Modern reading. Not in use.** A furuncle or carbuncle is drained and, where there is cellulitis or systemic upset, treated with an antistaphylococcal antibiotic; recurrent furunculosis warrants a look for nasal carriage and for diabetes. A first convulsion in a child is assessed for its cause — fever and its source, electrolytes, glucose, meningitis, trauma, and in the afebrile child the epilepsies — and the parent's most useful instruction is the practical one about positioning, timing the seizure and when to call for help.
1.10.11 Horse's Eye 眼
譯 1.10.11.1 Source원문
主驚癎瘧疾, 及小兒鬾病. 《本草》
Translation영역
It governs fright epilepsy and malarial disease, and the gi disease of children.
Clinical note임상 주석
鬾病 is a named childhood wasting of the old literature, the condition of a suckling child who sickens and fails to thrive when the mother conceives again — the child is said to be struck by the 鬾, the spirit of the coming sibling. Stripped of the spirit, the observation underneath it is sound and still clinically familiar: an abruptly weaned infant displaced from the breast by a new pregnancy loses its principal food and its growth falters. 瘧疾 is the intermittent fever, which in Korea meant Plasmodium vivax, endemic in the peninsula historically and re-established near the demilitarised zone since the 1990s.
**Modern reading. Not in use.** A faltering infant is weighed and plotted, and the differential is feeding adequacy, coeliac disease, cow's milk protein allergy, cystic fibrosis, renal tubular disease, congenital heart disease and neglect; the answer is almost always found in the feeding history and the growth chart. Intermittent fever with rigors in anyone who has been in a malarious area is a blood film and a rapid diagnostic test, urgently, because P. falciparum kills within days — and vivax malaria acquired in Korea needs primaquine for the liver stage after a G6PD test. Eye tissue of any animal is not a medicine.
1.10.12 Horse's Hoof 蹄
譯 1.10.12.1 Source원문
性熱, 味甘, 無毒. 辟温瘧.
Translation영역
Its nature is hot, its flavour sweet, and it is without toxicity. It wards off warm malarial disease.
Clinical note임상 주석
The passage carries no source mark of its own and takes the 《本草》 that closes the passage below, following this project's rule that a mark cascades backwards to the unmarked passages of its group.
譯 1.10.12.2 Source원문
白馬蹄療婦人白崩, 赤馬蹄療婦人赤崩. 《本草》
Translation영역
A white horse's hoof treats white flooding in women and a chestnut horse's hoof treats red flooding.
Clinical note임상 주석
**This is the clearest statement of the colour logic in the whole horse group, and it should be read as a key to the headword.** 白崩 is flooding with white discharge and 赤崩 with red; the white horse's hoof is matched to the white and the chestnut horse's to the red. There is no mechanism here beyond the correspondence of colour to colour, and once it is visible the colour marking of 白馬莖, 白馬脂, 赤馬皮 and 屎及尿以白馬爲良 stops looking like a varietal distinction and becomes what it is — a five-phase assignment.
**Modern reading. Hoof is keratin, the same protein as hair and fingernail, and it has no pharmacology.** 崩 is heavy uterine bleeding and it is a presentation, not a diagnosis: structural causes (fibroids, polyps, adenomyosis), ovulatory dysfunction, coagulopathy including von Willebrand disease which is underdiagnosed in women with lifelong heavy periods, thyroid disease, pregnancy and its complications, and endometrial hyperplasia or carcinoma all present this way. A woman bleeding heavily needs a haemoglobin and ferritin, a pregnancy test, and in the appropriate age or risk group an endometrial assessment. Discharge of a given colour does not select a treatment.
1.10.13 Horse's Vestigial Hoof 懸蹄
譯 1.10.13.1 Source원문
性平. 主驚癎, 乳難, 辟惡氣鬼毒蠱疰不徉, 療齲齒, 止衂.
Translation영역
Its nature is balanced. It governs fright epilepsy and difficulty in lactation, wards off malign qi, demon toxin, go-sorcery fixation and what is inauspicious, treats dental caries, and checks nosebleed.
Clinical note임상 주석
懸蹄, the hanging hoof, is the horny callus on the inside of the horse's leg above the fetlock — the vestige of a digit, known in English as the chestnut and named in the next passage by its Korean colloquial name. The indication list is the broadest in the group and it is mostly apotropaic: 惡氣, 鬼毒, 蠱疰 and 不徉 (for 不祥) belong to the ward-off register rather than the pharmacological one. 乳難 is difficult or failed lactation, 齲齒 is caries, 止衂 is stopping epistaxis. The passage has no source mark and takes the 《本草》 below.
譯 1.10.13.2 Translation영역
Its common name is horse night-eye.
Clinical note임상 주석
**馬夜眼, "horse night-eye", is the book naming its own headword, and the name is worth keeping.** The chestnut on a horse's leg was taken for an eye with which the animal saw in the dark — hence its use against things that come at night, which is the whole apotropaic half of the indication list above. The structure is in fact a vestigial digital pad and has no function at all.
**Modern reading. Nothing in this entry is in use, and two of the indications are worth answering directly.** Dental caries is a bacterial demineralisation treated by restoration and prevented by fluoride and sugar restriction; it does not resolve. Difficulty with lactation is a problem of attachment, frequency and effective milk removal in the great majority of cases and is solved by skilled feeding support — tongue-tie, retained placenta, hypothyroidism and insufficient glandular tissue being the medical causes to look for. Keratin is keratin. Recurrent epistaxis needs the bleeding point looked at and, if it is recurrent and there is a family history, hereditary haemorrhagic telangiectasia considered.
1.10.14 Horse's Mane Hair 鬐毛
譯 1.10.14.1 Translation영역
It governs flooding in women, red and white.
Clinical note임상 주석
鬐毛 is the hair of the mane and withers, and 鬃毛 at 1.10.15 is the same region's hair under a second name; the two leaves are distinguished only by name and indication, which is as fine a division as this chapter makes anywhere. 崩中赤白 again pairs the red and the white, the pairing of 1.10.12.
The Bogam's formulary does use a horse hair, but it is 馬尾, tail hair, calcined and combined with calcined silk, lotus node and mugwort in a formula for flooding and all loss of blood — the materia medica of this site carries that as 馬尾 and the record is not this leaf. Mane hair appears in no prescription.
**Modern reading. Not in use.** Burnt hair as a styptic belongs to the large class of charred organic haemostatics, and the mechanism claimed for them — a physical absorbent surface — is not achieved by anything taken by mouth. For heavy menstrual bleeding the effective non-hormonal options are tranexamic acid and mefenamic acid during the bleed, and the levonorgestrel intrauterine system is the most effective single intervention; see the note at 1.10.12 on the workup.
1.10.15 Horse's Neck Hair 鬃毛
譯 1.10.15.1 Translation영역
It checks bleeding, and is also applied to malign sores.
Clinical note임상 주석
鬃 is the bristly hair of the neck and the same material as the 鬐毛 above; the book splits them because its sources did. 付 is 敷, to apply as a dressing, so this leaf is topical where 1.10.14 is internal. 惡瘡 is the chronic non-healing or malignant-looking ulcer.
**Modern reading. Do not dress a wound with animal hair.** A chronic ulcer needs its cause established — venous, arterial, diabetic-neuropathic, pressure, vasculitic, or malignant, and a non-healing ulcer with rolled or everted edges needs a biopsy, because squamous cell carcinoma arises in long-standing ulcers. Treatment is compression for venous disease, revascularisation for arterial, offloading for neuropathic and pressure ulcers, and modern moist wound dressings throughout. Animal hair in a wound is a foreign body and a vehicle for Clostridium tetani and for staphylococci; tetanus immunisation status is part of the assessment of any contaminated wound.
1.10.16 White Horse's Urine 尿
譯 1.10.16.1 Source원문
性微寒, 味辛. 主消渴, 破積聚癥堅, 銅器承飮之, 又主鼈瘕.
Translation영역
Its nature is slightly cold and its flavour acrid. It governs dispersion-thirst and breaks up accumulations, gatherings and hard concretions; it is caught in a copper vessel and drunk. It also governs turtle-lump.
Clinical note임상 주석
**銅器承飮之 — caught in a copper vessel and drunk — is the instruction that makes this leaf unmistakable: the urine is taken fresh and raw.** 消渴, dispersion-thirst, is the polyuric polydipsic syndrome covering diabetes mellitus and diabetes insipidus. 積聚癥堅 are the palpable abdominal masses and fixed concretions of the 寶鑑's internal-mass nosology. 鼈瘕, turtle-lump, is a named abdominal mass likened to a soft-shelled turtle under the skin, moving and changing shape, which in modern terms covers an organomegaly, a mobile tumour or a loaded colon.
The copper vessel is the counterpart of the copper knife at 1.10 above, and the book's iron-avoidance for horse materials runs through the group.
**Modern reading. Raw urine must not be drunk, and the indications are all conditions that need investigation rather than a diuretic folk remedy.** Urine is not sterile; fresh urine carries the periurethral and faecal flora of the animal and, in a horse, specifically Leptospira, which is excreted in the urine of infected animals and is the classical occupational zoonosis of urine contact — leptospirosis presents with fever, myalgia, conjunctival suffusion and can progress to Weil's disease with renal and hepatic failure and pulmonary haemorrhage. Salmonella and E. coli follow the same route. Thirst with polyuria is a fingerstick glucose and an HbA1c, and new diabetes in an adult is managed and not drunk away; an abdominal mass is imaged.
The materia medica of this site carries this leaf as 白馬尿, Equi Urina, which is the drug's name as the Bogam gives it here — 屎及尿以白馬爲良 at 1.10.17 confirms the white animal for both excretions.
譯 1.10.16.2 Translation영역
It washes head sores and white baldness.
Clinical note임상 주석
The second route for the tinea capitis of 1.10.6, here as a scalp wash rather than a fat. On the condition and its treatment see that note; a urine wash on broken scalp skin adds bacterial inoculation to a fungal infection.
1.10.17 White Horse's Dung 屎
譯 1.10.17.1 Source원문
性微温. 主崩漏吐下血, 衂血, 金瘡止血, 又主隂陽易. 一名馬通.
Translation영역
Its nature is slightly warm. It governs flooding and spotting, vomiting and passing of blood, and nosebleed; it checks bleeding in metal-inflicted wounds, and it also governs eumyangyeok.
Clinical note임상 주석
**一名馬通 — one name for it is 馬通 — is the book glossing its own headword, and that gloss is what connects this leaf to the formulary.** The materia medica of this site carries 馬糞 / Equi Faeces with 馬通 recorded as its alias, and the alias was entered from the Miscellaneous Disorders chapters, where the single-drug remedy 馬通 reads 臘月馬糞乾者煎湯飮之治一切暑病 — dung of the twelfth month, dried, decocted and drunk for all summerheat disease — which is the third passage of this very leaf, and where 馬糞 treats the wind that enters a staff-wound. **The leaf should be linked to that record, but it cannot be linked in this file**: the materia medica's hanja is 馬糞, the section name here is 屎, and the name-matching in this project's checker builds its candidates from the parent headword 白馬莖, so neither 馬糞 nor 馬通 can be reached. The pair is reported for the alias table instead and `herb:` is left empty. The one apparent formula hit for 馬糞 is not this drug either — 蜣蜋散 directs the gatherer to 尋牛馬糞中蜣蜋, to look for dung beetles in cow and horse dung, and the ingredient is the beetle.
金瘡 is a wound from a blade. 隂陽易 is the relapse of a febrile illness said to pass between a convalescent and a sexual partner. 崩漏 is flooding and spotting.
**Modern reading. This is the most dangerous single instruction in my part of this chapter, and the reason is specific.** 金瘡止血 directs horse dung to be packed into a fresh open wound, and **the horse's intestine is the classical reservoir of Clostridium tetani**: the organism's spores are shed in equine faeces, survive indefinitely in soil and manure, and germinate in exactly the low-oxygen conditions of a deep or crushed wound. Tetanus kills by generalised spasm and respiratory failure, has a case fatality of the order of ten to twenty per cent even with intensive care, and is entirely preventable. Horse manure applied to a wound is the textbook mechanism, and this is the one place in this chapter where the historical practice and a named lethal pathogen line up precisely.
So: a fresh wound is cleaned, irrigated, explored for foreign material and closed or left open as its age and contamination dictate; tetanus immunisation status is checked and a booster, and in the unimmunised also tetanus immunoglobulin, is given. Nothing organic is packed into it. Beyond tetanus, dung carries Salmonella, Shiga-toxin-producing E. coli, Clostridioides difficile and the equine parasite burden, and dried dung ground to powder aerosolises all of it.
譯 1.10.17.2 Source원문
屎及尿, 以白馬爲良. 《本草》
Translation영역
For the dung and the urine alike, that of a white horse is best.
Clinical note임상 주석
The colour rule applied to both excretions, and the sentence that justifies naming 1.10.16 as 白馬尿 in the materia medica of this site. On the reasoning see 1.10's fourth passage: white is the proper colour of Metal.
譯 1.10.17.3 Source원문
煎湯服, 治暑病最佳. 《俗方》
Translation영역
Decocted and taken, it is best of all for treating summerheat disease.
Clinical note임상 주석
**《俗方》 — a local prescription, Heo Jun's own layer rather than a Chinese source — and this is the passage that put the drug into the Bogam's single-drug remedies.** The Miscellaneous Disorders chapter on summerheat carries it under the name 馬通 with the month specified: 臘月馬糞乾者, dung of the twelfth lunar month, dried. 暑病 is the summerheat illness, the collapse, thirst and prostration of hot weather.
**Modern reading. Heat illness is a time-critical emergency and this would waste the time.** Heat stroke is core temperature above about 40°C with central nervous system disturbance, and survival depends on how fast the temperature is brought down — cold-water immersion where it can be done, otherwise evaporative and conductive cooling, with fluid resuscitation and monitoring for rhabdomyolysis, acute kidney injury and disseminated intravascular coagulation. Decocting dung is boiled dung; boiling will kill the vegetative bacteria but does not destroy tetanus or other clostridial spores, and nothing about the preparation makes it a treatment.
1.11 Deer Velvet Antler 鹿茸
ᄀᆞᆮ is 갓, "just now"; 내민 is "protruded"; ᄲᅳᆯ is 뿔, horn. The gloss is a definition and it is a precise one — the antler caught at the moment it comes out, which is what 茸 means and what distinguishes this drug from the hardened 角 at 1.11.1. The animal word 사슴 resolves without difficulty to modern 사슴, deer, but it does not fix a species; see the note to the first passage.
Leaf 046a's foot carries a collation line on this gloss: 슴의 : ᄉᆞᄆᆡ(초간본). The transcription writes 사슴의, the first printing 사ᄉᆞᄆᆡ — which is the regular Middle Korean genitive of 사ᄉᆞᆷ, deer, and therefore the older and more regular form. The transcription's reading is printed above. The same line recurs at 1.12 on leaf 047a for the gloss of 麋脂, which contains the same sequence.
譯 1.11.1 Source원문
性温, 味甘酸一云苦辛, 無毒. 療虛勞羸瘦, 四肢腰脊痠疼, 補男子腎虛冷, 脚膝無力, 夜夢鬼交泄精, 女人崩中漏血及赤白帶下, 能安胎. 《本草》
Translation영역
Its nature is warm, its flavour sweet and sour one says bitter and acrid, and it is without toxicity. It treats vacuity taxation with emaciation, aching pain of the four limbs, lumbus and spine, and supplements kidney vacuity cold in men, with weakness of the legs and knees and the loss of essence from dreaming of intercourse with a ghost; in women it treats flooding and leaking of blood and red and white vaginal discharge, and it is able to quiet the fetus.
Clinical note임상 주석
**Four of the five sections in my part of this chapter are deer, and the book means them to be four different drugs.** 鹿 here, 麋 at 1.12, 麞 at 1.13 and 麂 at 1.14 are separate headwords with separate natures and separate indications, and 麋 carries its own 茸 and its own 角 beneath it — so that **鹿茸 and 麋茸, and 鹿角 and 麋角, are four drugs and not two.** The Birds chapter of this same volume does the same thing with the fowl, giving the red cock, the white cock, the black cock, the black hen and the yellow hen five headwords at 1.1 to 1.5; this is that habit applied to the deer. Do not split these and do not merge them. The book argues the distinction out explicitly at 1.12.2, where it reasons from the shedding season that 鹿 is a mountain beast and 麋 a marsh beast, and it is not a scribal duplication.
**What animal is 鹿.** The vernacular gloss gives 사슴, which is simply "deer" in Korean and has stayed that word; it resolves as a word and does not fix a species, and no species is asserted here. What can be said is that the pharmacopoeial drug is defined: the Korean and Chinese pharmacopoeias give 鹿茸 as the unossified young antler of Cervus nippon (sika), Cervus elaphus (red deer) and in some texts Cervus canadensis (elk or wapiti), and all three are farmed for it. Sika and red deer are native or long-established in the region and are what a sixteenth-century Korean source would have had in view.
夜夢鬼交泄精 is nocturnal emission attributed to dream intercourse with a spirit, a standing 寶鑑 presentation with its own section in the 精 chapter. 虛勞羸瘦 is the wasting of chronic depletion. 安胎 is quieting the fetus, that is, preventing threatened miscarriage.
**Modern reading, part one: this drug is in current use and the honest note says so.** 鹿茸 is in the Korean Herbal Pharmacopoeia, is farmed rather than hunted, and is one of the highest-value items in the Korean materia medica; the deer are shed of the velvet annually under veterinary supervision in regulated operations and the animals are not killed for it. **Unlike the tiger bone, rhinoceros horn, musk, bear bile and pangolin scale of other sections of this chapter, nothing here is prohibited, and a note that painted the whole chapter as unusable would be worthless.** The clinical evidence for the indications above is weak — trials of velvet antler in fatigue, osteoarthritis and athletic performance are small, heterogeneous and largely negative or inconclusive — but weak evidence is a different thing from a legal bar, and the distinction is worth making to a practitioner.
**Modern reading, part two: three real cautions attach to it.** The first is **doping**. Velvet antler is a growth tissue and contains insulin-like growth factor 1 (IGF-1) along with other growth factors; IGF-1 and growth factors affecting muscle, tendon and ligament are prohibited at all times under class S2 of the World Anti-Doping Agency's list, and deer antler velvet products have been the subject of anti-doping cases and of explicit warnings from national anti-doping organisations. **An athlete subject to testing should not take this drug or any extract of it, and should be told so before it is prescribed.** The second is **hormonal activity**: velvet antler extracts have been reported to carry androgenic and oestrogenic activity, which is a problem in hormone-sensitive disease — a man with prostate cancer, a woman with an oestrogen-receptor-positive breast cancer — and is a particular incoherence in the indication above for uterine bleeding, where a hormonally active material is the last thing wanted until the cause of the bleeding is known. The third is **adulteration and substitution**: antler products are among the most frequently faked in the trade, with cattle and goat horn, hide gelatin and other cervid species sold under the name, and heavy-metal contamination has been found in products of uncertain origin.
**Modern reading, part three: chronic wasting disease.** CWD is a transmissible spongiform encephalopathy — a prion disease — of cervids, and it is not a distant problem for a Korean practitioner. **Korea has had outbreaks in farmed deer, the first detected in elk imported from Canada in 2001 and further cases in the years that followed, which is the reason deer products from affected regions have been subject to risk assessment and import restriction.** Prions in infected animals concentrate in central nervous and lymphoid tissue, and experimental work has detected prion infectivity in the velvet antler itself, which is innervated, vascular and lymphoid-rich while growing. No human case of CWD has been demonstrated, and the species barrier may well hold; the agencies that have examined the question nonetheless advise against consuming tissue from infected animals, because prions are not destroyed by cooking, autoclaving or the usual decoction, and the incubation of these diseases is measured in decades. The practical conclusion is not that 鹿茸 must not be used but that **its provenance matters in a way that no other property of the drug does** — a certified herd from a surveilled, CWD-free operation is a different product from an antler of unknown origin, and the distinction cannot be made by inspecting the material. This caution applies with equal or greater force to the bone, marrow, blood, head, kidney and flesh leaves below, which are nervous and lymphoid tissue in a way the antler only partly is.
譯 1.11.2 Source원문
五月角初生時, 取其茸火乾, 以形如小茄子者爲上. 或云茄子茸太嫩, 血氣未具, 不若分歧如馬鞍形者有力. 《本草》
Translation영역
In the fifth month, when the antler first grows, the velvet is taken and dried over fire, and the kind shaped like a small aubergine is best. Some say that the aubergine velvet is too tender, its blood and qi not yet complete, and that it is not as potent as the kind branched in the shape of a horse's saddle.
Clinical note임상 주석
**This is a grading passage and the book preserves a disagreement inside it.** The 本草 line gives the small-aubergine form as best — the earliest, softest tip. The dissenting voice says that form is 太嫩, too tender, with 血氣未具, its blood and qi not yet formed, and prefers the branched antler shaped like a saddle. The two positions are the two ends of the commercial grading of velvet antler that is still in use: the tip sections command the highest price, and the lower, more ossified sections are cheaper and are held by some to be stronger. The 寶鑑 prints both and does not choose, which is its habit with a split in its sources.
五月 is the fifth lunar month, roughly June, which is when a sika or red deer's regrowing antler is at the stage the drug requires.
譯 1.11.3 Source원문
塗酥火燎去毛, 微灸入藥. 《本草》
Translation영역
Smear it with clarified butter, singe it in fire to remove the hair, and roast it lightly before putting it into medicine.
Clinical note임상 주석
酥 is clarified butter, the drug of 1.8.4 of this chapter. 火燎去毛 is singeing off the velvet hair, 微灸 — standing for 微炙 — is a light roasting. This is substantially the processing still used: the hair is removed, and the antler is dried and sliced. The practical reason for the singeing appears in the next passage.
譯 1.11.4 Source원문
不可以鼻嗅, 其茸中有小䖝, 入鼻害人. 《本草》
Translation영역
It must not be sniffed at the nose; there are small insects inside the velvet, and they enter the nose and harm a person.
Clinical note임상 주석
**This is a straightforwardly correct observation and it belongs with the singeing instruction above.** Growing antler in velvet is a host to arthropods — the hair carries mites, and biting flies and their larvae are attracted to the vascular tip — and unprocessed velvet is a real source of them. The instruction not to put the nose to it is practical advice from people handling the raw material, and the recommendation to singe the hair off before use deals with the same problem.
**Modern reading.** Nothing has changed about this: raw animal material is not inhaled or held to the face, and dried animal products of any kind can carry storage mites, which cause rhinitis and, in sensitised handlers, occupational asthma. It is also worth noting what this passage shows about the entry as a whole — the compiler is transmitting the knowledge of people who actually handled deer antler, which is why the grading passage above records a trade dispute and why the processing instruction works.
1.11.1 Deer Antler 角
譯 1.11.1.1 Source원문
性温, 味醎, 無毒. 主癕疽瘡腫, 除惡血, 除中惡心腹疰痛, 又治折傷腰脊痛. 《本草》
Translation영역
Its nature is warm, its flavour salty, and it is without toxicity. It governs welling-abscess, flat-abscess and sores and swellings, removes malign blood, removes malign strike with fixed pain of the heart and abdomen, and also treats fracture and injury and pain of the lumbus and spine.
Clinical note임상 주석
**鹿角 is the ossified, shed antler and it is a different drug from the velvet above — the book sets them one under the other to be read as a pair, soft and hard.** The velvet's indications are tonifying; the antler's are for abscess, stasis and injury, which is the standing division between the two in the Chinese and Korean materia medica and remains the division in current practice. The drug is heavily used: the Bogam's formulary names 鹿角 and its preparations in some seventy places — 鹿角 and 鹿角屑 (the raspings), 鹿角霜 (the degelatinated residue, which the Birds-chapter neighbour 白膠 carries as its own leaf at 1.6.1), 鹿角膠 (the glue) and two distinct formulas called 鹿角散. 鹿茸 itself is named in over forty.
癕疽 are the deep suppurative lesions; 中惡 is sudden collapse attributed to malign qi; 疰痛 is a fixed, boring pain.
**Modern reading. 鹿角 is in current pharmacopoeial use and is not restricted, and the same three cautions as at 1.11 apply — doping, hormonal activity and provenance against chronic wasting disease — with the last applying more strongly here.** Shed antler is bone, and an antler cut from a culled animal rather than collected after natural casting carries the animal's tissue; the processing into 膠 and 霜 involves prolonged boiling, which does not destroy prions. For the indications: an abscess is drained, and a drug taken by mouth does not substitute for drainage; a fracture is imaged, reduced and immobilised. Where the entry is most defensible is the least glamorous part — antler is calcium and collagen, and in a dietary sense a calcium source.
譯 1.11.1.2 Source원문
鹿壽千歲, 五百歲毛變白, 年歲久者其角堅好, 入藥彌佳. 《本草》
Translation영역
The deer lives a thousand years, and at five hundred its hair turns white; in an animal of many years the antler is hard and fine, and it is all the better for medicine.
Clinical note임상 주석
A thousand-year lifespan and a white coat at five hundred — the deer as an emblem of longevity, which is why it carries the tonic indications and why it stands beside the crane in that iconography. **Underneath the figure there is a real criterion: an older stag does grow a heavier, denser antler, and antler mass increases with age to a prime and then declines, so "the antler of an animal of many years is hard and fine" is a grading rule a buyer could actually apply.** It is the complement of the velvet grading at 1.11's second passage. The lifespan is not a claim about deer; it is the register of the passage.
譯 1.11.1.3 Source원문
冬至一陽生, 麋角解; 夏至一隂生, 鹿角解. 各逐隂陽分如此解落, 今人用一般, 殆踈矣. 凡麋鹿自生至堅完, 無兩月之久, 大者二十餘斤, 其堅如石, 計一晝夜須生數兩. 凡骨之類成長, 無速於此, 雖草木至易生, 亦無能及, 豈可與凡骨血爲比哉. 《本草》
Translation영역
At the winter solstice the single yang is born and the mi deer's antler is cast; at the summer solstice the single yin is born and the rok deer's antler is cast. Each follows its own division of yin and yang in casting thus, and for people today to use them as one and the same is surely careless. From first growth to full hardening, in both mi and rok, is not two months, and a large one is upwards of twenty geun and as hard as stone — which comes to several ounces grown in a single day and night. Of all things of the nature of bone, nothing grows faster than this; even plants, which grow most easily, cannot match it. How can it be compared with ordinary bone and blood?
Clinical note임상 주석
**今人用一般, 殆踈矣 — for people today to use them as one and the same is surely careless — is the book telling the reader, in its own words, not to merge 鹿 and 麋.** This is the sentence that settles how the four deer sections of this chapter are to be handled, and it is the reason 麋 at 1.12 keeps its own 茸 and 角 rather than being folded into this section. The complaint is that practitioners of the compiler's own day were already treating the two antlers as interchangeable; the book records the complaint and then, at 1.12.2, sets out the cosmological argument for the distinction in full.
The rest of the passage is a measurement and it is a good one. **Antler is the fastest-growing bone known in any animal, and the 本草's arithmetic is of the right order**: a large stag's antlers reach full size in some ten to twelve weeks, and growth rates of one to two centimetres a day, with daily mass gains in the range this passage computes, are documented in red deer and elk. 二十餘斤 for the pair is high but not absurd for a large elk. The concluding rhetorical question — how can it be compared with ordinary bone and blood — is the pharmacological argument of the whole deer group: a tissue that grows at this rate must carry something that makes growth, which is a reasonable inference from the evidence available and is, as it turns out, not wholly wrong. **Growing antler is rich in growth factors, and that is both why the drug was valued and why the doping caution at 1.11 exists.**
譯 1.11.1.4 Translation영역
For medicinal use, do not use one that has fallen of itself.
Clinical note임상 주석
**入藥不用自落者 is in flat contradiction with the passage above it, and the contradiction is worth stating rather than smoothing over.** The preceding passage identifies the drug by the casting of the antler — 麋角解, 鹿角解, the antler falls — and uses the season of casting as the criterion that separates the two animals. This passage then rules the cast antler out for medicinal use. The two positions can be reconciled only by reading the first as taxonomy and the second as pharmacy: the casting tells you which animal you have, but the material you dispense should be cut rather than picked up.
**It is also the sentence with the sharpest modern consequence in the deer group.** A cast antler is shed naturally by a living animal and costs it nothing; an antler that is not cast must be sawn from the animal, alive or dead. The entry's preference is therefore the one with the welfare and the biosecurity cost attached, and the opposite of the preference a reader should carry forward. Collected cast antler is available, is the by-product of nothing, and carries none of the tissue burden discussed at 1.11.
譯 1.11.1.5 Source원문
或醋煮剉碎, 或灸黃色, 或燒灰爲末用. 《入門》
Translation영역
Either boil it in vinegar and chop it fine, or roast it to a yellow colour, or burn it to ash and use it as a powder.
Clinical note임상 주석
The three preparations of 鹿角 in current use, and each goes to a different use: vinegar-boiled and chopped for the decoction, roasted for internal tonifying work, calcined for topical and absorbent application. 灸 here stands for 炙, to roast; the transcription's graph is kept. One of the book's two 鹿角散 formulas is an external vinegar paste, which is the first of these three.
1.11.2 Deer Bone 骨
譯 1.11.2.1 Source원문
性微熱一云温, 味甘, 無毒. 主虛勞, 可爲酒, 治風補虛, 又安胎下氣, 殺鬼精物. 《本草》
Translation영역
Its nature is slightly hot one says warm, its flavour sweet, and it is without toxicity. It governs vacuity taxation, may be made into a wine, treats wind and supplements vacuity, and also quiets the fetus and precipitates qi, and kills demons and spirit-things.
Clinical note임상 주석
可爲酒 — it may be made into a wine — is the bone-steeped liquor that recurs three times in my part of this chapter: here, at 1.12.3 for 麋骨 and at 1.13 for 麞骨, each time with 煮骨汁釀酒 or its equivalent. The three deer bones are given the same preparation and nearly the same indication, which is an argument that the compiler's sources distinguished the animals more firmly than the pharmacology did. 殺鬼精物 is the apotropaic register.
This leaf has no record in the materia medica of this site and no formula in the Bogam uses deer bone under any name. **That is the correct state and not an omission** — the materia medica of this project grew out of formula composition, so a drug that no prescription names has no way into it. The entry still holds its nature, flavour, indications and source, which is the Bencao's record of it.
**Modern reading. The chronic wasting disease caution at 1.11 bears on this leaf more than on the antler, and the reason is the tissue.** Deer bone is marrow-bearing and lymphoid, and in a prion-infected animal the lymphoreticular tissue carries infectivity before and more abundantly than most other tissues; prions are not destroyed by boiling, by prolonged simmering into a stock, or by alcoholic extraction. Where the provenance of a deer carcass is unknown, bone and marrow are the parts to leave alone. Beyond prions, a bone stock from a wild cervid carries the ordinary zoonoses of handling a carcass — Brucella, Coxiella burnetii and, in Korea specifically, the tick-borne agents discussed at 1.11.4.
1.11.3 Deer Marrow 髓
譯 1.11.3.1 Source원문
性温, 味甘, 無毒. 治男女傷中絶脉, 筋骨弱, 四肢不收, 壯陽令有子, 和酒服.
Translation영역
Its nature is warm, its flavour sweet, and it is without toxicity. It treats damage to the centre and severed vessels in men and women, weakness of the sinews and bones, and inability to gather up the four limbs; it invigorates yang and enables conception. It is taken mixed with wine.
Clinical note임상 주석
四肢不收 is the inability to draw the limbs in — flaccid weakness, covering what would now be a flaccid paresis, a peripheral neuropathy or a myopathy. 傷中絶脉 is damage to the middle burner with interruption of the vessels. The passage has no source mark and takes the 《本草》 of the passage below.
**On the materia medica link.** This leaf is the same material as the record this site carries as 鹿髓脂 / Cervi Medulla, which was entered from the single-drug remedies of the 外形篇 — where the entry 鹿髓脂 reads 主四肢不隨, governs the four limbs not following, which is this passage's 四肢不收, and where a second entry under the name 鹿髓 treats cramping sinew pain. **The pair 鹿髓 = 鹿髓脂 is reported for the alias table and `herb:` is left empty here**, because the checker's name-matching reaches 鹿髓 from this section but not 鹿髓脂, and linking it would be flagged as a mismatched name.
**Modern reading. Bone marrow is food and is eaten, but it is the tissue where the chronic wasting disease caution at 1.11 is at its strongest and it is also the fattiest tissue in the carcass.** Marrow is lymphoid and haematopoietic, and in prion disease the lymphoreticular system carries infectivity; the provenance point made at 1.11 applies here without qualification. For the indications: new limb weakness is a neurological presentation that needs localising — cord compression, Guillain–Barré syndrome, myasthenia, motor neuron disease and the inflammatory myopathies each have a time-critical window — and taking it with wine does nothing. Male factor infertility is investigated with a semen analysis, which is the one cheap test that is skipped most often in subfertility.
譯 1.11.3.2 Translation영역
Deer marrow may be made into a wine.
Clinical note임상 주석
The marrow liquor, the third of the deer-bone preparations noted at 1.11.2. **The sentence also names the drug — 鹿髓 — which is what permits this leaf to be matched to the 外形篇's single-drug entries of that name**; the section heading in the transcription is the bare part-character 髓, as the leaf names in this chapter mostly are, and the body text supplies the full name.
1.11.4 Deer Blood 血
譯 1.11.4.1 Source원문
補虛, 止腰痛, 治肺痿吐血及崩漏帶下.
Translation영역
It supplements vacuity, checks lumbar pain, and treats lung wilting with spitting of blood, and flooding and spotting with vaginal discharge.
Clinical note임상 주석
肺痿 is lung wilting, the wasting cough with blood in the sputum, which covers pulmonary tuberculosis, bronchiectasis and chronic suppurative lung disease. The passage has no source mark and takes the 《本草》 below.
譯 1.11.4.2 Source원문
有人因獵失道, 飢渴, 獲一鹿, 刺血飮之, 飢渴頓除, 遂覺氣血充盛異常, 人有效此刺鹿頭角間血和酒飮之更佳. 《本草》
Translation영역
There was a man who lost his way while hunting and, hungry and thirsty, took a deer, pricked it for its blood and drank it; his hunger and thirst were relieved at once and he found his qi and blood replete beyond the ordinary. People have imitated this, pricking the blood from between the deer's head and antlers and drinking it mixed with wine, which is better still.
Clinical note임상 주석
**A case anecdote, and this project should mark it as such: it is a single reported incident which the Bencao then says people copied.** The structure is familiar from the Birds chapter and from several places in the Internal Landscape — one striking recovery, no follow-up, and a practice generalised from it. 刺鹿頭角間血, the blood pricked from between the head and the antlers, is the blood of the vascular antler pedicle, which is the richest blood supply in the animal while the antler is growing. 和酒飮之 — mixed with wine and drunk — is the form it is still sold in.
**Modern reading. Raw deer blood must not be drunk, and in Korea this is not a theoretical caution.** Four things attach to it.
First, **chronic wasting disease**. Prion infectivity has been demonstrated in the blood of infected cervids, and blood is one of the routes by which the disease is thought to spread within herds. Korea has had CWD in farmed deer since the first detection in imported elk in 2001, and raw blood is the preparation from which no processing step removes infectivity.
Second, **tick-borne infection**. Deer are a principal host of Haemaphysalis longicornis, and Korea has a substantial burden of severe fever with thrombocytopenia syndrome (SFTS), a bunyavirus infection with a case fatality that has run around twenty per cent in Korean series; it is transmitted by tick bite but also by contact with the blood and body fluids of infected patients and animals, and person-to-person transmission through blood contact is documented. Scrub typhus (Orientia tsutsugamushi) and Lyme borreliosis come from the same tick-and-deer ecology. **Handling and drinking the blood of a freshly killed wild deer is a plausible route for SFTS and the practice has been identified as a risk behaviour.**
Third, **brucellosis and Q fever**. Brucella and Coxiella burnetii are classically acquired from the blood, birth fluids and tissues of infected ruminants, and both cause prolonged febrile illness that is easily missed.
Fourth, the ordinary bacterial load of raw blood from an animal field-dressed without refrigeration.
For the indications themselves: haemoptysis needs a chest radiograph and, in most adults, a CT and bronchoscopy, because the differential runs from tuberculosis and bronchiectasis to lung cancer and pulmonary embolism, and treating it as a vacuity to be supplemented loses the diagnosis. Low back pain is mechanical in the great majority and needs red flags excluded rather than a tonic.
1.11.5 Venison 肉
譯 1.11.5.1 Source원문
性温, 味甘, 無毒. 補虛羸, 強五藏, 益氣力, 調血脉. 《本草》
Translation영역
Its nature is warm, its flavour sweet, and it is without toxicity. It supplements vacuity and emaciation, strengthens the five viscera, boosts qi and strength, and regulates the blood vessels.
Clinical note임상 주석
The flesh is food and the entry treats it as food — this is the one leaf in the deer group with no caution and no apotropaic indication. The materia medica of this site carries it as 鹿肉 / Cervi Caro, with 鹿生肉, raw venison, recorded as a preparation from the single-drug remedies of the Wind chapter.
**Modern reading. Venison is a lean red meat and is good food, well cooked.** It is lower in fat than farmed beef and pork and higher in iron. The cautions are those of any game: thorough cooking against Toxoplasma, the tick-borne agents noted at 1.11.4, and in hunted animals lead fragments from the bullet, which are dispersed through the carcass far from the wound channel and are a documented source of elevated blood lead in people who eat a lot of shot game — this matters most for children and in pregnancy. And the chronic wasting disease point: **muscle is not a tissue where prions concentrate, but muscle from a CWD-positive animal has been shown to carry some infectivity, and the agencies that have considered it advise against eating meat from an animal known or suspected to be infected.** In jurisdictions with CWD, testing of hunted deer before consumption is offered and should be used.
譯 1.11.5.2 Source원문
野肉之中, 獐鹿可食, 生不羶腥, 又不屬十二辰八卦, 無主兼能補益於人, 卽生死無尤, 故道家許聽爲脯. 其餘牛羊雞犬, 雖補益充肌膚, 於亡魂皆爲愆責, 並不足啖. 《本草》
Translation영역
Among the flesh of wild animals, the roe deer and the deer may be eaten: raw, they are not rank or fishy, they do not belong to the twelve earthly branches or the eight trigrams, they have no master and are moreover able to supplement and benefit a person, and so there is no blame in their living or dying — which is why the Daoists permit them to be made into dried meat. As for the rest, cattle, sheep, fowl and dog, though they supplement and fill out the flesh, they are all a matter of reproach to the departed soul, and none of them is fit to be eaten.
Clinical note임상 주석
**This is a dietary rule from outside medicine and it should be read as such: a Daoist food prohibition, preserved in a materia medica because the compiler's source preserved it.** The argument is that the roe deer and the deer are the only large game not assigned to a calendrical or divinatory position — not among the twelve branch animals, not among the eight trigram animals — and therefore have 無主, no master, no patron spirit to answer to; killing and eating them incurs no debt, so the Daoist adepts allowed them as dried meat. The domestic animals, which do have such positions, bring 愆責, reproach, upon the soul of the departed. The same rule reappears at 1.13.1 in almost the same words — 道家以麞鹿肉羞爲白脯言其無禁忌也 — which is how the book links its 鹿 and 麞 sections to each other.
It is worth noticing that the prohibition runs in the opposite direction from the modern one. Nothing in nutrition distinguishes venison from beef in the way this passage does, and the animals it forbids are the ones a modern reader would call safer, being inspected and farmed.
生不羶腥, "raw, they are not rank", is an observation about flavour that is also an invitation to eat the meat raw; see the preceding note on why that should not be done.
譯 1.11.5.3 Source원문
饗神用鹿肉者, 以其性別淸凈故也. 《本草》
Translation영역
That venison is used in offering to the spirits is because its nature is distinctively clear and pure.
Clinical note임상 주석
The sacrificial use, which follows from the passage above: an animal with no patron spirit is the clean offering. 淸凈 is ritual purity rather than a pharmacological property, and the entry is recording the reason for a practice.
譯 1.11.5.4 Source원문
鹿之一身皆能益人, 野族中第一品也. 或脯或煮或蒸俱宜, 和酒服. 但餌藥者不可食, 盖鹿常食解毒草, 減藥力故也. 《入門》
Translation영역
Every part of the deer can benefit a person; it is the first-rank item among the wild animals. Dried, boiled or steamed, all are suitable, and it is taken with wine. But one who is taking medicine must not eat it, for the deer constantly eats detoxifying herbs and so reduces the strength of the drug.
Clinical note임상 주석
**餌藥者不可食 — a person taking medicine must not eat it — is a food-drug interaction rule, and it is the only one in my part of this chapter.** The reasoning given is indirect and rather good: the deer browses on 解毒草, herbs that resolve toxin, so the animal's flesh carries that counteracting action into the person eating it and weakens whatever drug they are taking. It is an argument from the animal's diet to the properties of its flesh, which is the correct general form of argument even though the particular conclusion has no support.
鹿之一身皆能益人, every part of the deer benefits a person, is the sentence that explains why this section has nine parts hanging beneath it — antler, bone, marrow, blood, flesh, head, kidney, hoof and sinew — and why the chapter returns to the deer four times.
**Modern reading. The rule as stated is not real, but the instinct behind it is the single most useful thing in the deer group and should be redirected rather than dismissed.** Food and herb interactions with drugs are genuine, common and clinically serious, and the mechanisms are known: grapefruit inhibits intestinal CYP3A4 and raises the concentration of a long list of drugs; vitamin K in green vegetables antagonises warfarin; St John's wort induces CYP3A4 and P-glycoprotein and has caused transplant rejection and contraceptive failure; Ginkgo, Salvia miltiorrhiza (丹參) and Angelica sinensis (當歸) add to anticoagulant effect. **A practitioner who takes the Yixue rumen's warning seriously and asks every patient what else they are taking is doing the right thing for the wrong reason, and that is worth more than the rule itself.** Venison does not reduce drug levels.
1.11.6 Deer's Head 頭
譯 1.11.6.1 Source원문
止消渴, 主夜夢見物, 取肉食之. 《本草》
Translation영역
It checks dispersion-thirst and governs seeing things in dreams at night; the flesh is taken and eaten.
Clinical note임상 주석
夜夢見物, seeing things in dreams, is the vivid or frightening dream of the 夢 chapter — the head for the head, the same organ-for-organ reasoning as the horse's heart at 1.10.2. 取肉食之 specifies that it is the flesh of the head that is eaten, not the bone.
**Modern reading. This is the one leaf in the deer group that should be refused outright on the tissue, and the reason is prions.** The head is where the central nervous system is, and in a cervid with chronic wasting disease the brain, the obex, the retropharyngeal lymph nodes and the eyes are precisely where prion infectivity is concentrated — they are the tissues on which CWD surveillance testing is performed. Korea's CWD outbreaks in farmed deer make this a local question, not an imported one. Head meat is also the cut most likely to be contaminated with nervous tissue during butchery. **No processing removes prions: they survive cooking, prolonged boiling, drying and standard autoclaving.** Whatever view is taken of the species barrier, head tissue from a deer of unknown provenance has nothing to recommend it and an identified hazard against it.
For the indications: dispersion-thirst is a blood glucose; disturbed and vivid dreaming is worth asking about properly, because it is produced by REM sleep behaviour disorder — which precedes Parkinson's disease and dementia with Lewy bodies by years and is a referable finding — and by beta-blockers, alcohol withdrawal, obstructive sleep apnoea and post-traumatic stress disorder.
1.11.7 Deer's Kidney 腎
譯 1.11.7.1 Translation영역
Its nature is balanced. It supplements the kidney and invigorates yang qi.
Clinical note임상 주석
Organ-for-organ in its purest form — a kidney to supplement the Kidney — and the shortest entry in the deer group. 壯陽氣 is invigorating yang qi, which in this register means sexual function as much as anything else.
**Modern reading. Not in use.** Kidney is offal and is eaten; it is high in purines, which matters in gout, and it concentrates cadmium, which is the reason offal consumption is limited in dietary guidance. The chronic wasting disease provenance point at 1.11 applies. Erectile dysfunction and low libido have a workup — morning testosterone, glucose, lipids, medication review, and the cardiovascular assessment noted at 1.10 — and animal organ preparations for them are the class most often found adulterated with undeclared PDE5 inhibitors.
1.11.8 Deer's Hoof 蹄
譯 1.11.8.1 Translation영역
Its flesh governs aching pain of the legs and knees.
Clinical note임상 주석
The headword is the hoof but the indication specifies 肉, the flesh — the soft tissue of the foot rather than the horn. 脚膝痠疼 is the aching of the legs and knees that runs through the whole deer group; the velvet at 1.11 carries it, the antler carries lumbar and spinal pain, and here it narrows to the lower limb. The treat-like-with-like logic is visible: the foot for the foot.
**Modern reading. Not in use.** Knee pain in an adult is most often osteoarthritis, and what works is exercise therapy and weight management, with topical and then oral analgesia; patellofemoral pain in younger patients responds to loading programmes. The collagen in a trotter is the basis of the hydrolysed collagen supplement trade, where the evidence in osteoarthritis is weak and inconsistent, and swallowed collagen does not reach joint cartilage as collagen.
1.11.9 Deer's Sinew 筋
譯 1.11.9.1 Translation영역
It governs taxation damage and joins what is severed.
Clinical note임상 주석
續絶, joining what is severed, is the indication of the whole class of trauma drugs — 續 is the verb in 續骨, knitting bone — and like-for-like reasoning again: a tendon for torn tendons. 勞損 is the damage of chronic overuse, which is the one place where the deer group and modern practice are looking at the same thing.
**Modern reading. Not in use, and the condition is better understood than it was.** A ruptured tendon does not knit by itself in any useful alignment: an Achilles rupture, a distal biceps rupture, a quadriceps or patellar tendon rupture is a surgical or carefully protocolled conservative problem, and the diagnosis is missed often enough that a palpable gap and a positive Thompson test are worth knowing. Overuse tendinopathy is not an inflammation and does not respond to rest alone; progressive loading — eccentric and heavy slow resistance programmes — is the treatment with the best evidence, and corticosteroid injection gives short-term relief at the cost of worse long-term outcomes and a risk of rupture. Eaten tendon is dietary collagen; see 1.11.8.
1.12 Mi Deer's Fat 麋脂
ᄀᆞ징큰사슴의기름 가장 큰 사슴의 기름 the fat of the largest kind of deer
The gloss is a definition and not a name: ᄀᆞ징 (for ᄀᆞ장, modern 가장, "most") + 큰 "large" + 사슴의 "of the deer" + 기름 "fat" — the fat of the very largest deer. It agrees with the book's own gloss at the end of the third passage, 靑麋大鹿也, the blue-grey mi is a large deer.
Leaf 047a's foot carries two lines on this gloss. 징 : 장(초간본) gives the first printing's ᄀᆞ장, which is the ordinary Middle Korean form of modern 가장 and recovers the sense; the transcription's 징 is printed above and the modernisation follows the first printing's reading, since 가장 is what the word is. 슴의 : ᄉᆞᄆᆡ(초간본) is the same line as at 1.11 on leaf 046a: the first printing writes 사ᄉᆞᄆᆡ, the regular Middle Korean genitive of 사ᄉᆞᆷ, deer.
The third passage of this section adds a second Korean word inside the Chinese text — ≪本草 ○俗名고란이≫ — and that word pulls against this gloss. 고란이 is modern 고라니, the water deer, which is a small animal, while this gloss and the book's own 大鹿 both say the mi is the largest deer. The conflict is set out in the note to that passage and is not resolved here.
譯 1.12.1 Source원문
性温一云大熱, 味辛, 無毒. 主癕腫惡瘡, 風寒濕痺, 四肢不收, 不可近隂令痿. 一名宮脂. 《本草》
Translation영역
Its nature is warm one says greatly hot, its flavour acrid, and it is without toxicity. It governs welling swellings and malign sores, wind-cold-damp impediment and inability to gather up the four limbs. It must not be brought near the genitals, as it causes wilting. One name for it is palace fat.
Clinical note임상 주석
**麋 is a different animal from the 鹿 of 1.11 and the book insists on it.** It has its own velvet at 1.12.1 and its own antler at 1.12.2, so that 麋茸 and 鹿茸, 麋角 and 鹿角 are four drugs; 1.11.1's third passage says in so many words that treating the two as one is careless, and 1.12.2 below gives the argument in full. This headword is the fat, where 1.11's headword is the velvet, which is itself a sign that the compiler's sources treated the two animals as having different principal products.
**Which animal is 麋 cannot be settled, and no species is asserted here.** The evidence pulls two ways and should be laid out rather than tidied. On one side: 麋 in the Chinese tradition is read as Elaphurus davidianus, Père David's deer, the 사불상, and 1.12.2 below calls it 澤獸, a marsh beast, as against the 鹿 which is 山獸, a mountain beast — which fits a wetland cervid, as does the casting of its antler at the winter solstice, since Elaphurus is unusual among deer in casting in late autumn and early winter and in sometimes growing a second set within the year. The alternative traditional reading is simply "a large deer", elk or moose, and the Korean gloss above — the fat of the very largest deer — and the book's own 大鹿 both support that. On the other side stands the inline Korean word in the third passage, 俗名고란이, modern 고라니, which is the water deer Hydropotes inermis — a wetland animal, which fits 澤獸, but one of the smallest deer there is, which contradicts both 大鹿 and the gloss. **The name was evidently unstable in sixteenth-century Korean, and the project's rule is that a word which resolves is recorded while a species that is not fixed is left unfixed.** It is left unfixed. No Latin binomial is given for this section.
**不可近隂令痿 — it must not be brought near the genitals, as it causes wilting — is the entry's own prohibition, and the next passage immediately disputes it.** See that note; this is the most interesting thing in the section.
一名宮脂, palace fat, is a second name and it appears nowhere else in the Bogam.
**Modern reading. This is a rendered animal fat and nothing in it is a drug.** No pharmacopoeia carries 麋脂; the Bogam itself uses it in no formula, and **the characters 麋, 麞, 獐, 麕 and 麂 do not occur once in the whole of this book's formulary** — a measurement worth stating, because it means sections 1.12, 1.13 and 1.14 and all their parts correctly have no materia medica record, rather than having been overlooked. An occlusive fat over an abscess or an infected sore macerates the skin and traps the infection; abscesses are drained. Wind-cold-damp impediment, which is the inflammatory and degenerative joint disease of this nosology, is treated by the means set out at 1.11.8.
**If 麋 is Elaphurus davidianus, there is a further point: the animal is assessed by the IUCN as Extinct in the Wild.** The species survived only in a single imperial park and in European collections, was reintroduced to China from Woburn Abbey stock in the 1980s, and every living individual descends from a handful of founders. There is no wild source for this drug and there has not been one for a century.
譯 1.12.2 Source원문
麋性淫快, 不應痿人隂. 一方云, 不可近隂, 令隂不痿, 此說有理. 《本草》
Translation영역
The mi is by nature lustful and quick, so it ought not to make a person's genitals wilt. One text says: it must not be brought near the genitals, as it keeps them from wilting — and this reading makes sense.
Clinical note임상 주석
**This is the book arguing with itself about its own drug, in consecutive passages, and it is the most valuable thing in my part of this chapter.** The first passage said 不可近隂令痿: do not bring it near the genitals, it causes wilting. This passage objects on the ground that the animal is 淫快, lustful and quick, and so should not have an anti-aphrodisiac action — then produces a variant text that reads 令隂不痿, keeps them from wilting, which inverts the meaning of the warning into a claim of potency, and endorses the variant: 此說有理, this reading makes sense.
So the same four characters, 近隂令痿 against 近隂令不痿, carry opposite instructions, and the Bogam prints both the prohibition and the refutation and then sides with the refutation while leaving the prohibition standing above it. **The reasoning is also instructive: the argument for the variant is not a clinical observation but an inference from the animal's behaviour to the properties of its fat** — the same form of argument as the deer's browsing at 1.11.5, and the form that generates most of this chapter. It is worth showing a reader exactly once, because it is how a great deal of animal materia medica was produced.
This project's rule is not to resolve the book's own contradictions in either direction, and it is not resolved here. The 寶鑑's editorial choice — to set the dispute down rather than silently adopt one reading — is the thing to carry forward.
譯 1.12.3 Source원문
靑麋大鹿也. 《本草》 俗名고란이
Translation영역
The blue-grey mi is a large deer. 俗名고란이 — its common name is gorani
Clinical note임상 주석
**靑麋大鹿也 is the book defining its own headword — the blue-grey mi is a large deer — and the Korean word printed beside it says the opposite.** 고란이 is modern 고라니, the water deer Hydropotes inermis, which stands about half a metre at the shoulder and is one of the smallest deer in the world; it is not a large deer by any reading. The two glosses cannot both be right about the animal, and this section therefore has three competing identifications pulling at it — Père David's deer from the Chinese tradition and the 澤獸 of 1.12.2, "the largest deer" from the Korean gloss in the section heading and from 大鹿 here, and the water deer from this word.
**The most likely explanation is that the Korean names of the small cervids were unstable, and the rest of this chapter shows it.** 1.13 麞 is glossed 놀의, 노루, the roe deer; 1.14 麂 is glossed 효근노로, "small roe deer"; and here 麋 is glossed 고란이. In modern Korean 노루 and 고라니 are two different animals — Capreolus pygargus and Hydropotes inermis — which have been confused with each other in common speech for centuries, and the water deer's prominent tusks are in fact what 1.14 describes under 麂. A transcriber or compiler reaching for a Korean name for a deer he had not seen had a set of partly overlapping words to choose from. **The word resolves; the animal does not. No binomial is given.**
It is also worth recording what the water deer's status would mean if that gloss were taken as decisive: Hydropotes inermis is assessed by the IUCN as Vulnerable, because the Chinese population has collapsed, while Korea holds the large majority of the world's animals and manages them as agricultural pests. That is an unusual position for a species to be in and a practitioner should know it, but it does not settle what 麋 is.
1.12.1 Mi Deer's Velvet Antler 茸
譯 1.12.1.1 Source원문
麋茸利補陽, 鹿茸利補隂, 壯骨血, 堅陽道, 強骨髓, 端如瑪瑙紅玉者最善.
Translation영역
Mi velvet is suited to supplementing yang and deer velvet to supplementing yin. It invigorates the bones and blood, firms the yang passage and strengthens the bone marrow; the kind whose tip is like agate or red jade is best.
Clinical note임상 주석
**麋茸利補陽, 鹿茸利補隂 — this is the whole argument for keeping 1.11 and 1.12 apart, stated in eight characters.** The two velvets are assigned to opposite halves of the primary polarity: the mi's to yang, the deer's to yin. Nothing in a materia medica is a stronger statement of difference than that, and it means **麋茸 cannot be linked to the 鹿茸 record and must not be** — they are not the same drug under two names, they are two drugs with contrary actions. The passage carries no source mark and takes the 《本草》 of the passage below.
端如瑪瑙紅玉者最善, the tip like agate or red jade, is a grading criterion of the same kind as the small-aubergine form at 1.11's second passage, and it describes the blood-filled, translucent tip of velvet antler accurately. 堅陽道 is firming the yang passage, that is, erectile function.
**Modern reading. There is no pharmacopoeial drug 麋茸 and no formula in the Bogam uses it, so nothing is in current use here.** Whatever cervid 麋 is, velvet antler as a material carries the three cautions set out at 1.11 — the anti-doping prohibition on IGF-1 and growth factors, the hormonal activity, and the chronic wasting disease provenance question — and in this case a fourth, that the animal cannot be identified, so that no provenance claim about it could be verified. If 麋 is Elaphurus davidianus, the species is Extinct in the Wild and any material offered under the name is something else.
譯 1.12.1.2 Translation영역
Taken internally, its potency surpasses that of deer velvet.
Clinical note임상 주석
The comparison made explicit, and in the mi's favour. It is a useful piece of evidence about the two sections: a compiler who thought 麋 and 鹿 were the same animal could not have written that one's velvet was stronger than the other's. **Read with 麋茸利補陽, 鹿茸利補隂 above and with 今人用一般, 殆踈矣 at 1.11.1, the book has now said three times and in three different ways that these are separate drugs.** Against that, the market history runs the other way — the mi velvet is the one that disappeared from the trade, and what is sold today as velvet antler is the 鹿 drug.
1.12.2 Mi Deer's Antler 角
譯 1.12.2.1 Source원문
性温, 味甘, 無毒. 添精補髓, 益血脉, 煖腰膝, 悅色壯陽, 偏治丈夫, 療腰膝不仁, 補一切血. 《本草》
Translation영역
Its nature is warm, its flavour sweet, and it is without toxicity. It adds to essence and supplements the marrow, boosts the blood vessels, warms the lumbus and knees, brightens the complexion and invigorates yang; it treats men in particular, treats numbness of the lumbus and knees, and supplements the blood in every case.
Clinical note임상 주석
偏治丈夫, it treats men in particular, is a sex-specific indication and it is the counterpart of 鹿茸's double list at 1.11, which gives separate indications for men and women. 腰膝不仁 is numbness and loss of feeling in the lumbus and knees, which is a sensory rather than a painful complaint and points at what would now be a lumbar radiculopathy or a peripheral neuropathy.
**Modern reading. Not a pharmacopoeial drug and not used; the 鹿角 of 1.11.1 is the antler that is.** Numbness in both legs with lumbar symptoms needs examining rather than warming: cauda equina syndrome is the emergency to exclude — saddle anaesthesia, urinary retention, bilateral radicular signs — and a peripheral neuropathy needs glucose, HbA1c, B12 and a drug and alcohol history. For the material and its hazards see 1.12.1.
譯 1.12.2.2 Source원문
月令云, 仲夏鹿角解, 仲冬麋角解. 日華子謂夏至角解, 誤矣. 鹿是山獸, 夏至得隂氣而解角, 從陽退之象; 麋是澤獸, 冬至得陽氣而解角, 從隂退之象也. 《本草》
Translation영역
The Monthly Ordinances say that in mid-summer the deer's antler is cast and in mid-winter the mi's antler is cast. Rihuazi's statement that the antler is cast at the summer solstice is mistaken. The deer is a mountain beast: at the summer solstice it receives yin qi and casts its antler, which is the image of yang withdrawing. The mi is a marsh beast: at the winter solstice it receives yang qi and casts its antler, which is the image of yin withdrawing.
Clinical note임상 주석
**This is the passage that settles the structure of the deer sections in this chapter, and it should be read carefully, because it is the book doing taxonomy.** The argument has three steps. First the authority: the Liji's Yueling assigns the two castings to opposite halves of the year, mid-summer for 鹿 and mid-winter for 麋. Second the correction: Rihuazi, the Tang author of the Rihuazi zhujia bencao, had said the antler is cast at the summer solstice without qualifying which animal, and the Bencao calls that wrong — it is right for the deer and wrong for the mi. Third the explanation: the two animals belong to opposite habitats, 山獸 a mountain beast and 澤獸 a marsh beast, and therefore respond to opposite solstices, each casting when the qi contrary to its own nature arrives.
**It interlocks exactly with 1.11.1's third passage, which states the same two castings in the yin-yang form — 冬至一陽生麋角解, 夏至一隂生鹿角解 — and then complains that practitioners use the two antlers as one. The two passages are the two ends of one argument, separated by a section, and they are the reason this file keeps 鹿 and 麋 apart.**
**What is underneath the cosmology is a real zoological observation.** Deer do cast their antlers on a fixed annual schedule tied to photoperiod and testosterone, and cervid species differ in when. Red deer and sika cast in late winter and early spring; Elaphurus davidianus is the outlier among deer in casting in late autumn or early winter, and is further unusual in sometimes growing a second, smaller set within the same year — which is as close as this chapter comes to a testable identification of 麋, and it supports the Père David's deer reading without being decisive against the others. 仲夏 for the 鹿 is not right for any temperate cervid, so the Yueling's half of the pairing is schematic. The compiler, in other words, is using a difference in seasonal biology to separate two animals, which is sound method on inadequate data.
譯 1.12.2.3 Source원문
煎作膠, 與鹿角膠同功. 《本草》
Translation영역
Boiled down into a glue, it has the same action as deer-antler glue.
Clinical note임상 주석
**This is the one place where my part of the chapter connects to a drug that is in current use, and it is worth being precise about what can and cannot be used.** 鹿角膠, deer-antler glue, is a real and current pharmacopoeial item: the materia medica of this site carries it as Cervi Cornus Colla, the Bogam's formulary names it and its preparations some fifteen times, and it stands as the headword 白膠 at 1.6 of this chapter with 鹿角霜, the degelatinated residue, as its leaf — 白膠's own entry says 一名鹿角膠一名黃明膠煮鹿角作之, made by boiling deer antler. That drug, with 鹿茸, 鹿角 and 鹿角霜 of 1.11, and with the 阿膠 of 1.7, is the group in this chapter that **is** still dispensed, stocked and pharmacopoeially defined. A note that treated the whole Beasts chapter as unusable would be false to that.
麋角膠, on the other hand, is not a drug anywhere. The sentence is a substitution claim of the same form as 可代芩連用 at 1.10.9 — use mine, it does what theirs does — and the drug it offers to substitute for is the one that survived.
1.12.3 Mi Deer's Bone 骨
譯 1.12.3.1 Source원문
除虛勞至良, 煮骨汁釀酒飮, 令人肥白美顔色. 《本草》
Translation영역
It is excellent for eliminating vacuity taxation; the bone is boiled for its liquor, which is brewed into a wine and drunk, and it makes a person plump and fair with a fine complexion.
Clinical note임상 주석
The bone liquor again — the same preparation as 鹿骨 at 1.11.2 and 麞骨 at 1.13, in almost the same words, and all three for 虛勞. **Three of the four deer sections give their bone the identical treatment and the identical indication, which is the one place where the book's careful separation of the animals collapses**: whatever distinguished 鹿 from 麋 from 麞 in the compiler's sources, it did not distinguish their bones.
令人肥白美顔色, plump and fair with a fine complexion, is a cosmetic indication and should be read in its own period's terms: in a society where undernutrition was common, 肥 was a sign of health rather than its opposite.
**Modern reading. Not in use.** On bone liquor and the prion caution see 1.11.2; the provenance problem is worse here, because the animal cannot be identified. A long-simmered bone stock is a dilute source of collagen-derived amino acids and some minerals and is unobjectionable food made from an animal of known health; it is not a treatment for wasting, and unintentional weight loss in an adult is a presentation that needs a cause found — malignancy, thyroid disease, diabetes, malabsorption, depression, chronic infection.
1.12.4 Mi Deer's Flesh 肉
譯 1.12.4.1 Source원문
性熱, 益氣補中, 治腰脚. 《本草》
Translation영역
Its nature is hot. It boosts qi and supplements the centre, and treats the lumbus and legs.
Clinical note임상 주석
The shortest entry in the section and the only one in the mi group with no caution attached. 性熱, hot in nature, sets it against 鹿肉's 性温 at 1.11.5 — a small but consistent difference, the mi being the hotter and more yang animal throughout this section.
**Modern reading. Game meat, well cooked, with the cautions at 1.11.5 — thorough cooking, lead from shot, the tick-borne agents of 1.11.4 and the provenance question of 1.11.** If 麋 is Père David's deer, the animal is Extinct in the Wild and its flesh is not obtainable; if it is the water deer, the animal is hunted in Korea as a pest and eaten, and is assessed as Vulnerable globally.
1.13 Roe Deer's Bone 麞骨
놀의ᄲᅧ 노루의 뼈 roe deer's bone
놀의 is the genitive of 놀/노로, which is modern 노루; ᄲᅧ is 뼈, bone. The gloss resolves without difficulty, and here, unlike at 1.12 and 1.14, it also fixes the animal: 노루 is one word for one animal in Korean and has been since the earliest records, the Siberian roe deer. The section note gives the binomial and the qualification that goes with it.
譯 1.13.1 Source원문
性微温一云平, 味甘一云醎, 無毒. 主虛損泄精, 益精髓, 悅顔色.
Translation영역
Its nature is slightly warm one says balanced, its flavour sweet one says salty, and it is without toxicity. It governs vacuity detriment with seminal emission, boosts the essence and marrow, and brightens the complexion.
Clinical note임상 주석
**The vernacular gloss does the identifying work in this section and it does it cleanly.** 노루 in Korean is the Siberian roe deer, Capreolus pygargus, and the word is not ambiguous in the way that 고라니 at 1.12 and 효근노로 at 1.14 are ambiguous; the animal is native to the peninsula, common, and legally hunted under licence in Korea today, and the IUCN assesses it as of Least Concern. The qualification to enter is that the character, not the Korean word, is loose: 麞 is a variant of 獐 and both are used in Chinese sources for more than one small cervid, and the book itself says 獐又呼爲麕 at 1.13.1 below, folding in a third graph. **The Korean gloss is what settles it, and it is on the strength of the gloss rather than the character that the roe deer is named here.**
Note also what the headword is. This section's headword is the **bone** — not the flesh, not the fat, not the antler — and the roe deer's antler, which is small, gets no entry at all. Each of the four deer sections of this chapter is headed by a different product: the velvet for 鹿, the fat for 麋, the bone for 麞, the flesh for 麂. That patterning is the compiler's, and it reflects what each animal was actually used for.
The two sochu record disagreements in the sources about nature and flavour, which is the usual way this book keeps a split rather than resolving it. 虛損泄精 is depletion with involuntary loss of semen. The passage has no source mark and takes the 《本草》 of the passage below.
**Modern reading. Not a pharmacopoeial drug, and nothing in the Bogam's formulary uses it — the graphs 麞, 獐 and 麕 do not occur once in the whole formulary.** On the bone liquor of the next passage and on the prion caution that attaches to cervid bone see 1.11.2 and 1.12.3. Involuntary seminal emission is normal at some frequency and is not a depletion; where it is distressing or new, the useful questions are about sleep, medication, anxiety and, rarely, neurological disease.
譯 1.13.2 Source원문
煮骨汁釀酒飮之, 有補下之功. 《本草》
Translation영역
The bone is boiled for its liquor, which is brewed into a wine and drunk, and it has the virtue of supplementing the lower body.
Clinical note임상 주석
The third of the three bone liquors — 鹿骨 at 1.11.2, 麋骨 at 1.12.3, 麞骨 here — in almost identical words. 補下, supplementing the lower, means the Kidney and the lower burner and therefore the sexual and urinary functions, which is what 虛損泄精 above is about.
**Modern reading.** Alcohol is the active ingredient in any medicinal liquor and it should be named as such: an infusion drunk daily for a chronic complaint is a daily alcohol intake, and alcohol worsens sleep quality, raises blood pressure, is a direct cause of several cancers at any dose, and is itself a cause of erectile dysfunction and of reduced testosterone. For a patient taking a bone or antler liquor for sexual function, **the alcohol is working against the indication**, and that is worth saying plainly because it is the kind of thing a practitioner is well placed to notice and a patient is not.
1.13.1 Roe Deer's Flesh 肉
譯 1.13.1.1 Source원문
性温, 味甘, 無毒. 補益五藏.
Translation영역
Its nature is warm, its flavour sweet, and it is without toxicity. It supplements and benefits the five viscera.
Clinical note임상 주석
The first of four passages, none of which carries a source mark until the last; all four take the 《本草》 that closes the group.
譯 1.13.1.2 Source원문
自八月至十二月食之勝羊肉, 餘月食之動氣.
Translation영역
Eaten from the eighth month to the twelfth it is better than mutton; eaten in the other months it stirs the qi.
Clinical note임상 주석
**A seasonal prohibition, and read backwards it is a closed season.** The permitted months, the eighth to the twelfth lunar — roughly September to January — are autumn and winter, after the rut and outside the period when roe deer are breeding and raising their young; the forbidden months are spring and summer. The Birds chapter of this volume has the same structure at the pheasant, where the prohibition is also by month and also covers the breeding season, and the inference is the same: a rule expressed as a property of the meat tracks a rule about when the animal should be taken. Roe deer in Korea are hunted under licence in a winter season now, for reasons the compiler would not have recognised but arriving at much the same calendar.
動氣, stirring the qi, is the standing term for a food that disturbs rather than nourishes. There is a nutritional observation available too: a deer in late autumn carries its year's fat, and a deer in spring is at its leanest and poorest.
譯 1.13.1.3 Source원문
道家以麞鹿肉羞爲白脯, 言其無禁忌也.
Translation영역
The Daoists serve the flesh of the roe deer and the deer as white dried meat, saying that there is no prohibition on them.
Clinical note임상 주석
The same Daoist dietary rule as at 1.11.5, in a compressed form and naming both animals — **and this is the sentence that ties the 麞 section to the 鹿 section, since 1.11.5's version also names 獐鹿 as the pair.** 白脯 is plain dried meat; 無禁忌 is the absence of any prohibition. On the reasoning — that these two animals have no calendrical or divinatory patron and so incur no debt when killed — see the note at 1.11.5.
譯 1.13.1.4 Source원문
獐又呼爲麕, 麕肉主人心麄豪, 取心肝爲末酒服, 卽小膽. 《本草》
Translation영역
The jang is also called gyun. The flesh of the gyun makes a person's heart coarse and bold; take the heart and liver, powder them and take with wine, and the gall becomes small.
Clinical note임상 주석
**獐又呼爲麕 — the book supplying a third graph for its own animal.** The section heading is 麞, this passage writes 獐, and it then says the animal is also called 麕. All three are the roe deer and the variation is orthographic; the Korean gloss 노루 holds them together. It is a useful illustration of why the vernacular names in this chapter are worth as much as they are — the characters wander and the Korean word does not.
The rest of the passage is a piece of character pharmacology and it reads oddly in translation. 心麄豪, a coarse and bold heart, is boldness to the point of coarseness; 小膽, a small gall, is timidity, the gall bladder being the seat of decisiveness and courage in this system. So the meat makes a person bold and the powdered heart and liver make them timid, and the entry sets the two against each other as if adjusting a dial. 麄 is the variant of 粗.
**Modern reading. Nothing here is in use and the premise is worth naming rather than passing over.** Temperament is not altered by eating the corresponding organ of an animal, and the belief that it is — the doctrine of signatures in its organ form — is what generates a large share of this chapter. Roe deer meat is lean game and is good food, well cooked, with the cautions at 1.11.5: thorough cooking, lead from shot, and the tick-borne agents at 1.11.4, which matter particularly for roe deer because they are a principal host of Haemaphysalis longicornis in Korea and therefore sit at the centre of the severe fever with thrombocytopenia syndrome ecology. Liver, as at 1.10.4, concentrates retinol and heavy metals and should not be eaten in pregnancy.
1.13.2 Roe Deer's Marrow 髓
譯 1.13.2.1 Source원문
益氣力, 悅澤人面, 和酒服. 《本草》
Translation영역
It boosts qi and strength and gives a glossy sheen to the face; it is taken mixed with wine.
Clinical note임상 주석
悅澤人面, making the face glossy and bright, is a cosmetic indication like 令人肥白美顔色 at 1.12.3, and the whole 麞 group leans that way — complexion at 1.13, complexion here, fragrance at 1.13.3.
**Modern reading. Not in use.** On marrow as a tissue and the prion caution see 1.11.3; on the alcohol in 和酒服 see 1.13's second passage. Marrow is almost entirely fat, and the condition of the skin is affected by sleep, smoking, ultraviolet exposure and the control of any inflammatory dermatosis, not by dietary fat of a particular origin.
1.13.3 Roe Deer's Navel 臍
譯 1.13.3.1 Source원문
中有香, 治虛損, 亦治惡病. 《本草》
Translation영역
There is a fragrance within it. It treats vacuity detriment, and also treats malign disease.
Clinical note임상 주석
**中有香 — there is a fragrance within it — is the claim that needs examining, because it attaches the roe deer to the musk deer and the attachment is not sound.** The drug that 中有香 describes is musk, 麝香, which is the headword at 1.2 of this chapter, and its source is the preputial gland of the male musk deer, Moschus — an animal of a different genus, family-adjacent but distinct, which has no antlers and does have the gland. **The roe deer has no musk gland.** Roe deer, like most cervids, have scent glands — metatarsal, interdigital, and the forehead glands a buck rubs on saplings — and a rutting buck is strongly odorous, which is the likeliest observation behind this entry. But there is no 香 in a roe deer's navel in the sense in which the musk entry at 1.2 means it, and a practitioner offered "roe deer musk" is being offered something that does not exist.
That matters for a practical reason. **真 musk is a drug under the hardest constraints in this chapter**: all Moschus species are CITES-listed, the Siberian musk deer is a Class I endangered species in Korea and Natural Monument No. 216, and the animal is killed for the gland. Synthetic muscone is manufactured and is what legitimate products use. Where a substitute is offered under a cognate name — and 麞臍 is exactly such a name — the right response is to establish what the material actually is, because the two possibilities are a worthless gland and a prohibited one.
惡病, malign disease, is a vague term in this book and covers the chronic ulcerating and disfiguring conditions; it is the kind of indication that attaches to an exotic and expensive drug.
**Modern reading. Nothing to use.** See the note at 1.2 for the musk question in full.
1.14 Gwi Deer's Flesh 麂肉
효근노로 작은 노루 a small roe deer
효근 is the attributive of Middle Korean 횩다/혁다 "to be small", modern 작은; 노로 is modern 노루, roe deer. So the gloss is "small roe deer" and it resolves as a word without difficulty, but it does not fix a species — it is a comparison to the animal of 1.13 rather than a name of its own, and the section note sets out why the two candidate identifications cannot be decided between. No binomial is given.
譯 1.14.1 Source원문
性平一云凉, 味甘一云辛, 無毒一云有毒. 主五痔, 能墮胎, 多食動痼疾, 發瘡疥.
Translation영역
Its nature is balanced one says cool, its flavour sweet one says acrid, and it is without toxicity one says toxic. It governs the five kinds of haemorrhoid; it can cause miscarriage, and eaten in quantity it stirs up a chronic complaint and brings out sores and scabies.
Clinical note임상 주석
**Three sochu in one line, and the third of them contradicts the main text outright: 無毒 with a variant reading 一云有毒, without toxicity against toxic.** This is the densest cluster of dissenting readings in my part of the chapter, and it is the shortest section — one headword, no parts, two passages. The book has collected a drug about which its sources agreed on nothing: not its nature, not its flavour, not whether it is poisonous.
**And then the entry supplies its own contraindications, which is the thing to carry forward.** 能墮胎 — it can cause miscarriage — is an explicit prohibition in pregnancy, stated by the book about its own drug. 多食動痼疾 is that eating much of it stirs up a long-standing illness; 發瘡疥 is that it brings out sores and scabies. Taken with the 一云有毒, the entry as a whole reads as a warning with an indication attached rather than the other way round. **In a chapter where the compiler is often criticised for recording everything, this is the Bogam doing exactly what it should: printing the hazard beside the use.**
五痔, the five haemorrhoids, is the standard division of anorectal disease in this literature.
**Modern reading. Nothing here is in use and the entry's own warnings should be read as the useful content.** No pharmacopoeia carries 麂肉, and the character 麂 does not occur once in the Bogam's formulary. On a claimed abortifacient the clinical point is simple and important: substances taken to end a pregnancy at home are a cause of maternal death and of incomplete abortion with sepsis, and medical abortion with mifepristone and misoprostol is safe, effective and, where lawful, available — a patient asking about any traditional abortifacient should be told about that instead. Haemorrhoids are managed by fibre, fluid, stool softening and avoidance of straining, with banding or surgery for the minority that need it; the important caution is that rectal bleeding is not to be assumed to be haemorrhoidal, since colorectal cancer presents this way and is missed exactly so. Scabies is a mite infestation treated with permethrin or oral ivermectin, with simultaneous treatment of all household contacts.
譯 1.14.2 Source원문
麂音紀獐類也, 又小於獐, 但口兩邊有長牙, 性好闘, 山深處有之. 《本草》
Translation영역
The gwi pronounced gi is of the roe deer kind, and smaller than the roe deer, but it has long teeth on both sides of the mouth; it is by nature fond of fighting, and it is found deep in the mountains.
Clinical note임상 주석
**This is the book describing its own animal, and the description is good enough to argue from but not good enough to decide.** Four characters are given: of the roe deer kind, smaller than the roe deer, with long tusks on both sides of the mouth, and aggressive. The sochu 音紀 is a pronunciation gloss, giving the reading of 麂.
**Two candidates fit and this project does not choose between them.** The first is the muntjac, Muntiacus, which is what 麂 means in Chinese sources: it is small, the bucks have elongated upper canines projecting from the mouth, and they are notably pugnacious and use the tusks in fighting — every element of this description is satisfied. Against it, no muntjac occurs in Korea or has in historical times, so a Korean reader would have known the animal only from books, which is consistent with the entry being wholly a quotation from the Bencao. The second is the water deer, Hydropotes inermis, the Korean 고라니: it too is small, and the bucks carry long tusks which they use in combat, having no antlers at all. Against it, 고란이 is the gloss the book has already attached to 麋 at 1.12, where it fits nothing, and the gloss here is 효근노로, "small roe deer".
**The tusks are the decisive-looking detail and they are shared by both animals, which is why they do not decide.** The honest statement is that 효근노로 resolves as a Korean phrase and names no species, that the Chinese character names the muntjac, and that the animal a sixteenth-century Korean reader would have recognised from this description is the water deer. No binomial is entered.
It is worth adding one observation about the chapter as a whole. Across 1.11 to 1.14 the book has four deer, three of them glossed with Korean words that overlap each other — 사슴, 고란이, 노루, 효근노로 — and only one of those glosses, 노루 at 1.13, fixes an animal. **The vernacular names in this chapter are the most valuable thing in it and they are also, here, the place where the identification breaks down**, and both halves of that have to be said.
1.15 Ram's Horn 羖羊角
`수양` 은 지금 말과 같다 — 거세하지 않은 숫양이다. `ᄲᅳᆯ` 은 `뿔` (ᄲ→ㅃ)이므로 향명 전체가 또렷하게 풀린다. **이 향명이 책의 제 풀이와 맞는다**: 본문이 `卽牡羊角也`(곧 숫양의 뿔이다)라 하니, 향명과 본문이 같은 것을 두 말로 적은 자리다. 그래서 이 절은 약재표의 `羊角`(yanggak) 에 이었다 — 지침 §3.6 의 「책이 스스로 풀어 주는 자리」다.
**羖羊(수양)과 다음 절의 羚羊(영양)은 다른 짐승이니 섞지 말 것.** 羖 는 집에서 치는 양ㆍ염소이고 羚 은 들의 영양이다. 전사본은 이 절이 든 잎 047b 의 발에 향명 교감줄을 적지 않았다.
譯 1.15.1 Source원문
性温一云微寒, 味醎苦, 無毒. 主靑盲明目, 止驚悸, 殺鬼魅, 辟虎狼, 療漏下惡血, 治風退熱. 《本草》
Translation영역
Its nature is warm one says slightly cold, its flavour salty and bitter, and it is without toxicity. It governs blue blindness and brightens the eyes, checks fright palpitation, kills ghosts and bewitchments, wards off tiger and wolf, treats spotting with malign blood, and treats wind and abates heat.
Clinical note임상 주석
The chapter's sheep. 羖 is the ram — the book glosses its own headword two lines down as 卽牡羊角也, "this is the horn of the male sheep" — and sixteen parts hang beneath it, the fourth largest family in the chapter after the pig, the ox and the horse. 靑盲 is blue blindness, loss of sight with an eye that looks normal, which covers optic atrophy and the end stage of glaucoma. 漏下惡血 is spotting with dark clotted loss. 辟虎狼, warding off tiger and wolf, is apotropaic and sits oddly beside the ophthalmic indications; it belongs with 殺鬼魅 and travels with horn drugs generally.
**Modern reading.** Sheep and goat horn is keratin — the same structural protein as hair, hoof and nail — over a bony core, and it has no pharmacological activity of its own. It is worth saying this plainly here rather than only at 犀角 below, because the horn drugs of this chapter are graded by the book into a hierarchy (rhinoceros best, antelope next, ram ordinary) that has no compositional basis: all three are keratin.
The one thing that makes this entry useful today is the opposite of a prohibition. **羊角 is the accepted replacement for 羚羊角, the next section.** Where saiga horn is prescribed and cannot lawfully be obtained, Chinese and Korean practice substitutes goat or ram horn (山羊角, Caprae Cornu), which is this entry; the site's materia medica carries it as 羊角. So the chapter supplies its own way out of its most legally difficult entry, two sections earlier, and a reader who stops at 羚羊角 will miss it.
Sheep meat, offal, milk and skin are all still food, and most of the leaves below are dietary rather than pharmacological. Where a leaf asks for raw tissue the note says so, because unpasteurised and undercooked small-ruminant material is a defined infectious hazard: *Brucella melitensis*, *Toxoplasma gondii*, *Coxiella burnetii* (Q fever), *Fasciola hepatica* and *Echinococcus granulosus* all reach humans by this route.
譯 1.15.2 Source원문
卽牡羊角也. 靑羖者佳. 取無時, 勿使中濕, 濕卽有毒. 《本草》
Translation영역
This is the horn of the male sheep. The dark-coated ram is the good one. It may be taken at any season; do not let it take damp, for once damp it carries toxin.
Clinical note임상 주석
**This is the book telling us what its own headword is**, and the gloss decides where the section belongs: 羖羊角 is 牡羊角, and the materia medica entry for that is 羊角. 靑羖 is the dark or blue-grey ram; the colour selection is of a kind this chapter makes constantly and carries no compositional weight.
濕卽有毒, "once damp it carries toxin", is the one genuinely useful sentence. Keratinous material taken damp and stored moulds, and the moulds that colonise it are *Aspergillus* and *Penicillium* species; the practical content of the sixteenth-century warning is fungal spoilage, and it is correct.
1.15.1 Sheep's Head 頭
譯 1.15.1.1 Source원문
性凉一云平. 治骨蒸腦熱, 風眩癲疾, 補虛損, 安心止驚, 治小兒驚癎.
Translation영역
Its nature is cool one says balanced. It treats bone-steaming and brain heat, wind dizziness and withdrawal disorder, supplements vacuity detriment, quiets the heart and checks fright, and treats fright epilepsy in children.
Clinical note임상 주석
骨蒸 is bone-steaming, the deep nocturnal heat of yin vacuity with night sweats and tidal fever; 腦熱 is brain heat. 癲疾 is withdrawal — the quiet, inward, non-violent psychiatric presentation, paired in this literature against 狂 — and in children 驚癎 is the febrile or epileptic convulsion.
**Modern reading.** This is a cooked sheep's head, and sheep's head is food in Korea and across Central and West Asia; the entry is dietetics with a cooling rubric attached. Two things should be said. Convulsions in a child need a cause established — fever, meningitis, metabolic derangement, epilepsy — and are not a dietary matter; and head meat includes the skull, so the brain comes with it. Ovine brain is not a bovine-spongiform risk in the way beef brain was, but scrapie is a transmissible spongiform encephalopathy of sheep and goats, and although it has never been shown to transmit to humans, the prudent position taken worldwide since the BSE epidemic is that small-ruminant central nervous tissue is specified risk material and is removed from the food chain. The head is eaten; the brain is not the part to eat.
譯 1.15.1.2 Source원문
熱病後宜食羊頭肉, 冷病人勿食. 《本草》
Translation영역
After a heat disease it is fitting to eat sheep's head meat; a person with a cold disease must not eat it.
Clinical note임상 주석
**The prohibition runs the opposite way to the one at 1.15.2, and the contrast is the point.** The flesh is 大熱, greatly hot, and is forbidden to the convalescent from a febrile illness; the head is 凉, cool, and is prescribed to exactly that patient and withheld from the cold one. So within a single animal the book has two opposed dietary rules decided by the thermal rubric assigned to the part, not by anything observed about either part. Sheep's head and sheep's flesh are nutritionally much the same material.
Taken as advice, "eat something light and cooling while recovering from a fever, and something warming if you are cold and depleted" is harmless and not unreasonable; taken as pharmacology it is circular.
1.15.2 Mutton 肉
譯 1.15.2.1 Source원문
性大熱一云温, 味甘, 無毒. 治虛勞寒冷, 補中益氣, 安心止驚, 開胃肥徤. 《本草》
Translation영역
Its nature is greatly hot one says warm, its flavour sweet, and it is without toxicity. It treats vacuity taxation with cold, supplements the centre and boosts qi, quiets the heart and checks fright, and opens the stomach so as to fatten and strengthen.
Clinical note임상 주석
Mutton is the chapter's warming food par excellence and the Bogam's formularies use it: the site's formula database carries three ingredient lines for 羊肉, among them the mutton in 當歸羊肉湯 for postpartum vacuity cold. 虛勞寒冷 is taxation vacuity with cold — wasting, chill, no reserve — and 開胃肥徤 is the frank nutritional claim.
**Modern reading.** This is sound as far as it goes: mutton is a dense source of protein, iron, zinc and B₁₂, and in a wasted, cold, undernourished patient refeeding is the treatment. The sochu disagreement, greatly hot against merely warm, is the kind of split this book preserves rather than resolves, and the 大熱 reading is what drives the prohibitions in the next passage.
Cook it through. Undercooked mutton is one of the two principal dietary routes of *Toxoplasma gondii* infection — tissue cysts in sheep are common, and toxoplasmosis acquired in pregnancy causes congenital disease — and raw or undercooked small-ruminant meat also transmits *Brucella melitensis*, the most virulent of the brucellae.
譯 1.15.2.2 Source원문
齒骨及五藏皆温平而生疾, 惟肉性大熱. 熱病差後百日內食之, 復發熱. 瘧人食之, 令發熱困重, 皆致死. 《本草》
Translation영역
The teeth, the bones and the five viscera are all warm and balanced, yet they give rise to illness; it is the flesh alone whose nature is greatly hot. Eaten within a hundred days of recovery from a heat disease it brings the heat back; eaten by a person with malaria it makes him break out in heat and grow heavy and exhausted — in both cases it can kill.
Clinical note임상 주석
This is the hinge of the whole sheep family, and it is also the place where the first printing and the transcription part company (see the textual note). Read with the first printing's 主疾 the sentence says: teeth, bone and the viscera are mild and so can be used as medicine, and only the flesh is greatly hot, which is why the flesh alone carries prohibitions.
Both prohibitions are month-and-condition rules of the kind this literature generates freely, and both have a reading. 熱病差後百日內, within a hundred days of recovery from a febrile illness, is a convalescent restriction; a very rich hot meal during convalescence does provoke malaise, and relapsing fevers — typhoid, brucellosis, malaria — were being attributed to the meal that coincided with them. 瘧, malaria, is the second: the pattern of paroxysmal fever with prostration is described exactly, and the book is right that such a patient is harmed by a heavy meal and wrong about why. 皆致死 is not hyperbole in the setting of untreated falciparum malaria; the lethality belongs to the disease.
**Modern reading.** Malaria is diagnosed by blood film or rapid antigen test and treated with artemisinin-based combination therapy; *Plasmodium vivax* is endemic in the Republic of Korea, chiefly in the northern border counties, so this is not a historical disease here. Dietary restriction has no part in its management.
1.15.3 Sheep's Liver 肝
譯 1.15.3.1 Source원문
性冷. 療肝風, 目赤暗痛, 能明目. 《本草》
Translation영역
Its nature is cold. It treats liver wind and eyes red, dim and painful, and it can brighten the eyes.
Clinical note임상 주석
The organ-to-organ reasoning at its plainest: sheep liver treats the liver, and because the liver opens into the eyes it treats the eyes. The site's formula database carries seven ingredient lines for 羊肝, most of them in the eye formulas, and the book's own 肝 chapter and eye chapter both use it.
**Modern reading, and here the old entry is partly right for a reason it did not know.** Liver is the richest dietary source of preformed vitamin A (retinol), and vitamin A deficiency is the world's leading nutritional cause of blindness — night blindness, xerophthalmia, corneal ulceration. A patient whose eyes were "dim" from deficiency would genuinely improve on liver. That is nutrition, not pharmacology, and it does not extend to the red painful eye, which needs a cause found: acute angle-closure glaucoma, anterior uveitis, keratitis and scleritis all present this way and all can destroy sight. Retinol also has a ceiling — high-dose preformed vitamin A is teratogenic, and liver is specifically advised against in pregnancy for that reason.
**This leaf must be cooked.** Raw sheep liver is the classical vehicle of *Fasciola hepatica*, the liver fluke, whose sheep-and-snail cycle is the reason the parasite is named for the liver at all; and the ingestion of raw ovine liver also causes halzoun, the acute pharyngeal obstruction produced by *Fasciola* and *Linguatula serrata* larvae attaching in the throat. *Echinococcus granulosus* cysts and *Toxoplasma* tissue cysts are in the same organ.
1.15.4 Sheep's Gall 膽
譯 1.15.4.1 Source원문
性平. 主靑盲明目. 點眼中, 主赤障白膜. 《本草》
Translation영역
Its nature is balanced. It governs blue blindness and brightens the eyes. Instilled into the eye it governs red obstruction and white membrane.
譯 1.15.4.2 Translation영역
The dark ram's gall is the good one.
Clinical note임상 주석
The second passage is why the site's materia medica carries this leaf as 靑羊膽 rather than 羊膽: the book names the dark-coated animal's gall as the one to use, and the formula database follows it, with five ingredient lines under that id. 赤障 is a red obstruction of vision and 白膜 a white membrane — between them they cover pterygium, corneal scar and pannus, and a mature cataract.
**Modern reading. Nothing is to be instilled into an eye.** Bile is an alkaline detergent solution of bile salts; put on the cornea it strips the epithelium, and the material is not sterile. Instillation of animal bile has caused bacterial keratitis and corneal perforation, and the eye is the organ least able to absorb that insult. A white membrane growing across the cornea is treated surgically; a red obstruction needs the differential above; and the cataract that 靑盲 often means is cured by lens extraction, which is among the most effective operations in medicine. There is a wider point here about this chapter: bile from sheep, ox, pig, bear and dog recurs across it as an eye drug, and the recurrence is a single inherited idea rather than five observations.
1.15.5 Sheep's Heart 心
譯 1.15.5.1 Source원문
補心. 主憂恚膈氣. 心有孔者殺人, 勿食. 《本草》
Translation영역
It supplements the heart. It governs the diaphragmatic qi of grief and rage. One whose heart has a hole in it kills a man; do not eat it.
Clinical note임상 주석
憂恚膈氣 is the qi bound at the diaphragm by grief and anger — the globus, chest oppression and sighing of what this book treats as constrained qi. The site's materia medica carries the drug as 白羊心, the white sheep's heart, which is the form the formula database uses.
**心有孔者殺人 is the most interesting sentence in the sheep family, and it is an observation rather than a doctrine.** A heart with a hole in it is a congenital septal defect — an atrial or ventricular septal defect, or a patent foramen ovale left open — and a butcher handling hundreds of carcasses would see them. The book's inference, that such a heart is poisonous to the eater, is wrong; what is right is the recognition that the lesion exists and is identifiable by inspection. Congenital cardiac malformation in humans is now identified by echocardiography and closed by catheter or surgery, with results that are among the triumphs of twentieth-century medicine.
**Modern reading.** Heart muscle is lean meat and is eaten. It must be cooked, for the reasons given at 1.15.2. The drug is of no use for the indication, and the indication itself — chest oppression with emotional precipitation — is one where a cardiac cause must be excluded before it is treated as constraint.
1.15.6 Sheep's Stomach 胃
譯 1.15.6.1 Source원문
主虛羸, 補胃虛損, 止尿數, 補氣. 《本草》
Translation영역
It governs vacuity emaciation, supplements vacuity detriment of the stomach, checks frequent urination, and supplements qi.
譯 1.15.6.2 Translation영역
This is the tripe.
Clinical note임상 주석
**Another place where the book glosses its own leaf name, and the gloss decides the link.** The headword is 胃, stomach, but the book says 卽肚也 — it is the 肚, the tripe — and that is the entry the site's materia medica carries, 羊肚, Ovis Ventriculus. Following the rule that the book's own gloss outranks a later standard name, this leaf is linked there rather than to an invented 羊胃. The same habit produced 1.15 above (卽牡羊角也) and 1.21.5 below (一名玩月砂).
**Modern reading.** Tripe is food. The indications are the standard supplementing set, and 止尿數, checking frequent urination, is the only specific one; frequency needs a cause — urinary infection, bladder outlet obstruction, overactive bladder, diabetes mellitus or insipidus — and the first thing to do with it is a urinalysis and a blood glucose, not a diet. Tripe is thoroughly cooked by necessity, which happens to remove the hazard that the raw-tissue leaves of this section carry.
1.15.7 Sheep's Kidney 腎
譯 1.15.7.1 Source원문
補腎氣, 益精髓. 主虛損耳聾, 盗汗. 壯陽益胃, 止小便.
Translation영역
It supplements kidney qi and boosts essence and marrow. It governs deafness from vacuity detriment, and night sweats. It invigorates yang, boosts the stomach, and checks urination.
譯 1.15.7.2 Translation영역
The sheep's five viscera supplement a person's five viscera.
Clinical note임상 주석
The closing sentence states the organ-for-organ principle in one line, and it is the principle that generated this whole run of leaves — head, liver, gall, heart, stomach, kidney, marrow — rather than any observation about any of them. It is worth leaving in plain sight: the book is not reporting that sheep kidney helps the kidney, it is deducing it.
Kidney in this book is the seat of essence, and its vacuity presents as the cluster listed here: deafness, night sweats, failing sexual function, nocturia. The site's materia medica carries 羊腎 with three ingredient lines, and the related 羊腰子 (yangyoja, 羊石子) with two.
**Modern reading.** Offal kidney is food, and nutritionally it is a dense source of protein, iron, selenium and B vitamins, which in a depleted patient is worth something. None of the specific claims holds. Sensorineural hearing loss is assessed by audiometry and managed with hearing aids or cochlear implantation; night sweats are a red-flag symptom requiring exclusion of tuberculosis, lymphoma and endocrine disease; erectile dysfunction is a vascular marker as often as a hormonal one and is treated with PDE5 inhibitors after cardiovascular assessment. Note also that organ meats are high in purines and raise urate — a patient with gout, which the next chapters of this book treat under 歷節風, is the one patient who should eat less of this, not more.
1.15.8 Sheep's Marrow 髓
譯 1.15.8.1 Source원문
性温, 味甘, 無毒. 利血脉, 益經氣. 以酒服之. 《本草》
Translation영역
Its nature is warm, its flavour sweet, and it is without toxicity. It disinhibits the blood vessels and boosts channel qi. Take it in wine.
Clinical note임상 주석
Long-bone marrow, taken in wine. 利血脉 and 益經氣 are vascular and channel claims of the kind marrow and fat drugs attract in this literature by appearance — marrow is rich, unctuous and runs in a channel inside the bone.
**Modern reading.** Marrow is fat, and nothing more: roughly pure triglyceride with a little collagen and iron. Taken in alcohol it is a fat-and-ethanol preparation, which is the opposite of what a patient with vascular disease needs. There is nothing here for the blood vessels. Marrow is also, with brain and spinal cord, the tissue in which bovine spongiform encephalopathy agent concentrated and which is therefore removed as specified risk material; in small ruminants the equivalent concern is scrapie, which has not been shown to transmit to humans but which is the reason small-ruminant spinal and skull material is handled as it is. Bone marrow as a food is eaten cooked and in small quantity, and that is the whole of its modern standing.
1.15.9 Sheep's Fat 脂
譯 1.15.9.1 Translation영역
It treats roaming wind, and also black blotches.
Clinical note임상 주석
遊風 is roaming wind — the migrating, itching, weal-forming skin complaint that covers urticaria and the wandering dermatitides. 黑䵟 is the dark facial blotch, which is melasma or post-inflammatory hyperpigmentation; the same character pair recurs at 熊脂 earlier in this chapter, and the two fat entries carry the same indication, which suggests the indication belongs to "animal fat" generally rather than to the sheep.
**Modern reading.** Tallow is an emollient, and as an emollient it works: an occlusive lipid applied to dry, itching, barrier-damaged skin reduces transepidermal water loss and relieves the itch, which is exactly the modern first line in eczema and in urticaria with dry skin. That much of this entry survives. It does nothing for pigmentation — melasma is driven by ultraviolet exposure and hormones, and its management is photoprotection, topical depigmenting agents and, for the stubborn, procedural treatment — and an occlusive grease on the face is comedogenic. Sheep tallow is not in this site's materia medica and does not occur in its formula database; the entry is a *Bencao* record.
1.15.10 Sheep's Blood 血
譯 1.15.10.1 Source원문
主産後血暈及中風血悶, 飮一升卽愈. 《本草》
Translation영역
It governs post-partum blood dizziness and the blood oppression of wind strike; drink one *seung* of it and the cure follows at once.
Clinical note임상 주석
産後血暈 is the postpartum faint — the woman who has just delivered and goes grey, dizzy and then unconscious. 中風血悶 is the stuporous, oppressed state after a wind strike. The dose, one *seung*, is about 0.6 litres in Joseon measure, and 卽愈 claims immediate cure.
**This entry is dangerous in a specific and identifiable way, and the danger is the delay.** The postpartum collapse it describes is, in the overwhelming majority of cases, postpartum haemorrhage — the leading direct cause of maternal death worldwide. It is managed by uterine massage, uterotonics (oxytocin, then ergometrine, carboprost or misoprostol), tranexamic acid, examination for retained placenta and genital tract trauma, bimanual compression, balloon tamponade, and transfusion of blood that has been cross-matched; amniotic fluid embolism and eclampsia account for most of the remainder. Drinking half a litre of animal blood supplies no circulating volume — swallowed blood is digested, not transfused — and the minutes spent on it are the minutes in which the woman bleeds. The same applies to the second indication: a stroke is a time-critical diagnosis with a thrombolysis and thrombectomy window measured in hours.
**The material itself is also a hazard.** Raw sheep blood transmits *Brucella melitensis* and *Coxiella burnetii*, both of which concentrate in the blood and birth products of small ruminants; Q fever outbreaks are classically traced to parturient sheep and goats. A woman immediately post partum is the worst possible recipient. The drug is recorded in this site's materia medica because the Bogam's formularies use it, and the record is kept; it is not to be used.
1.15.11 Sheep's Bone 骨
譯 1.15.11.1 Source원문
性熱. 主虛寒羸瘦. 有宿熱人勿食. 《本草》
Translation영역
Its nature is hot. It governs vacuity cold with emaciation. A person with lodged heat must not eat it.
Clinical note임상 주석
Bone, presumably as a long-boiled broth, for the cold wasted patient; with the standard counter-indication for anyone carrying 宿熱, lodged or residual heat. The entry is internally consistent with 1.15.2's statement that the bones are 温平 and so usable.
**Modern reading.** Bone broth is food and a thin one at that — mostly water, gelatine, a little calcium and whatever the marrow contributes. For a cold wasted patient the useful intervention is calories and protein in a form they will eat, and broth alone does not supply them. Nothing in the entry is hazardous and nothing in it is pharmacologically active. Not in this site's materia medica, and no occurrence in its formula database.
1.15.12 Sheep's Spine Bone 脊骨
譯 1.15.12.1 Source원문
治腎冷腰痛. 搗碎煮爛, 和蒜虀或酒, 空心食. 《入門》
Translation영역
It treats kidney cold with lumbar pain. Pound it up, boil it until it falls apart, mix it with garlic relish or with wine, and eat it on an empty stomach.
Clinical note임상 주석
One of only two leaves in the sheep family drawn from the *Yixue rumen* rather than the *Bencao*, and it reads like a dish rather than a drug: spine pounded, stewed to collapse, dressed with 蒜虀, garlic relish, and eaten fasting. 腎冷腰痛 is lumbar pain of kidney cold — the chronic, aching, cold-aggravated low back pain that improves with warmth.
**Modern reading.** Chronic low back pain is managed with activity rather than rest, graded exercise and physiotherapy, and simple analgesia; the red flags that must be excluded first are infection, malignancy, fracture and cauda equina compression. The garlic is the one ingredient with any pharmacological literature behind it. The spine itself is a specific caution: vertebral column in small ruminants is the site of the spinal cord and dorsal root ganglia, which is why it is handled as specified risk material in the slaughter rules of most jurisdictions, and a preparation that pounds and stews the whole vertebra is precisely the one that does not separate the cord from the bone.
1.15.13 Sheep's Shin Bone 脛骨
譯 1.15.13.1 Source원문
治牙齒踈痛. 火煆爲末, 入𥂁, 每早擦牙上. 《入門》
Translation영역
It treats loose and painful teeth. Calcine it in fire, powder it, add salt, and rub it on the teeth every morning.
Clinical note임상 주석
This is a dentifrice, and it is the most defensible preparation in the sheep family. 牙齒踈痛 is the loose, painful, receding-gum tooth — periodontal disease. Bone calcined to ash is hydroxyapatite and calcium oxide; ground fine and mixed with salt it makes a mildly abrasive, alkaline tooth powder, which is what tooth powders were made of until the twentieth century. The site's materia medica carries 羊脛骨 with seven ingredient lines, and the alias table already records 羊脛骨灰, the calcined ash, as its prepared form.
**Modern reading.** Mechanical plaque removal twice daily is the treatment for periodontal disease, so the act prescribed here is correct and only the material is wrong. Calcined bone is too coarse: abrasive dentifrices wear enamel and expose dentine, and the modern measure of this is the RDA value, which commercial pastes keep below 250. What the old powder lacks is fluoride, which is the single intervention of proven benefit in caries prevention. Established periodontitis also needs scaling and root planing by a clinician; no powder reverses attachment loss. The entry is a good example of this chapter containing real technique inside an obsolete pharmacology.
1.15.14 Sheep's Teeth 齒
譯 1.15.14.1 Source원문
主小兒羊癎. 三月三日取之. 《本草》
Translation영역
It governs sheep epilepsy in children. Take them on the third day of the third month.
Clinical note임상 주석
**This is sympathetic magic stated without disguise, and the name gives it away.** 羊癎, sheep epilepsy, is one of the five 癎 of the paediatric literature, each named for the animal cry or posture the fit resembles — sheep, ox, horse, pig, dog — and the remedy for the sheep one is the sheep's teeth. The logic runs entirely through the name. 三月三日 is the double-third festival, a collection date of calendrical rather than botanical significance.
**Modern reading.** The classification of childhood seizures by the sound the child makes has been replaced by electroencephalography, imaging and genetic testing, and the seizure types so identified — focal, generalised tonic-clonic, absence, myoclonic, the epileptic encephalopathies — carry different treatments and different prognoses. Anticonvulsant therapy is effective in roughly two thirds of patients, and ketogenic diet and surgery in a proportion of the rest. A child with recurrent seizures needs a paediatric neurologist. Not in this site's materia medica, and no occurrence in the formula database.
1.15.15 Sheepskin 皮
譯 1.15.15.1 Source원문
補虛, 去諸風. 去毛作臛食之. 《本草》
Translation영역
It supplements vacuity and dispels the winds. Remove the wool, make it into a thick broth, and eat it.
Clinical note임상 주석
Skin as food — dewooled and stewed to a 臛, a thick meat broth. This is collagen, and the dish is the same one that gives 阿膠 and 白膠 earlier in this chapter their standing; the difference is that those are refined gelatines with a long pharmaceutical history and this is a stew.
**Modern reading.** Hide collagen is protein, deficient in tryptophan and so nutritionally incomplete, but perfectly good food in a mixed diet, and in a wasted patient it is calories. 去諸風 has no content. One real hazard attaches to hides specifically and should be named: *Bacillus anthracis* spores survive in hides and wool for decades, and cutaneous and inhalational anthrax from handling infected animal skins is a documented occupational disease, the inhalational form historically called woolsorters' disease. The entry's first instruction, 去毛, removing the wool, is the step that raises the dust. Hides from animals of unknown provenance are not to be processed at home.
1.15.16 Sheep's Droppings 屎
譯 1.15.16.1 Source원문
燒灰淋取汁, 沐頭令髮長黑, 又生髮.
Translation영역
Burn it to ash, steep and strain off the liquor, and wash the head with it: it makes the hair grow long and black, and it also makes hair grow.
譯 1.15.16.2 Source원문
理聤耳, 罨竹木刺, 又主箭鏃不出. 《本草》
Translation영역
It puts right a suppurating ear, is poulticed on bamboo and wood splinters, and also governs an arrowhead that will not come out.
Clinical note임상 주석
Two quite different uses. The first is a lye: dung ash steeped in water yields a potassium carbonate solution, and an alkaline wash does clean and degrease the scalp, which is how soap was made before soap. The darkening is a visual effect on the hair shaft, not pigment. The second is a drawing poultice for a retained foreign body — splinter, and then the arrowhead, which tells us something about what this chapter was for.
The site's materia medica carries this leaf's drug under 羊糞 (yangbun, Ovis Faeces) with one ingredient line, a *Yijian*-sourced external preparation for 白禿頭瘡. Note in passing a trap the formula database contains: the other occurrence of 羊糞 in it is not an ingredient at all but a simile, 色如猪糞, 少如羊糞者 — stool "like pig dung, scant like sheep dung" — describing the constipated stool of the elderly.
**Modern reading.** 聤耳 is the discharging ear, which means chronic suppurative otitis media or otitis externa; it is diagnosed with otoscopy and treated with aural toilet and topical or systemic antibiotics, and what must not go into it is an unsterile alkaline liquor, which is ototoxic if the tympanic membrane is perforated — as in a discharging ear it generally is. Faecal material has no place on broken skin either: *Clostridium tetani* spores are a herbivore-gut and soil organism, and a dung poultice over a penetrating splinter or arrow wound is the textbook mechanism of tetanus. A retained foreign body is removed under imaging guidance, the wound is irrigated and debrided, and tetanus immunisation status is checked. For the hair: androgenetic alopecia responds to topical minoxidil and oral finasteride, and alopecia from iron deficiency or thyroid disease responds to treating those.
1.16 Antelope Horn 羚羊角
낱말은 또렷하게 풀린다 — `산양`ㆍ`뿔` 이 다 지금 말이다. **그런데 낱말이 풀리는 것과 어느 짐승인지 아는 것은 다르고, 이 자리가 바로 그 자리다.**
藥典의 `羚羊角` 은 중앙아시아 사이가영양(Saiga tatarica)의 뿔이고 약재표의 `yeongyanggak` 도 그 라틴명(Saigae Tataricae Cornu)을 쓴다. 그러나 **전사자가 적은 우리말 `산양` 은 사이가가 아니다** — 지금 말에서 `산양` 은 한반도의 긴꼬리염소, 곧 **산양 (Naemorhedus caudatus)** 이다. 사이가는 한반도에 살지 않고 16세기 조선에서 그 뿔은 들여오는 唐材였을 것이나 **이 절에는 `唐` 이 찍히지 않았다.** 곧 향명은 **들여온 약재를 제 땅의 짐승 이름으로 받아 적은 자리**일 수 있고, 거꾸로 조선에서 실제로 쓰인 것이 산양 뿔이었을 수도 있다. **어느 쪽인지 이 절만으로는 가리지 못한다.** 학명을 하나로 못 박지 않고 둘 다 적어 두고, 임상 주석에서 두 짐승의 법적 지위를 따로 적었다.
譯 1.16.1 Source원문
治中風筋攣, 熱毒風攻注, 中惡風昏亂不省, 安心氣, 定驚悸, 常不魘寐, 明目, 辟蠱毒惡鬼不祥, 治熱毒痢及血痢. 《本草》
Translation영역
It treats wind strike with sinew spasm, heat-toxin wind assailing and pouring in, and the confusion and loss of awareness of a malign wind strike; it quiets heart qi, settles fright palpitation, keeps a man from nightmare-ridden sleep, brightens the eyes, wards off *gu* toxin and malign ghosts and the inauspicious, and treats heat-toxin dysentery and bloody dysentery.
Clinical note임상 주석
**This section carries no 性味 line at all.** The text begins straight at 治中風筋攣, the indications, with nothing said about nature, flavour or toxicity — which is the case in roughly half the headwords of this volume, and is left as the book left it rather than supplied from elsewhere.
Antelope horn is the great cooling liver drug of this literature, and the indications here are its classical ones: 中風筋攣, the spasticity that follows a stroke; 熱毒風攻注, heat-toxin wind driving into the joints; the obtunded patient of 中惡風; convulsion, palpitation, nightmare; and the bloody dysenteries. The site's formula database carries thirty ingredient lines for it, which puts it among the more heavily used animal drugs in the book — 羚羊角湯 and the convulsion formulas of the paediatric and wind chapters are where it concentrates.
**The legal position, and it has two halves because the gloss and the pharmacopoeia name two different animals** (see the note on the Korean gloss above).
* **The saiga antelope, *Saiga tatarica*,** is the pharmacopoeial source. It has been on **CITES Appendix II since 1995**, and a proposal to move it to Appendix I at CoP18 (2019) was not adopted; what was adopted instead was an annotation to the Appendix II listing setting **a zero export quota for wild specimens traded for commercial purposes**, in force from 26 November 2019. The practical effect for this drug is the same as a prohibition: no wild saiga horn may lawfully enter international commercial trade. The species is also on **CMS Appendix II** with a dedicated Memorandum of Understanding. It suffered a catastrophic die-off in 2015, when *Pasteurella multocida* killed over 200,000 animals in central Kazakhstan — more than half the global population — in a few weeks; the Kazakh population has since recovered strongly enough for the IUCN to reclassify the species from Critically Endangered to **Near Threatened in December 2023**, which is one of the few unambiguous conservation successes anywhere in this chapter. Large stockpiles of horn predating the quota remain in trade and are the laundering route.
* **The Korean goral, *Naemorhedus caudatus*,** is what the Korean gloss 산양 names. All *Naemorhedus* are on **CITES Appendix I**; the goral is a **Natural Monument** of the Republic of Korea and **endangered wildlife Class I** under the Wildlife Protection and Management Act, with a few hundred animals surviving in the Baekdudaegan and the eastern mountains. Killing or taking one, or possessing or trading its parts, is a criminal offence. There is no lawful route to this drug from a Korean animal.
**The substitute is in this same chapter, two sections back.** Where 羚羊角 is prescribed, Chinese and Korean practice replaces it with **山羊角, goat or ram horn (Caprae Cornu)** — which is 1.15 羖羊角 above, carried in this site's materia medica as 羊角. All three horns are keratin over a bony core, so the substitution loses nothing that was ever there. For the indications themselves: post-stroke spasticity is managed with physiotherapy, botulinum toxin and oral antispasmodics; convulsions as at 1.15.14; the liver-wind function is also covered in this materia medica by **釣鉤藤 (jogudeung, Uncariae Ramulus cum Uncis)**, which is a plant and lawful.
譯 1.16.2 Source원문
角甚多節, 蹙蹙圓繞, 細如人指, 長四五寸, 蹙文細者爲堪用. 採無時. 《本草》
Translation영역
The horn has a great many nodes, wrinkled and ringed round, slender as a man's finger, four or five *chi* long; the one with fine wrinkle-markings is fit for use. It may be gathered at any season.
Clinical note임상 주석
A description precise enough to identify the animal. Ringed annulations, finger-thin, four or five *chi* (about 12 to 15 cm in Joseon measure): that is a saiga or goral horn and not a bovid's. The emphasis on fine, close ringing is an authentication test, and the next passage gives a second.
譯 1.16.3 Source원문
羚羊夜宿, 以角掛木, 不着地. 但取角彎中深銳緊小, 猛有掛痕者是眞也. 《本草》
Translation영역
The antelope sleeps at night with its horns hooked over a tree so that it does not touch the ground. Take only the horn whose inner curve is deep, sharp, tight and small, and which still bears the marks of hanging — that is the genuine one.
Clinical note임상 주석
The hanging-by-the-horns story is in the *Bencao* and is not true; gorals and saigas bed down on the ground like other ungulates. But the use made of it is an authentication test, and that part is real commercial practice: a horn with wear marks at the inner curve was taken as proof of a wild animal rather than a substitute, in a trade where substitution was endemic. The next passage gives a third test, by sound.
This is also the place to note what the authentication tests tell us: a drug that needs three separate tests for genuineness was being faked constantly in the sixteenth century, which is worth remembering when the modern market in the same material is described.
譯 1.16.4 Source원문
羚羊角行厥隂經藥也, 入厥隂甚捷, 能淸肝. 《丹心》
Translation영역
Antelope horn is a drug that travels the *jueyin* channel; it enters *jueyin* very swiftly and can clear the liver.
Clinical note임상 주석
Zhu Zhenheng places the drug in the channel system: 厥隂 is the liver channel, and 淸肝, clearing the liver, is the function that organises every indication in the first passage — spasm, convulsion, red eyes, nightmare and the heat dysenteries all belong to liver heat in this framework. This is the sentence that makes 羚羊角 a liver drug rather than a miscellany, and it is the sentence a substitution has to satisfy: 山羊角 and 釣鉤藤 are chosen as replacements because they are read into the same channel and the same function.
譯 1.16.5 Source원문
眞角, 耳邊聽之, 集集鳴者良. 《本草》
Translation영역
A genuine horn, held to the ear and listened to, sounds *jip-jip*; that is the good one.
Clinical note임상 주석
The third authentication test, and the strangest: the horn held to the ear is said to ring. 集集 is onomatopoeic. What is actually being heard is the resonance of a hollow keratin sheath, which a solid substitute would not give — so the test does discriminate, although not for the reason assumed. It is a reminder that an empirical procedure can be sound while the theory attached to it is not.
1.16.1 Antelope Flesh 肉
譯 1.16.1.1 Source원문
肥軟益人, 兼主冷勞, 山嵐瘧痢, 又主蛇咬惡瘡. 《本草》
Translation영역
Fat and tender, it benefits a person; it also governs cold taxation, the malaria and dysentery of mountain miasma, and snakebite and malign sores.
Clinical note임상 주석
山嵐瘧痢 is the malarial fever and dysentery attributed to mountain miasma, 山嵐瘴氣 — the explanatory category that covered what was in fact mosquito-borne and water-borne disease in hill country.
**Modern reading, and here the law is the whole of it.** Both candidate animals are CITES-listed (see 1.16 above): the Korean goral on Appendix I, the saiga on Appendix II with a zero commercial export quota for wild specimens. The goral is additionally a Natural Monument and a Class I endangered species, and killing one for meat is a criminal offence carrying imprisonment. The drug cannot be made. Nutritionally the claim 肥軟益人 is simply that lean wild meat is good food, which is true of any such meat. Malaria is treated as at 1.15.2; snakebite is a medical emergency managed with immobilisation, transport and antivenom — in Korea the pit vipers of the genus *Gloydius* are the species concerned — and nothing applied or eaten substitutes for it.
1.17 Rhinoceros Horn 犀角
譯 1.17.1 Source원문
性寒一云微寒, 味苦酸醎一云甘辛, 無毒一云小毒. 鎭心神, 散風毒, 辟邪精鬼魅中惡毒氣, 止驚, 退熱毒入心狂言妄語, 鎭肝明目, 解山嵐瘴氣及百毒, 治癕疽瘡腫, 化膿作水. 《本草》
Translation영역
Its nature is cold one says slightly cold, its flavour bitter, sour and salty one says sweet and acrid, and it is without toxicity one says slightly toxic. It settles the heart spirit, scatters wind toxin, wards off evil essences, ghostly bewitchments and the malign toxic qi of a strike; it checks fright; it abates the raving and wild speech of heat toxin entering the heart; it settles the liver and brightens the eyes; it resolves mountain miasma and the hundred toxins; it treats welling abscess, flat abscess and swollen sores, and turns pus to water.
Clinical note임상 주석
**This is the chapter's one imported drug in my share — the section carries 唐 and is marked `dangjae` — and it is also the most heavily prescribed animal drug in the whole book: the site's formula database carries sixty ingredient lines for 犀角.** 犀角地黃湯 and the cooling, consciousness-restoring formulas of the heat-disease and pox chapters are where it concentrates. Nothing about this entry is marginal, which is exactly why the modern note has to be unambiguous.
The indications are the coherent set of a cold, heart-and-liver-clearing drug: 熱毒入心狂言妄語 is the delirium of high fever, 鎭心神 and 止驚 its sedative and anticonvulsant use, 癕疽瘡腫 the suppurative skin infections, 解百毒 the antidotal claim. The triple sochu on nature, flavour and toxicity records three separate disagreements in the sources and is characteristic of a drug discussed by many hands.
**Modern reading. Rhinoceros horn is keratin, and it is the same keratin as hair and nail.** Analyses have found it to be a compacted mass of keratin filaments with calcium and melanin deposits and no pharmacologically distinctive constituent; controlled studies of antipyretic effect have been negative at doses achievable in use. The Bogam itself supplies the comparison without meaning to: this materia medica also carries **爪甲 (jigap, Hominis Unguis), human nail**, as a drug in the 人部, and 人爪甲 is prescribed there for a film on the eye. Rhinoceros horn and fingernail are not analogous materials — they are, compositionally, the same material, and the book uses both. A reader who accepts that the nail entry is a historical curiosity has already settled the question about the horn.
**The legal position, stated plainly: this is not a drug that is hard to obtain, it is a drug whose acquisition is a crime.**
* **All five rhinoceros species are on CITES Appendix I** (with the single exception of the southern white rhinoceros populations of South Africa and Eswatini, on Appendix II with a zero quota for horn), so all commercial international trade in horn is prohibited.
* **China banned the trade in 1993 and struck both drugs from its materia medica.** The 1993 State Council measure prohibited trade in rhinoceros horn and tiger bone and **removed both from the pharmacopoeia and from the traditional-medicine curriculum**; prescriptions containing them were to be reformulated. This is worth knowing precisely because the prohibition is often taken to be a Western imposition: the largest traditional-medicine jurisdiction removed these drugs itself, and they have not been taught or listed there for more than thirty years. One qualification should be recorded rather than smoothed over: on **29 October 2018** the State Council issued a notice that would have permitted controlled use of rhinoceros horn and tiger bone **from farmed animals** by qualified practitioners in qualified hospitals; after international objection its implementation was **postponed on 12 November 2018**, and the ban remains in force. The 2018 notice has not been withdrawn, and a farmed-source exemption reopening would be the single most consequential change to this entry's legal position.
* **In the Republic of Korea the controlling law is the Wildlife Protection and Management Act (「야생생물 보호 및 관리에 관한 법률」), which carries the domestic implementation of CITES.** Import, export, possession, transport, sale and processing of Appendix I specimens and their parts without authorisation are criminal offences. There is no clinical permit.
* Demand for horn, driven by exactly the indications in this entry plus a modern market in it as a status good, has produced a poaching crisis that killed over a thousand rhinoceroses a year in South Africa through the 2010s and reduced the northern white rhinoceros to two living females.
**The substitute is in this site's materia medica and in the same chapter: 水牛角, water buffalo horn (suugak, Bubali Cornu).** It is the officially adopted replacement in Chinese practice, it is used at larger doses to the same end, and it comes from a domestic food animal. For the indications themselves, the delirium of high fever is a medical emergency requiring the cause to be found — sepsis, meningitis, encephalitis, cerebral malaria, heatstroke — with cultures, imaging and antimicrobials; suppurative skin infections need drainage and antibiotics.
譯 1.17.2 Source원문
入藥有黑白二種, 以黑者爲勝, 其角尖又勝.
Translation영역
For use as a drug there are two kinds, black and white, and the black is the better; its horn-tip is better still.
譯 1.17.3 Source원문
凡犀見成物, 皆被蒸煮, 不堪入藥, 惟生者爲佳.
Translation영역
Any rhinoceros horn seen as a finished article has been steamed and boiled and is unfit for use as a drug; only the raw horn is good.
Clinical note임상 주석
見成物, the finished article, means horn that has been worked into cups, belt plaques and hilts — rhinoceros horn was a luxury carving material long before and long after it was a drug, and the trade in the two overlapped. Steaming and boiling are the softening steps of the carver's workshop. The practical warning is about adulteration and recycled carvings, and the economic fact behind it is the one that still drives the poaching: the same object serves as medicine and as status good.
譯 1.17.4 Source원문
又有牸犀, 其角甚長, 紋理細膩, 不堪藥用.
Translation영역
There is also the female rhinoceros, whose horn is very long with a fine smooth grain; it is unfit for medicinal use.
譯 1.17.5 Source원문
要使牯犀角烏黑色, 肌理麄皺裂光潤者上. 《本草》
Translation영역
What must be used is the bull rhinoceros's horn, jet black, its grain coarse and wrinkled and cracked yet glossy — that is the best.
Clinical note임상 주석
The sex and grain selection, 牯 bull against 牸 cow, is the kind of discrimination a trade in a scarce material generates; there is no compositional difference between them. Worth noting what the two passages together describe: by the sixteenth century the drug was already being selected out of a supply of worked and reworked material of uncertain origin.
譯 1.17.6 Source원문
犀者淸心鎭肝之劑也. 其性善走, 解熱毒以化血, 淸心以入陽明經. 《入門》
Translation영역
Rhinoceros horn is an agent that clears the heart and settles the liver. Its nature is to travel well: it resolves heat toxin so as to transform the blood, and clears the heart so as to enter the *yangming* channel.
Clinical note임상 주석
The *Yixue rumen*'s theoretical placement, and the one that governs how the drug is actually prescribed in this book: 淸心鎭肝, clearing heart and settling liver, is the pairing behind 犀角地黃湯 and the whole family of cooling blood-moving formulas. 化血 is transforming the blood — in practice, the bleeding, purpuric, blood-heat presentations of severe febrile illness. The functional description is what a substitute has to meet, and 水牛角 is accepted on precisely this ground.
譯 1.17.7 Source원문
犀性走散, 比諸角尤甚. 鹿取茸, 犀取尖, 其精銳之力盡在是矣. 《本草》
Translation영역
The rhinoceros's nature runs and scatters, more so than any other horn. Of the deer one takes the velvet, of the rhinoceros the tip: the whole of its keen and concentrated force lies there.
Clinical note임상 주석
A nice piece of internal cross-reference: the chapter's other great horn drug, 鹿茸 at 1.11, is taken as velvet — living, vascular, growing antler — and the rhinoceros as the tip, and the book explains both by the same doctrine of concentrated force at the growing or leading point. The contrast is worth keeping because it is also the compositional contrast: deer velvet is living tissue with blood, collagen and growth factors in it, and rhinoceros horn tip is dead keratin.
譯 1.17.8 Source원문
凡修治犀角, 剉末, 以紙裹置人懷中一宿, 令受人氣則易研. 古人云人氣粉犀者此也, 盖犀角得人熏染則易爲粉也. 尋常湯藥磨水剌服, 若在散藥則屑之. 多用則令人煩, 以麝香一字水調解之. 《入門》
Translation영역
In processing rhinoceros horn, chip it coarse, wrap it in paper and keep it overnight against a person's breast so that it takes on human qi, and then it grinds easily. When the ancients said that human qi powders rhinoceros, this is what they meant: the horn, once steeped in a person's warmth and vapour, powders readily. For ordinary decoctions it is ground in water and taken by pricking; if it is in a powder formula it is shaved. Used in quantity it makes a person vexed, which is resolved with a *ja* of musk stirred in water.
Clinical note임상 주석
The processing instruction is the most human sentence in the section: the horn is carried overnight inside a man's clothes against his chest so that it will grind. 人氣, human qi, is the explanation; what actually happens is that body heat and perspiration raise the moisture content of the keratin and a hydrated keratin is less brittle and less elastic under the pestle, so it powders instead of springing. The old technique works and the reason given for it is wrong, which is the pattern of this whole chapter.
Two pharmacological details should be kept exactly as written rather than smoothed over. 多用則令人煩 — in quantity it makes the patient vexed and agitated — is the book recording an adverse effect of its own most prized drug. And the stated antidote, 麝香一字, a *ja* of musk (a quarter of a *jeon*, so roughly 1 g) stirred in water, names another CITES Appendix I material: the musk deer, *Moschus* spp., is endangered wildlife Class I and a Natural Monument in Korea, and synthetic muscone replaces natural musk in modern practice. The remedy for the side effect of one prohibited drug is a second prohibited drug.
剌服, taking by pricking, is unusual and may be a graph for 刺 in the sense of decanting the ground suspension; the transcription is printed as it stands.
譯 1.17.9 Source원문
又有通天犀, 駭雞犀, 辟塵犀, 辟水犀, 皆至貴之物. 《本草》
Translation영역
There are also the heaven-piercing rhinoceros, the fowl-startling rhinoceros, the dust-repelling rhinoceros and the water-repelling rhinoceros, all of them objects of the highest value.
Clinical note임상 주석
The four named rhinoceroses are not species but legendary grades of horn, catalogued in the *Bencao* out of the earlier bestiary literature: 通天犀 pierces heaven and was the imperial tribute grade, 駭雞犀 startles fowl, 辟塵犀 repels dust, 辟水犀 repels water. 至貴之物, objects of the highest value, is the honest part of the sentence.
**This passage is the entry's own best commentary on itself.** The section ends not on a clinical observation but on a list of prestige grades, and that is what the material has principally been: a luxury good whose price is its point. The modern trade reproduces the structure exactly — horn sold by grade and provenance at prices per kilogram above gold, to buyers for whom the medicinal claim is a licence rather than a reason. The poaching described in the first note is driven from this end of the entry, not from the clinical end.
1.18 Tiger Bone 虎骨
`갈범` 은 지금도 사전에 있는 말이다 — 몸에 칼 모양의 얼룩무늬가 있는 범, 곧 호랑이다(`갈`=무늬 + `범`). `ᄲᅧ` 는 `뼈`(ᄲ→ㅃ)이므로 향명 전체가 `갈범의 뼈` 로 또렷하게 풀린다. 지금 더 흔한 말은 `호랑이` 이고 `범`ㆍ`갈범` 은 옛 쪽에 가깝다.
**전사본은 이 절이 든 잎 049b 의 발에 향명 교감줄 `범의 : 버믜(초간본)` 을 적어 두었다.** 初刊本은 `갈버믜ᄲᅧ` 로 읽는다(`범의`→`버믜`, 곧 속격 `-의` 가 앞 음절에 붙어 적히는 꼴). 049b 에 한글은 이 향명뿐이므로 걸릴 자리가 또렷하다. **전사본의 글자를 싣고 初刊本의 읽기를 여기 적어 둔다.**
같은 짝(`범의 : 버믜`)이 **다음 잎 050a 의 발에 한 번 더** 나오는데 그것은 1.19 豹肉 의 향명 `표범의고기` 의 것이다. 두 잎이 각각 제 쪽의 한글 하나를 가리키므로 **이 두 줄은 잎으로 갈라 세는 것이 가능한 자리**다 — 049b 는 `갈범의`, 050a 는 `표범의` 다.
譯 1.18.1 Source원문
性平一云微熱, 味辛, 無毒. 骨用頭及脛.
Translation영역
Its nature is balanced one says slightly hot, its flavour acrid, and it is without toxicity. Of the bone, the head and the shin are used.
Clinical note임상 주석
**骨用頭及脛 is the book defining its own headword, and it governs the two leaves that follow.** 虎骨 is not "tiger bone" indiscriminately: the drug is the skull bone and the shin bone, and 1.18.1 and 1.18.2 are those two. This site's materia medica carries 虎脛骨 (hogyeonggol) as its own entry because the formularies name it separately twenty times; 虎頭骨 is recorded within 虎骨 with the part named in the preparation, and the eight occurrences of 虎頭骨 in the formula database are registered that way.
Twelve leaves hang beneath this headword — skull, shin, flesh, fat, whiskers, nose, claws, tooth, skin, gall, dung and eyeball — the fifth largest family in the chapter, and the whole of it is a single prohibited animal.
**The legal and conservation position, stated once here and not repeated under every leaf.**
* **The tiger, *Panthera tigris*, is on CITES Appendix I**, so all commercial international trade in the animal or any part of it is prohibited.
* **China banned the trade and struck 虎骨 from its materia medica in 1993**, by the same 1993 State Council measure that removed rhinoceros horn from the pharmacopoeia and the traditional-medicine curriculum; the qualification about the postponed 2018 farmed-source notice set out at 1.17 applies equally here, and tiger bone was the drug that notice was principally about.
* **In the Republic of Korea the tiger is listed as endangered wildlife Class I under the Wildlife Protection and Management Act (「야생생물 보호 및 관리에 관한 법률」), which also carries the domestic implementation of CITES.** Possession, processing, transport and sale of specimens and derivatives are criminal offences. The Amur tiger, *Panthera tigris altaica*, was extirpated from the southern peninsula in the colonial period — the last confirmed South Korean animals were killed in the 1920s — and the drug in this entry was obtained from an animal that no longer exists here.
* **Demand for tiger bone is not incidental to the tiger's decline; it is one of its direct drivers.** The bone was the bulk commodity of the trade, boiled into tiger-bone glue and wine for the joint indications set out at 1.18.2 below, and the collapse of the wild population through the twentieth century — from perhaps 100,000 animals to under 5,000 — tracks the demand. Three subspecies were lost outright. The farming of tigers for bone, now holding more captive tigers in East and Southeast Asia than there are wild ones anywhere, exists to supply this entry, and the laundering of farmed parts sustains the market that funds wild poaching.
**Substitutes exist and should be named, because this is a drug with real indications.** After the 1993 ban Chinese practice replaced tiger bone with **dog bone (狗骨)** and **mole-rat bone (塞隆骨)**, and an artificial tiger-bone powder was licensed in 2005. The Bogam itself documents the substitution running the other way, which is the more interesting fact: at 天靈蓋 in the 人部 the book quotes the *Yixue rumen* recommending 虎頭骨 **or** 黃犬頭骨, yellow dog's skull, in place of a human skull-cap — and 黃犬頭骨 (hwangugudugol) is carried in this materia medica. The book knew the two bones were interchangeable. For the indications as medicine: inflammatory arthritis is treated with DMARDs and biologics, osteoarthritis with exercise, weight management and analgesia, and neither is a bone-drug problem.
譯 1.18.2 Source원문
一名大䖝. 凡虎色黃者佳, 雄虎爲勝.
Translation영역
One name for it is the Great Beast. Of tigers the yellow-coloured is good, and the male is the better.
Clinical note임상 주석
大䖝 — written with the common variant graph for 蟲 — is "the great creature", a taboo-avoiding name for the tiger of the kind that attaches to dangerous animals in many languages; the Korean 갈범 of the gloss and 산신령 belong to the same impulse. The colour and sex selections are of a piece with the rest of the chapter and carry no compositional weight.
譯 1.18.3 Source원문
虎壽千歲, 五百歲毛變白. 《本草》
Translation영역
The tiger lives a thousand years, and at five hundred its coat turns white.
Clinical note임상 주석
A bestiary commonplace, and the same sentence recurs almost word for word at 1.21.1 below for the rabbit — 免壽千歲, 五百歲毛變白 — which is the clearest evidence that it is a formula of the genre rather than a statement about either animal. Tigers live roughly 10 to 15 years in the wild. White tigers are not aged animals but carriers of a recessive mutation in the *SLC45A2* pigmentation gene, and in captivity they are the product of deliberate inbreeding.
1.18.1 Tiger's Skull Bone 頭骨
譯 1.18.1.1 Source원문
除邪惡氣, 殺鬼疰毒, 止驚悸, 治温瘧, 殺犬咬毒.
Translation영역
It removes evil and malign qi, kills the toxin of ghost infixation, checks fright palpitation, treats warm malaria, and kills the toxin of a dog bite.
Clinical note임상 주석
One of the two bones the headword means (see 1.18). The site's formula database uses it in three formulas — 虎頭骨丸 and 辟瘟殺鬼丸 against epidemic and ghost disease, and 虎頭骨膏 for 中惡 in children — and in all three it is registered as 虎骨 with the head named in the preparation. The indication 殺犬咬毒 is the one to stop at.
**殺犬咬毒 — killing the toxin of a dog bite — is rabies, and rabies is why this leaf has to be marked rather than merely translated.** The *Bencao*'s reasoning is sympathetic: the tiger overcomes the dog, so the tiger's skull overcomes the dog's bite. Rabies encephalitis, once symptoms appear, is very close to one hundred per cent fatal; there are fewer than twenty documented survivors in the medical literature. What prevents it is post-exposure prophylaxis, and it is highly effective: immediate thorough washing of the wound with soap and water for fifteen minutes, rabies immunoglobulin infiltrated around the wound in the previously unvaccinated, and a course of rabies vaccine, started as soon as possible after exposure. The Republic of Korea has had no human case since 2005 and canine rabies is controlled by oral vaccination of wildlife, but the virus circulates in raccoon dogs near the northern border, and any mammal bite anywhere is a prophylaxis decision. **Nothing in this entry, and nothing in the related 狼肉, 狐隂莖 and 狸骨 entries of this chapter, substitutes for that decision, and the time spent on it is the incubation period being used up.**
温瘧 is warm malaria, one of the malaria subtypes of this literature; see 1.15.2.
譯 1.18.1.2 Source원문
作枕枕之辟惡魘, 以置戶上辟鬼. 《本草》
Translation영역
Made into a pillow and slept on, it wards off malign nightmare; set above the door, it wards off ghosts.
Clinical note임상 주석
The apotropaic use, and it is not medicine at all: a tiger's skull above the lintel is an amulet, of exactly the kind the 禽部 records for the cock's head above the eastern gate. 惡魘 is the oppressive nightmare, sleep paralysis among other things. Recurrent nightmare and sleep paralysis are now understood through sleep architecture — REM intrusion, sleep deprivation, post-traumatic stress, narcolepsy — and respond to sleep hygiene, treatment of the underlying disorder, and image-rehearsal therapy. Possessing the object is in any case an offence (see 1.18).
1.18.2 Tiger's Shin Bone 脛骨
譯 1.18.2.1 Source원문
治筋骨毒風攣急, 屈伸不得, 走注疼痛.
Translation영역
It treats toxin wind in sinew and bone with spasm and contracture, inability to bend or stretch, and running, pouring pain.
Clinical note임상 주석
**This is the indication that drove the trade.** 筋骨毒風攣急, 屈伸不得, 走注疼痛 is the migrating, deforming, movement-limiting arthritis of this literature, and the twenty ingredient lines for 虎脛骨 in the site's formula database are concentrated in the wind-impediment formulas — 虎骨散, 虎骨酒 and their relatives — for exactly this picture. It covers what would now be separated into rheumatoid arthritis, the spondyloarthropathies, gout and advanced osteoarthritis.
**Modern reading.** Calcined or boiled bone is hydroxyapatite with denatured collagen; tiger bone is not compositionally distinguishable from the bone of any other large carnivore, which is the pharmacological fact underlying the official substitutions named at 1.18. The indications themselves are among the areas where modern treatment has changed most: rheumatoid arthritis treated early with methotrexate and, where needed, biologic or targeted synthetic DMARDs now routinely achieves remission and prevents the deformity this passage describes; axial spondyloarthritis responds to exercise, NSAIDs and TNF or IL-17 inhibition; gout is prevented by urate-lowering therapy; osteoarthritis is managed with exercise, weight reduction, analgesia and, at the end, joint replacement. A patient with inflammatory arthritis who is given bone instead of a DMARD loses the window in which joint destruction is preventable, and that window is measured in months.
譯 1.18.2.2 Source원문
煮湯浴, 去骨節風毒. 《本草》
Translation영역
Boiled into a decoction and bathed in, it removes wind toxin of the bone joints.
譯 1.18.2.3 Source원문
用脛骨者, 虎之一身筋力皆出於前足, 脛骨中性氣藏焉, 故用以入藥. 《入門》
Translation영역
The reason the shin bone is used is that the whole strength of the tiger's sinews comes out of its forelegs, and the nature-qi is stored within the shin bone; that is why it is taken for use as a drug.
Clinical note임상 주석
The *Yixue rumen* explaining the part selection, and the explanation is pure virtue transfer: the tiger's strength is in its forelimbs, therefore the foreleg bone carries that strength to the patient's limbs. It is worth keeping in plain view because it is the actual reasoning behind the most commercially destructive animal drug in the pharmacopoeia — not an observation of effect, but an argument from the appearance of the animal. The observation about tiger forelimb musculature is, incidentally, correct: felids are forelimb-dominant and the tiger's forequarters carry the prey-grappling power. The inference from that to the pharmacology is the error.
1.18.3 Tiger Flesh 肉
譯 1.18.3.1 Source원문
性平, 味酸, 無毒. 益氣力. 主惡心欲嘔, 治瘧, 辟三十六種精魅.
Translation영역
Its nature is balanced, its flavour sour, and it is without toxicity. It boosts qi and strength. It governs nausea with retching, treats malaria, and wards off the thirty-six kinds of essence and bewitchment.
Clinical note임상 주석
益氣力 and 辟三十六種精魅 are both virtue transfer from the animal: eat the tiger, acquire the tiger's strength and the awe it commands. The same sentence appears in the book's 邪祟門 as a single remedy, where it is paired with the eyeball, skull and claws of 1.18.7, 1.18.1 and 1.18.12 as objects to be carried.
**Modern reading, beyond the law of 1.18. Raw or undercooked felid flesh is a specific parasitological hazard and the two organisms matter.** *Trichinella* — in wild carnivores of the northern temperate zone chiefly *T. nativa*, which is freeze-resistant — is maintained in a carnivore-scavenger cycle, and large wild felids are infected hosts; trichinellosis from eating wild carnivore meat causes fever, periorbital oedema, myositis and, in heavy infections, myocarditis and encephalitis. *Toxoplasma gondii* is the second: felids are the definitive host of the parasite, and felid tissue carries cysts. Both are killed by thorough cooking, and *T. nativa* is not reliably killed by freezing. Nausea and vomiting require a cause rather than a food.
譯 1.18.3.2 Translation영역
If a man eats tiger flesh and goes into the mountains, the tigers that see him are afraid.
Clinical note임상 주석
The virtue-transfer claim in its purest form, and stated as a field observation. There is nothing to say about it except that it is the reasoning of the whole family of leaves above and below, made visible because here it has no clinical dressing at all.
譯 1.18.3.3 Translation영역
Eating tiger flesh hot damages the teeth.
Clinical note임상 주석
A small, oddly concrete caution of a kind this chapter produces occasionally — and the only mechanism available for it is the obvious one, that very hot food hurts teeth. Thermal insult to dentine is real; so is the cracked-tooth pain of rapid temperature change. It has nothing to do with the tiger.
1.18.4 Tiger Fat 膏
譯 1.18.4.1 Source원문
主犬咬瘡. 納下部, 治五痔下血. 《本草》
Translation영역
It governs dog-bite sores. Introduced into the lower part, it treats the five haemorrhoids with bleeding.
Clinical note임상 주석
The first indication is the rabies claim again; see 1.18.1, and the warning there applies in full. The second is a suppository: rendered fat introduced per rectum for bleeding haemorrhoids. 五痔 is the five haemorrhoid types of the classical nosology.
**Modern reading.** An emollient suppository is not nothing — a lubricating base does ease the passage of stool and reduce the trauma that makes a fissure or a pile bleed, and that is part of modern conservative management. But bleeding per rectum is a symptom that must not be treated symptomatically without a cause: colorectal cancer, inflammatory bowel disease and polyps all present with it, and age, duration, change in bowel habit and family history decide who needs endoscopy. Haemorrhoidal disease itself is managed with fibre, fluid, topical preparations, and then rubber-band ligation or surgery. The material is prohibited (1.18) and an unsterile animal fat is in any case the wrong vehicle.
1.18.5 Tiger's Whiskers 鬚
譯 1.18.5.1 Source원문
療齒痛. 火上温, 揷孔中. 《本草》
Translation영역
It treats toothache. Warm it over the fire and insert it into the cavity.
Clinical note임상 주석
A warmed whisker pushed into the cavity of a decayed tooth. 孔 is the hole — a carious cavity, or the socket after a tooth has broken down.
**Modern reading.** This is a foreign body in an infected cavity, which is the one thing not to put there: it packs debris against the pulp and seals in anaerobes. Toothache from caries means the pulp is involved or about to be, and the treatment is removal of the carious dentine with restoration, or root canal treatment, or extraction; an abscessed tooth needs drainage and may need antibiotics, and spreading dental infection into the facial planes is a surgical emergency. Keratin has no analgesic property. There is also a persistent folk belief, found across Asia, that a tiger whisker is poisonous if swallowed; it is not — it is hair — but a stiff keratin filament lodged in soft tissue does cause a foreign-body reaction and an abscess, which is probably the observation behind the belief.
1.18.6 Tiger's Nose 鼻
譯 1.18.6.1 Translation영역
It governs withdrawal disorder and fright epilepsy in children.
Clinical note임상 주석
The nose of the animal for the convulsing or withdrawn patient; the reasoning is the awe-transfer of 1.18.3 applied to the frightened child. Compare 1.19.3 below, where the leopard's nose governs fox bewitchment — the two noses in my share have unrelated indications, which is itself a sign that the part is chosen for its owner and not for anything about it.
**Modern reading.** Withdrawal and childhood epilepsy as at 1.15.14; a child with seizures needs a neurologist and an EEG. The material is prohibited (1.18).
1.18.7 Tiger's Claws 爪
譯 1.18.7.1 Source원문
辟惡魅. 懸小兒臂上, 辟惡鬼. 《本草》
Translation영역
It wards off malign bewitchment. Hung on a child's arm, it wards off malign ghosts.
Clinical note임상 주석
An amulet, worn by a child on the arm — and the practice long outlived the drug: tiger claws, real and imitation, were among the commonest protective charms for children across East and South Asia, and the ones set in silver survive in museum collections. The book's 邪祟門 records the same use, with claw, eyeball and skull to be carried about the person.
**Modern reading.** A claw hung on a small child's arm is a choking and strangulation hazard and nothing else; cords and small hard objects are not to be tied on infants. Possession of the material is an offence (1.18). The demand for claws, teeth and skins as charms and ornaments is a continuing driver of tiger poaching alongside the bone trade, and the two are not separable in practice: a poached animal supplies both.
1.18.8 Tiger's Tooth 牙
譯 1.18.8.1 Translation영역
It governs sores on the glans in a man, and flat abscess with fistula.
Clinical note임상 주석
隂頭瘡 is a sore on the glans penis; 疽瘻 is a deep abscess that has fistulated.
**Modern reading, and the first indication needs naming precisely because of what it usually is.** A persistent ulcer or sore on the glans requires testing for syphilis, herpes simplex and chancroid, and — if it does not heal — biopsy for penile carcinoma; balanitis from candida or from poor hygiene under a tight foreskin is the commonest benign cause and is treated topically. A genital ulcer is also an HIV transmission risk and an indication to test. A fistulating abscess needs imaging to define the tract and surgery to lay it open; perianal fistula in particular raises the question of Crohn's disease. Powdered tooth — dentine and enamel, chemically hydroxyapatite — contributes nothing, and in the sixteenth century a drug applied to a syphilitic chancre would have been credited with the healing that the natural history of the primary lesion provides on its own. The material is prohibited (1.18).
1.18.9 Tiger Skin 皮
譯 1.18.9.1 Source원문
主瘧. 鋪房內寢卧其上. 《本草》
Translation영역
It governs malaria. Spread it in the room and lie down to sleep on it.
Clinical note임상 주석
Sleeping on the skin for the malarial fever — an amuletic use dressed as a treatment, and the least pharmacological entry in the family. The tiger skin was a prestige object in Joseon as everywhere else, and its presence in a materia medica is a reminder that the categories of medicine, charm and luxury good were not separate.
**Modern reading.** Malaria is diagnosed and treated as at 1.15.2. What a skin spread on the floor of a sleeping room actually harbours is *Dermanyssus* and other mites, dust-mite allergen, and the dermatophytes of untanned hide. Trade in tiger skin is prohibited under CITES Appendix I and the Korean Wildlife Protection and Management Act (1.18); the skin trade, with the bone and claw trades, is what poaching supplies.
1.18.10 Tiger's Gall 膽
譯 1.18.10.1 Translation영역
It governs fright epilepsy in children, and *gam* dysentery.
Clinical note임상 주석
疳 is the wasting, distended, pot-bellied malnutrition syndrome of children in this literature, and 疳痢 its diarrhoeal form; with 驚癎 it makes a paediatric pairing that the chapter gives to several galls — bear, ox, pig, sheep and here the tiger.
**Modern reading.** 疳 is protein-energy malnutrition with the enteropathy and infections that accompany it, and it is treated by nutritional rehabilitation along established lines: management of hypoglycaemia, hypothermia, dehydration and electrolyte imbalance first, cautious refeeding with therapeutic formula, micronutrient repletion including vitamin A and zinc, treatment of concurrent infection, and only then catch-up growth. Zinc supplementation specifically shortens childhood diarrhoea. Nothing in this entry contributes. **It is also worth saying what the bile entries of this chapter share:** the one bile whose active constituent is a real drug is the bear's — ursodeoxycholic acid, which exists as a synthetic pharmaceutical and needs no bear — and tiger bile has no such constituent. The material is prohibited (1.18).
1.18.11 Tiger's Dung 屎
譯 1.18.11.1 Translation영역
It governs ghost qi and malign sores.
Clinical note임상 주석
**Modern reading. Felid faeces is the single most specific infectious hazard in this chapter, and the reason is that cats are the definitive host of *Toxoplasma gondii*.** Only in the felid gut does the parasite complete its sexual cycle and shed oocysts, which become infective in the environment after one to five days and remain viable in soil for a year or more; human infection follows ingestion of oocysts from contaminated hands, soil, water or produce. In the immunocompetent adult the infection is usually trivial, but primary infection in pregnancy causes congenital toxoplasmosis — chorioretinitis, intracranial calcification, hydrocephalus — and in immunosuppressed patients reactivation causes cerebral toxoplasmosis. *Toxocara cati* is in the same faeces and causes visceral and ocular larva migrans in children. Handling felid dung, and applying it to 惡瘡 — an open sore — is therefore both an oocyst exposure and a bacterial inoculation, with the tetanus risk noted at 1.15.16.
The same applies to 1.20.3 狸糞 below, which is the leopard cat's dung and is the one felid-dung leaf in my share that the book's own gate chapters actually prescribe. Chronic or non-healing sores need a cause — venous or arterial insufficiency, diabetic neuropathy, infection, malignancy — and are managed by addressing it. The material is prohibited (1.18).
1.18.12 Tiger's Eyeball 眼睛
譯 1.18.12.1 Source원문
主癲及驚邪, 辟惡鎭心, 治瘧疾, 療小兒客忤驚啼.
Translation영역
It governs withdrawal and fright evil, wards off malignity and settles the heart, treats malaria, and treats a child's visitation-offence and fright crying.
Clinical note임상 주석
客忤, visitation-offence, is the paediatric category for the infant who screams, startles and will not settle after a stranger or a strange place — in this literature a disturbance of the child's spirit by an outside presence. 驚啼 is the fright crying itself.
**Modern reading.** Persistent inconsolable crying in an infant needs a cause excluded — infection, intussusception, incarcerated hernia, non-accidental injury, cows' milk protein allergy, and the self-limiting colic that is the commonest answer — and the approach is examination and reassurance rather than a drug. Withdrawal and malaria as above. The material is prohibited (1.18) and an eyeball is in any case raw tissue of a wild carnivore, with the *Trichinella* and *Toxoplasma* exposures of 1.18.3.
譯 1.18.12.2 Source원문
虎睛定魄, 治魄不寧者宜用此. 《本事》
Translation영역
The tiger's eye settles the *baek*; for one whose *baek* is unquiet this is the one to use.
Clinical note임상 주석
**This is the one passage in the tiger family with a real doctrinal argument behind it, and it belongs to a pair.** Xu Shuwei's *Puji benshi fang* sets the tiger's eye against the dragon's tooth: 龍齒安魂, 虎睛定魄 — dragon tooth quiets the *hon*, tiger eye settles the *baek*. The *hon* is the yang, mobile, liver-stored soul that wanders and so becomes deficient; the *baek* is the yin, still, lung-stored soul that holds its ground. The tiger, 虎能專靜, being capable of concentrated stillness, settles the one; the dragon, 龍能變化, being capable of transformation, quiets the other. The full argument is quoted in this book's 神門 at 眞珠母丸, where 眞珠母 is the sovereign and 龍齒 the assistant, and the compiler there adds that people take both drugs for calming the heart without knowing that they do opposite things.
It is worth recording because it shows the selection being made on a worked-out theory rather than on appearance — and because both halves of the pair are in this chapter's materia medica: 龍齒 (yongchi) at 1.1.1, fossil tooth, which is lawful mineral material, and this, which is not. The two occurrences of 虎睛 in the site's formula database are both inside this passage as quoted at 眞珠母丸; **the eyeball is not an ingredient of any formula in the book**, which is why no materia medica entry is made for it here.
**Modern reading.** The *hon*/*baek* distinction maps onto nothing anatomical, but what it is describing clinically is recognisable: the restless, wandering, dream-disturbed insomnia on one side and the startled, unanchored, hypervigilant state on the other. Both are now approached through sleep assessment, treatment of anxiety and post-traumatic states, and cognitive behavioural therapy for insomnia, which outperforms hypnotics over time. The material is prohibited (1.18).
1.19 Leopard Flesh 豹肉
표범의고기 표범의 고기 leopard's flesh
향명이 지금 말과 거의 글자째 같다 — `표범의 고기`. `표범` 은 지금도 Panthera pardus 의 이름이고, 이 향명이 그 이름의 이른 적기 가운데 하나다.
**전사본은 이 절이 든 잎 050a 의 발에 향명 교감줄 `범의 : 버믜(초간본)` 을 적어 두었다.** 初刊本은 `표버믜고기` 로 읽는다. 050a 에 한글은 이 향명뿐이므로 걸릴 자리가 또렷하다.
**같은 짝이 앞 잎 049b 에도 한 번 나오고 그것은 1.18 虎骨 의 `갈범의ᄲᅧ` 의 것이다.** 전사자가 두 잎에 같은 줄을 따로 찍었고 각 잎에 걸릴 한글이 하나씩뿐이므로, **이 되풀이는 잎으로 갈라 세는 것이 가능한 자리**다(049b=`갈범의`, 050a=`표범의`). 지침 §5.2 의 「같은 이체자는 쪽마다 한 줄만 찍힌다」가 한글 쪽에서도 그대로 보이는 자리다.
譯 1.19.1 Source원문
性平, 味酸, 無毒一云微毒. 主安五藏, 壯筋骨, 輕身益氣, 令人猛徤, 又主鬼魅邪神. 《本草》
Translation영역
Its nature is balanced, its flavour sour, and it is without toxicity one says slightly toxic. It governs the quieting of the five viscera, strengthens sinew and bone, lightens the body and boosts qi, makes a person fierce and strong, and also governs ghostly bewitchment and evil spirits.
Clinical note임상 주석
令人猛徤, making a person fierce and strong, is virtue transfer again and the book says so outright in the third passage: the leopard is 猛捷過虎, fiercer and quicker than the tiger, **and therefore** it quiets the viscera and lightens the body. The whole entry is an inference from the animal's character.
**The legal position. The leopard is CITES Appendix I and in Korea the case is more extreme than the tiger's.**
* ***Panthera pardus* is on CITES Appendix I**, so all commercial international trade in the animal or its parts is prohibited; the species is IUCN Vulnerable.
* **The Amur leopard, *Panthera pardus orientalis*,** is the subspecies of the Korean peninsula and north-east Asia, and it is one of the rarest large cats in the world — a wild population in the low hundreds in the Russian Far East and north-east China, and **IUCN Critically Endangered** at the subspecies level. It is **extirpated from South Korea**; the last confirmed animals date to the mid-twentieth century.
* **In the Republic of Korea it is listed as endangered wildlife Class I under the Wildlife Protection and Management Act (「야생생물 보호 및 관리에 관한 법률」)**, which also carries the domestic implementation of CITES. Killing, taking, possessing, processing or trading the animal or its parts is a criminal offence.
* Leopard parts are also the standard substitute offered when tiger parts are unavailable, so demand generated by the tiger entries above falls directly on this animal. That is not a historical observation: leopard bone and skin seizures rose as tiger supply fell, and the substitution is documented in the illegal trade.
**Modern reading of the drug.** Lean wild carnivore meat is food with no distinctive property; the five leaves below are bone, fat, skin and nose, which are collagen, triglyceride, keratin and cartilage. There is no clinical indication in this section for which anything is lost. For the raw-meat hazards — *Trichinella nativa* and *Toxoplasma gondii* in felid tissue — see 1.18.3; they apply in full here, and the sochu's minority reading 一云微毒, slightly toxic, is in that narrow sense the better-founded one.
譯 1.19.2 Source원문
肉食令人志性麄踈, 少時消卽定, 久食耐寒暑.
Translation영역
Eating the flesh makes a man's disposition coarse and careless; after a little while it digests and he settles; eaten long it confers endurance of cold and heat.
Clinical note임상 주석
**The book reporting a side effect of its own drug, and an unusually specific one**: the eater's temperament turns coarse and heedless until the meal digests. This is the acquired-character logic running in the unwanted direction — you take on the leopard's ferocity, and ferocity in a person is 麄踈 — and it is the same structure as 1.17's 多用則令人煩. A tradition that notices the undesirable half of its own reasoning is recording something, even when what it records is the reasoning rather than an effect.
譯 1.19.3 Source원문
豹毛赤黃, 其紋黑如錢而中空, 比比相次. 此獸猛捷過虎, 故能安五藏而輕身. 《本草》
Translation영역
The leopard's coat is reddish-yellow, its markings black like coins and hollow in the middle, set close one after another. This beast is fiercer and quicker than the tiger, and therefore it can quiet the five viscera and lighten the body.
Clinical note임상 주석
**The coat description is exact, and it identifies the animal beyond doubt.** 其紋黑如錢而中空, 比比相次 — black markings like coins, hollow in the middle, set close one after another — is a rosette: the open ring of dark spots with a tawny centre that distinguishes *Panthera pardus* from the solid spots of the cheetah and the larger, more broken rosettes of the jaguar. A sixteenth-century compiler describing a Korean animal from life would describe exactly this.
The sentence that follows is the chapter's reasoning laid bare: 此獸猛捷過虎, **故** 能安五藏而輕身. The *therefore* carries the whole pharmacology. It also matters for the leaf below: this description of the coat is what 1.19.5 土豹 is contrasted against, when the book says that animal has no markings at all and is a separate species.
1.19.1 Leopard Fat 脂
譯 1.19.1.1 Source원문
可合生髮膏, 朝塗暮生. 《本草》
Translation영역
It can be compounded into a hair-growing salve; applied in the morning, hair grows by evening.
Clinical note임상 주석
朝塗暮生, applied at dawn and grown by dusk, is a frank overstatement of the kind that marks a cosmetic claim rather than a clinical one; human scalp hair grows about a centimetre a month, and no topical agent alters that in a day.
**Modern reading.** Rendered fat is an occlusive emollient and nothing more; see 1.15.9. Androgenetic alopecia responds to topical minoxidil, oral finasteride or dutasteride, and transplantation; alopecia areata to intralesional or systemic immunosuppression and the JAK inhibitors now licensed for it; telogen effluvium and the alopecias of iron deficiency, thyroid disease and nutritional deficit resolve when the cause is corrected. Hair loss with scarring is a dermatological emergency in the sense that the follicle, once scarred, does not come back. The material is prohibited (1.19).
1.19.2 Leopard's Skull Bone 頭骨
譯 1.19.2.1 Source원문
燒灰淋汁, 沐頭去風屑. 《本草》
Translation영역
Burn it to ash, steep and strain off the liquor, and wash the head with it to remove wind scurf.
Clinical note임상 주석
風屑 is wind scurf — a flaking, itching scalp, which is seborrhoeic dermatitis and dandruff. The preparation is the same lye as 1.15.16: bone ash steeped in water gives an alkaline carbonate solution, and the leaf immediately above and this one together make a pair, grease then wash.
**Modern reading.** An alkaline wash degreases the scalp and will reduce scale in the short term, which is why the entry would have seemed to work. But seborrhoeic dermatitis is driven by *Malassezia* yeasts and is controlled with antifungal shampoos — ketoconazole, ciclopirox, zinc pyrithione, selenium sulfide — with topical corticosteroid for inflamed flares; a strong alkali strips the barrier and makes the condition worse over weeks. If the scale is thick, silvery and sharply edged the diagnosis is scalp psoriasis instead and is treated differently. The material is prohibited (1.19).
1.19.3 Leopard's Nose 鼻
譯 1.19.3.1 Translation영역
It governs fox bewitchment.
Clinical note임상 주석
狐魅, fox bewitchment, is a defined syndrome in this book and not a vague charge of enchantment. The 邪祟門 describes it at length: the person roams the hills and fields, greets strangers with elaborate courtesies, talks alone in quiet places, shows himself naked, bows without limit, sits with the mouth clamped shut and the hands folded, and voids urine and stool at random. Read as a clinical picture, that is disorganised and inappropriate behaviour with loss of social convention, stereotypy, mutism and incontinence — which is the presentation of a psychotic illness, or of frontotemporal dementia, or of an encephalitis.
**Modern reading.** Those three require different and urgent responses. Acute psychosis needs psychiatric assessment, exclusion of organic cause and antipsychotic treatment; autoimmune encephalitis — anti-NMDA receptor encephalitis in particular, which presents with exactly this mixture of psychiatric disturbance, mutism and stereotypy in young patients — is diagnosed by CSF antibody testing and MRI and is treated with immunotherapy, with good recovery if treated early; frontotemporal dementia is managed supportively. **The single most useful thing in this leaf is the symptom description, which is detailed enough to be recognised; the remedy is a leopard's nose and is nothing.** The same 邪祟門 passage prescribes the black nose-tip of a fox pelt for the same condition, which shows the part being chosen by the name of the illness. The material is prohibited (1.19).
1.19.4 Leopard Skin 皮
譯 1.19.4.1 Source원문
寢之袪瘟疫, 辟鬼邪. 《本草》
Translation영역
Sleeping on it dispels epidemic pestilence and wards off ghosts and evils.
Clinical note임상 주석
The same amuletic use as the tiger skin at 1.18.9, with epidemic disease in place of malaria. 瘟疫 is epidemic pestilence, the category that covers typhus, typhoid, cholera, smallpox, measles and plague in this literature.
**Modern reading.** Epidemic disease is prevented by vaccination, clean water, sanitation, vector control and case isolation, which are among the most effective interventions in the history of medicine; a skin on the floor prevents nothing and, as at 1.18.9, harbours mites, allergen and hide dermatophytes. Trade and possession are prohibited (1.19), and the skin trade is one of the two markets — ornament and medicine — that poaching supplies.
1.19.5 Lynx 土豹
**이 향명이 이 잎의 정체를 가려 준다.** `시러손` 은 지금 말 `시라소니`(Lynx lynx, 스라소니)의 16세기 꼴이다 (`시러손`→`시라손`→`시라소니`). 지금도 `스라소니`ㆍ`시라소니` 두 꼴이 쓰인다.
**그리고 향명과 본문이 같은 말을 한다** — 본문이 `此爲自有種非能變爲虎也` (이것은 제 종이 따로 있는 것이며 범으로 변할 수 있는 것이 아니다)라 하니, 책 스스로 이 잎이 **豹의 부위가 아니라 딴 짐승**임을 밝힌 것이다. `土豹` 를 「표범의 한 가지」로 읽으면 안 되고, 어미 아래 달린 것은 해부 관계가 아니라 **차례**다(지침 §3.3).
전사본은 이 잎이 든 050b 의 발에 교감줄 셋을 적었으나 **이 향명에 걸리는 것은 없다** — `ᄉᆞᆰ의 : ᄉᆞᆯ긔` 는 같은 잎의 1.20 狸骨 향명의 것이다.
譯 1.19.5.1 Source원문
此物毛更無紋, 色亦不赤, 其形亦小. 此爲自有種, 非能變爲虎也. 《本草》
Translation영역
This creature's coat has no markings at all, its colour is not reddish either, and its form is likewise small. It is a kind that exists in its own right, and not one that can turn into a tiger.
Clinical note임상 주석
**This is not a part of the leopard. It is a different animal, and the book says so in its own words.**
The leaf is constructed entirely as a contrast with 1.19 three passages above. There the leopard's coat is 赤黃 with rosettes 如錢而中空 set close together; here the coat has 更無紋, no markings whatever, the colour is 不赤, not reddish, and the animal is smaller. Then the decisive sentence: 此爲自有種, 非能變爲虎也 — a kind that exists in its own right, and not one that can change into a tiger. The *Bencao* is refusing a transformation story, and refusals of that kind are rare and valuable in this literature; the 禽部 of this same chapter is full of transformations accepted without comment (the dove into the 黃褐侯 at the equinox, the frog into the quail). Here the book declines one.
**The identification.** Unmarked or faintly marked coat, not reddish, smaller than a leopard, called 시러손 in the Korean gloss — that is the **Eurasian lynx, *Lynx lynx***, whose modern Korean name 스라소니 descends directly from this word. The lynx's coat varies from heavily spotted to almost plain, and the plain northern form is what the description fits. 土豹, "earth leopard", is the standard Chinese name for it.
**This leaf is not a drug.** It carries no 性味, no 主治 and no preparation — only identification. It is here to tell the reader that the animal he may be sold as 豹 is not one, and it should be read as the chapter's own quality-control note rather than as a medicine. Nothing is proposed for the materia medica from it: the name does not occur anywhere in the site's formula database.
**Legal position.** *Lynx lynx* is on **CITES Appendix II**, so international trade requires permits and the import of any part into Korea is controlled under the Wildlife Protection and Management Act. The species no longer occurs in South Korea — it is among the large carnivores lost from the southern peninsula during the twentieth century — so there is no domestic source at all, lawful or otherwise. (Whether it also carries a Korean endangered-species listing I have not been able to confirm and have therefore not asserted.)
1.20 Leopard Cat Bone 狸骨
ᄉᆞᆰ의ᄲᅧ 삵의 뼈 leopard cat's bone
`ᄉᆞᆰ` 은 지금 말 `삵` 이다(ᄉᆞ→사, 곧 `ᄉᆞᆰ`→`삵`). 향명 전체가 `삵의 뼈` 로 또렷하게 풀리고, **이 향명이 어느 짐승인지도 가려 준다** — 漢字 `狸` 는 중국 쪽에서 삵ㆍ너구리ㆍ담비에 두루 쓰이지만 전사자의 `삵` 은 하나를 가리킨다.
**전사본은 이 절이 든 잎 050b 의 발에 향명 교감줄 `ᄉᆞᆰ의 : ᄉᆞᆯ긔(초간본)` 을 적어 두었다.** 初刊本은 `ᄉᆞᆯ긔ᄲᅧ` 로 읽는다 — 속격이 `-의` 가 아니라 `-ᄋᆡ`/`-의` 가 앞 음절의 받침을 끌어와 적히는 꼴이고, 같은 잎의 1.18ㆍ1.19 에서 본 `범의 : 버믜` 와 **똑같은 표기 흔들림**이다. 한 잎의 발에 같은 꼴의 국어사 자료가 둘 들어 있는 자리다.
**전사본은 이 절의 머리말과 향명 사이에 공백 한 칸을 찍었다** (`狸骨 ᄉᆞᆰ의ᄲᅧ`). 이 문의 다른 절에는 없는 꼴이고 뜻은 없어 보인다.
譯 1.20.1 Source원문
性温, 味甘, 無毒. 主鬼疰毒氣, 心腹痛, 治噎病不通飮食及痔瘻惡瘡. 《本草》
Translation영역
Its nature is warm, its flavour sweet, and it is without toxicity. It governs the toxic qi of ghost infixation and pain in the heart and abdomen, and treats dysphagia with food and drink not passing, and haemorrhoidal fistula and malign sores.
Clinical note임상 주석
**狸 is the leopard cat, *Prionailurus bengalensis*** — the Korean gloss 삵 names it unambiguously, and the third passage below adds a selection rule that confirms a cat rather than a raccoon dog. Four leaves hang beneath this headword, and one of them (1.20.4) is the domestic cat.
The indications are a mixed set. 鬼疰 is ghost infixation, the wasting, transmissible, "struck-from-outside" illness of this literature; 噎病不通飮食 is dysphagia, food and drink not going down; 痔瘻 is haemorrhoidal fistula. **Unlike most of my share, these are not dead letters in the book's own practice:** the single-remedy sections of the gate chapters use this animal four times — 狸骨 burnt and taken in water for poisoning by the flesh of birds and beasts killed with poisoned arrows (解毒門), 狸肉 and 狸骨 for the five haemorrhoids and haemorrhoidal fistula (後陰門), 狸糞 for the irregular ghost malaria (瘧門), and 狸肉 with the skull bone for corpse infixation (邪祟門); the 婦人門 formula for difficult labour pairs 猫頭骨 with 菟頭骨 and adds that 狸頭骨 is better still. None of these names occurs in the site's formula database as a compound-formula ingredient, so no materia medica entry is created for them here — but the book plainly used the animal.
**Modern reading.** 噎病 is the entry that must not be left as history: new or progressive dysphagia is a red-flag symptom and requires endoscopy, because oesophageal carcinoma presents exactly this way, and because achalasia, eosinophilic oesophagitis, peptic stricture and extrinsic compression are the alternatives and all need identifying. Delay here costs stage. Haemorrhoidal fistula and malign sores as at 1.18.4 and 1.18.11.
**Legal position.** The leopard cat is on **CITES Appendix II** (some range-state populations on Appendix I), and in the Republic of Korea it is **endangered wildlife Class II** under the Wildlife Protection and Management Act — it is the last wild felid surviving in South Korea, and killing or taking one is an offence. Raw felid tissue carries *Trichinella* and *Toxoplasma* (1.18.3), and the dung at 1.20.3 is the oocyst exposure described at 1.18.11.
譯 1.20.2 Source원문
頭骨最妙, 皆當燒灰服之. 《本草》
Translation영역
The skull bone is the most excellent; in every case it should be burnt to ash and taken.
Clinical note임상 주석
The part selection and the preparation in one line, and the book keeps to it: the 邪祟門 and the 瘧門 both specify the skull bone burnt to ash, and the 婦人門 says 狸頭骨尤妙 of the same part. Calcination to ash is the one preparation in this chapter that at least sterilises the material, which is worth noting against the raw-tissue leaves. Ash of bone is hydroxyapatite and calcium oxide and has no activity for any indication here.
譯 1.20.3 Source원문
狸類甚多, 以虎斑文者堪用, 猫斑者不佳. 《本草》
Translation영역
There are a great many kinds of 狸; the one with tiger-striped markings is fit for use, and the one with cat-spotted markings is not good.
Clinical note임상 주석
**The book is distinguishing between animals that the single character 狸 does not distinguish, and this is the passage that lets the identification be pinned down.** 狸類甚多 — there are many kinds — is an admission that the name is a basket; and the division is by coat, 虎斑文, tiger-striped, against 猫斑, cat-spotted.
Read against the Korean gloss 삵 the discrimination makes zoological sense: among the animals a Korean trader would offer under 狸 are the leopard cat (*Prionailurus bengalensis*, spotted, with the spots tending to run into broken lines along the back), the raccoon dog (*Nyctereutes procyonoides*, 너구리, with a facial mask and no body pattern) and the domestic cat, and the mackerel-tabby cat is precisely the one with tiger striping. So the book's rule, taken literally, selects a striped animal and rejects a spotted one — which is the opposite of what the gloss 삵 implies, since the leopard cat is the spotted one.
**This is a genuine inconsistency and it is not resolved here.** The rule comes from the *Bencao*, where 狸 denotes a different set of animals from the Korean 삵, and the gloss comes from the transcriber's Korean. Either the imported rule was carried over without being matched to the local animal, or 虎斑文 is being used loosely for any boldly marked coat. The contradiction is the Bogam's own, and both sides of it are recorded rather than one being chosen.
1.20.1 Leopard Cat Flesh 肉
譯 1.20.1.1 Translation영역
It treats the infixations, mouse fistula, and roaming wind.
Clinical note임상 주석
鼠瘻, mouse fistula, is scrofula — the chronically discharging cervical lymph node with its sinus tracks, which in this literature covers tuberculous lymphadenitis above all. The animal logic is visible: the cat kills the mouse, therefore the cat's flesh cures the mouse fistula. 遊風 as at 1.15.9.
**Modern reading, and 鼠瘻 is why this leaf matters.** Tuberculous cervical lymphadenitis is still a live diagnosis in Korea, which has one of the higher tuberculosis incidences in the OECD; it is confirmed by fine-needle aspiration with mycobacterial culture and nucleic acid amplification testing, and cured by standard multi-drug antituberculous therapy over six months. Non-tuberculous mycobacterial adenitis in children, lymphoma, metastatic carcinoma and cat-scratch disease are the differentials — and cat-scratch disease, *Bartonella henselae*, is itself transmitted by cats, which is a pointed irony in this entry. A persistent neck lump needs investigation, not a soup. For the raw-meat hazards see 1.18.3; the material is also protected (1.20).
1.20.2 Leopard Cat's Penis 隂莖
譯 1.20.2.1 Source원문
主月水不通, 男子隂㿉. 燒灰, 東流水送下. 《本草》
Translation영역
It governs menses not coming through, and bulging in a man's genitals. Burn it to ash and send it down with eastward-flowing water.
Clinical note임상 주석
隂㿉 is the bulging swelling of the scrotum — hernia and hydrocele between them — and the organ chosen for it is the corresponding organ of the animal. 東流水, eastward-flowing water, is a ritual specification of the vehicle rather than a pharmaceutical one; the book's 水部 carries it as a headword.
**Modern reading.** Amenorrhoea requires a cause: pregnancy first, then hypothalamic causes including low body weight and exercise, polycystic ovary syndrome, hyperprolactinaemia, thyroid disease, premature ovarian insufficiency and outflow obstruction — the investigation is a pregnancy test, FSH, LH, prolactin, TSH and androgens, and the treatment follows the cause. An inguinoscrotal swelling is examined for a hernia, which is repaired surgically and which can strangulate, and distinguished by ultrasound from hydrocele, varicocele, epididymal cyst and testicular tumour; a painless testicular mass in a young man is a tumour until proved otherwise, and testicular cancer is among the most curable of solid malignancies when treated early. Ash of genital tissue does nothing for either, and the material is protected (1.20).
1.20.3 Leopard Cat's Dung 糞
譯 1.20.3.1 Source원문
主寒熱鬼瘧發無期度者極驗. 燒灰用, 五月收糞極神妙. 《本草》
Translation영역
For the chills and fever of ghost malaria breaking out with no fixed period it is extremely proven. Burn it to ash and use it; dung gathered in the fifth month is most wonderfully effective.
Clinical note임상 주석
鬼瘧發無期度 — ghost malaria breaking out with no fixed period — is the irregular fever that would not fit the quartan and tertian patterns, and 極驗 is an unusually confident claim. The book uses this leaf: the 瘧門 single remedies carry 狸糞 主鬼瘧, burnt to ash and taken in wine, with the skull bone as an alternative 用如虎骨法, by the tiger-bone method.
**Modern reading, and this is the one leaf in my share where the hazard is the material itself rather than the delay.** Felid faeces is the definitive-host excretion of *Toxoplasma gondii*, and gathering and powdering it is the oocyst exposure described in full at 1.18.11; *Toxocara cati* is in the same material. 五月收糞, dung gathered in the fifth month, specifies warm weather, which is when oocysts sporulate fastest. Calcination to ash would destroy both organisms, but the gathering, drying and grinding that precede it are where exposure occurs.
Irregular fever with chills has a wide differential of which malaria is one; it is diagnosed with blood films or rapid antigen tests, repeated if negative, and cultures, and treated accordingly. *Plasmodium vivax* is endemic in the northern Republic of Korea and its relapses — from hepatic hypnozoites — are the real-world version of "no fixed period"; they are prevented with primaquine or tafenoquine after G6PD testing.
1.20.4 Domestic Cat 家狸
`괴` 는 지금 말 `고양이` 의 16세기 꼴이다. `괴`→`고이`→`고양이` 로 이어지고 `괭이`(사투리ㆍ준말)가 그 사이 꼴을 보여 준다. **한 음절짜리 향명은 이 문에서 이것뿐이다.**
전사본은 이 잎이 든 051a 의 발에 교감줄 둘을 적었으나 **이 향명에 걸리는 것은 없다** — 하나는 한자 `本 : 夲` 이고 하나는 이 잎의 본문 판식에 걸리는 우리말 산문 줄이다(아래 `textual_note`).
譯 1.20.4.1 Source원문
一名猫, 亦曰狸奴. 肉性微寒, 味甘酸. 主勞瘵骨熱, 痰多及痔瘻. 作羹空心食之, 黑色者尤佳 《入門》
Translation영역
One name for it is 猫, and it is also called 狸奴, the cat-servant. The nature of the flesh is slightly cold and its flavour sweet and sour. It governs consumptive taxation with bone heat, copious phlegm, and haemorrhoidal fistula. Make it into a soup and eat it on an empty stomach; a black one is better still.
Clinical note임상 주석
**This leaf is a different animal from its mother, like 1.19.5 above: it is the domestic cat.** 一名猫, 亦曰狸奴 — the book names it twice over, and 狸奴, "the 狸's servant", is the affectionate literary name for the house cat. It is the only leaf in the section drawn from the *Yixue rumen* rather than the *Bencao*.
勞瘵 is consumptive taxation — the wasting, feverish, coughing illness that is principally pulmonary tuberculosis — with 骨熱, bone heat, and 痰多, copious phlegm. The 邪祟門 adds 家狸亦好, the domestic cat will serve too, after prescribing the leopard cat; this materia medica carries 猫頭骨 (myodugol, Felis Cranium) with four ingredient lines, all in the difficult-labour formula of the 婦人門, so the cat is in the book's formulary — though as skull, not as flesh.
**Modern reading.** 勞瘵 is tuberculosis and it is curable: four-drug therapy (isoniazid, rifampicin, pyrazinamide, ethambutol) for two months and then two drugs for four, with drug-susceptibility testing, achieves cure rates above ninety per cent in drug-sensitive disease, and the Republic of Korea has an active national programme because its incidence remains the highest in the OECD. A patient with weight loss, night sweats, fever and chronic productive cough needs sputum microscopy, culture and molecular testing and a chest radiograph, and is infectious until treated. Cat soup is not a treatment and the delay is measured in transmission to household contacts.
**Two further points.** Cats are the definitive host of *Toxoplasma gondii* (1.18.11) and their tissue carries cysts; cat scratches and bites transmit *Bartonella henselae*, *Pasteurella multocida* and *Capnocytophaga*, and a cat bite is a high-risk wound requiring irrigation, antibiotic prophylaxis and a rabies-exposure assessment. And in the Republic of Korea killing a cat to eat it is an offence under the Animal Protection Act (「동물보호법」), which prohibits killing animals by cruel methods and without justifiable cause; cats and dogs are companion animals in law, and the dog-meat industry was additionally prohibited by special statute in 2024. This entry describes a practice that is now illegal for reasons that have nothing to do with conservation.
1.21 Rabbit's Skull Bone 免頭骨
`톳긔` 는 지금 말 `토끼` 의 16세기 꼴이다(`톳긔`→`토끼`; 사이의 `ㅅ` 이 뒤 음절의 된소리로 넘어간 꼴). `머리` 는 지금 말과 글자째 같다. 향명 전체가 `토끼 머리` 로 또렷하게 풀린다.
**전사본의 머리말 글자는 `免` 이지만 `兔`(토끼)의 속자다.** `免`(면)과 `兔`(토)는 점 하나로 갈리는 글자여서 목판에서 흔히 섞이고, 이 절은 향명 `톳긔머리` 와 본문 `免爲食品之上味`(토끼는 식품의 으뜸 맛이다)로 토끼임이 분명하다. **전사본의 글자를 그대로 싣고 번역과 로마자는 `兔` 로 읽었다**(`Todugol`). `bg.VAR` 은 `兎`→`菟` 를 접으나 `免` 은 접지 않으므로 이 짝을 보고에 적었다.
전사본은 이 절이 든 051a 의 발에 향명 교감줄을 적지 않았다.
譯 1.21.1 Source원문
性平, 無毒. 主難産及胞衣不出, 及産後餘血不下搶心脹欲死.
Translation영역
Its nature is balanced and it is without toxicity. It governs difficult delivery and the afterbirth not coming away, and the post-partum residual blood that will not come down but strikes up against the heart with distension so that the woman is at the point of death.
Clinical note임상 주석
Six leaves hang beneath this headword, and the last of them (1.21.6) is a different animal again. The rabbit is the one food animal in my share that is neither protected nor prohibited, and most of this family is dietetics.
This headword is not. 難産, 胞衣不出 and the retained blood striking up to the heart are the three obstetric emergencies of this literature, and the site's materia medica carries 兎頭骨 (todugol, Leporis Cranium) for them; the 婦人門 formula for hastening delivery pairs 菟頭骨 with 猫頭骨, calcined and powdered, in 芎歸湯.
**Modern reading, and it has to be unambiguous.** Obstructed labour, retained placenta and postpartum haemorrhage are among the leading direct causes of maternal death. Obstructed labour is diagnosed by assessment of presentation, position and progress and resolved by instrumental or caesarean delivery. Retained placenta is managed with controlled cord traction, oxytocin, and manual removal under anaesthesia if it does not deliver — it causes haemorrhage and sepsis if left. The third, 餘血不下搶心, is postpartum haemorrhage with the clinical picture of shock: the treatment is uterotonics, tranexamic acid, examination for retained tissue and trauma, tamponade and transfusion, in the order and the timeframe set out at 1.15.10. **No oral powder affects any of the three, and the only thing a drug can do here is consume the interval in which the woman is savable.** A woman in obstructed labour or bleeding after delivery needs transfer to a facility with surgical and transfusion capacity, now.
譯 1.21.2 Source원문
頭骨和皮毛髓, 並燒灰酒服, 或丸服.
Translation영역
The skull bone together with the skin, the fur and the marrow — all burnt to ash and taken in wine, or taken as pills.
Clinical note임상 주석
The preparation collects four of the leaves below into one drug: skull, skin, fur and marrow, calcined together. Calcination at least sterilises; see 1.20's second passage. Ash of bone, hide and hair is hydroxyapatite with the mineral residue of keratin and collagen, and has no activity for the indications above.
譯 1.21.3 Source원문
免爲食品之上味. 免竅有六七穴, 子從口出, 故姙娠忌食者, 非爲缺唇, 亦緣口出. 《本草》
Translation영역
The rabbit is the first in flavour among foods. The rabbit has six or seven orifices, and its young come out of the mouth; therefore the reason a pregnant woman is forbidden to eat it is not that it causes harelip, but likewise that the young come out of the mouth.
Clinical note임상 주석
**This is the most interesting passage in the rabbit family, because the book is correcting a popular belief and getting it wrong in a different way.**
The belief being corrected is sympathetic: the rabbit has a cleft upper lip, so a pregnant woman who eats rabbit bears a child with a cleft lip, and therefore rabbit is forbidden in pregnancy. That inference from resemblance is explicitly rejected — 非爲缺唇, it is not on account of the harelip — which is a real piece of critical reasoning. But the replacement is worse: rabbits are said to give birth through the mouth, and the prohibition is said to follow from that instead. The claim is an old one in Chinese natural history (it also attaches to the rabbit's supposed lack of a male sex and its fertilisation by gazing at the moon, which is why the droppings at 1.21.5 are called 玩月砂, moon-gazing sand).
Rabbits are placental mammals and give birth normally. **Cleft lip and palate** arise from failure of fusion of the maxillary and medial nasal processes between the fifth and ninth weeks of gestation; the causes identified are genetic, with environmental contributions from maternal smoking, alcohol, some anticonvulsants (valproate, phenytoin, topiramate), high-dose vitamin A derivatives and poorly controlled diabetes, and the one protective measure of proven benefit is **periconceptional folic acid**. Diet in pregnancy does not cause it. Repair is surgical, staged in the first year or two of life, with speech therapy and orthodontic care following, and the results are good.
Two prohibitions in pregnancy that this chapter does not make, but that modern obstetrics does, are worth putting beside the old one: avoid liver because of preformed vitamin A (1.15.3), and avoid undercooked meat and unwashed produce because of *Toxoplasma* (1.18.11). The sixteenth-century rule forbade the right food for the wrong reason while allowing the genuinely risky ones.
1.21.1 Rabbit Flesh 肉
譯 1.21.1.1 Source원문
性寒平, 味辛一云酸, 無毒. 治渴健脾. 然性冷, 多食損元氣, 絶血脉, 弱房事, 令人萎黃. 《本草》
Translation영역
Its nature is cold and balanced, its flavour acrid one says sour, and it is without toxicity. It treats thirst and fortifies the spleen. But its nature is cold: eaten in quantity it damages original qi, cuts off the blood vessels, weakens the bedchamber, and makes a person sallow and yellow.
Clinical note임상 주석
治渴 is treating thirst, which in this book points at 消渴, the polyuric polydipsic syndrome covering diabetes mellitus; and then a long list of harms from eating too much of it, ending in 萎黃, the sallow yellow complexion of anaemia and malnutrition.
**Modern reading, and the entry is accidentally close to something true.** Rabbit is the leanest of the common meats — roughly 8 per cent fat, with very little intramuscular fat — and a diet of rabbit and nothing else produces the condition trappers called rabbit starvation: protein taken far in excess of the liver's capacity to deaminate it and clear the urea load, without the fat or carbohydrate needed to supply energy, causing nausea, diarrhoea, lassitude and eventually death from protein poisoning. 多食損元氣, 絶血脉, 令人萎黃 is a tolerably good description of it. The book attributes the harm to the meat's cold nature; the mechanism is that the meat is too lean to live on.
Thirst with polyuria needs a blood glucose and, if that is normal, assessment for diabetes insipidus; it is not treated with meat. **Rabbit must be cooked**: wild rabbits and hares transmit *Francisella tularensis* — tularaemia, "rabbit fever", classically acquired by skinning and dressing an infected animal, with the ulceroglandular form at the hands and the pneumonic form from aerosol — and also *Toxoplasma*. Tularaemia is treated with streptomycin, gentamicin or a fluoroquinolone.
譯 1.21.1.2 Translation영역
The flesh of the twelfth month, made into a fermented paste and eaten, removes pea-pox sores in children.
Clinical note임상 주석
豌豆瘡, pea-pox, is one of the old names for smallpox, from the size and shape of the pustules; the book's own 小兒門 devotes its largest section to it. 臘月, the twelfth lunar month, is the preserving season, and 醬 is a fermented paste.
**Modern reading. Smallpox is eradicated** — the last natural case was in Somalia in 1977 and the World Health Assembly declared eradication in 1980 — and it was eradicated by vaccination, which is the single greatest achievement in the history of public health. If the lesions are not smallpox the likely candidates in a child are chickenpox (varicella, now vaccine-preventable), hand-foot-and-mouth disease, and in the last years mpox; none is treated by diet. The entry is history, and in this instance the history has a clean ending.
譯 1.21.1.3 Source원문
八月至十月肉酒灸喫, 與丹石發熱人相宜, 性冷故也.
Translation영역
From the eighth to the tenth month the flesh, roasted with wine and eaten, is suitable for a person made feverish by cinnabar-and-mineral drugs, because its nature is cold.
Clinical note임상 주석
**丹石發熱人 — a person made feverish by the mineral elixirs — is a patient category, and it is a category of iatrogenic poisoning.** 丹石 are the cinnabar, realgar, orpiment, arsenolite and lead preparations of the alchemical and medical traditions, and the fever, restlessness, sores and wasting they produced were recognised as a syndrome with its own dietetics. Rabbit is recommended as a cooling food for it.
**Modern reading.** The underlying conditions are mercury, arsenic and lead poisoning. Chronic mercury exposure causes tremor, erethism, gingivitis and renal injury; arsenic causes hyperkeratosis, pigmentation changes, peripheral neuropathy and carcinoma of skin, bladder and lung; lead causes anaemia, neuropathy, nephropathy and, in children, irreversible cognitive impairment. All are managed by stopping the exposure and, where indicated, chelation — succimer or DMPS for lead and mercury, dimercaprol or DMPS for arsenic — with monitoring of blood or urine levels. A cold-natured meat does not address any of them. The entry is nonetheless valuable evidence: the tradition knew its mineral drugs made people ill, and built a diet around the fact rather than abandoning the drugs.
譯 1.21.1.4 Source원문
免有白者, 全得金之氣, 入藥尤佳. 免壽千歲, 五百歲毛變白. 餘免至秋深可食, 金氣全故也. 《本草》
Translation영역
Some rabbits are white, having wholly received the qi of metal, and these are better still for use as a drug. The rabbit lives a thousand years, and at five hundred its coat turns white. Other rabbits may be eaten late in autumn, because the metal qi is then complete.
Clinical note임상 주석
The five-phase reasoning in full: white is the colour of metal, autumn is the season of metal, so a white rabbit is a metal-replete rabbit and any rabbit in late autumn is as good as one. **免壽千歲, 五百歲毛變白 is word for word the sentence given of the tiger at 1.18**, which settles what kind of statement it is: a formula of the bestiary genre, applied to whichever animal is in hand.
Rabbits live a few years. White coats in wild lagomorphs are either the seasonal moult of the mountain hare and its relatives — which does happen in autumn, and is probably the observation the doctrine has swallowed — or albinism, or the fixed coat colour of a domestic breed. Nothing follows about the drug.
1.21.2 Rabbit's Brain 腦
譯 1.21.2.1 Source원문
主凍瘡手足皸裂, 又能滑産. 《本草》
Translation영역
It governs frostbite sores with the hands and feet cracked and split, and it can also make delivery slippery.
Clinical note임상 주석
Two unrelated uses, one topical and one obstetric. 凍瘡手足皸裂 is chilblain and frost-cracked skin; 滑産, making delivery slippery, is the lubricant logic applied to labour, and the brain is chosen because it is the slipperiest tissue in the animal. The site's materia medica carries the drug as 兎腦髓 (tonoesu, Leporis Cerebrum), with one ingredient line, in a formula for hastening delivery.
**Modern reading.** For the skin: chilblains are a cold-induced inflammatory response and are managed by rewarming, protection, emollients and, if recurrent, nifedipine; frank frostbite needs rapid rewarming in warm water, analgesia, and specialist assessment, with iloprost and thrombolysis in severe cases to salvage tissue. A greasy emollient on cracked hands and feet is genuinely useful, and that much of the entry stands. For labour: nothing eaten lubricates a delivery; progress is assessed clinically, and slow progress is managed by amniotomy, oxytocin augmentation and, where indicated, operative delivery.
**Brain is the tissue not to eat.** No transmissible spongiform encephalopathy is known in rabbits, and it is right to say so rather than to imply one; the objections are the general ones — brain spoils rapidly, concentrates lipophilic toxicants, is handled raw, and is the tissue in which any neurotropic agent is found. Handling a wild rabbit's head is also the tularaemia exposure described at 1.21.1.
1.21.3 Rabbit's Liver 肝
譯 1.21.3.1 Source원문
主目暗, 能明目, 補勞. 《本草》
Translation영역
It governs dimness of vision, can brighten the eyes, and supplements taxation.
Clinical note임상 주석
The same organ-and-eye reasoning as the sheep's liver at 1.15.3, and the same nutritional fact underneath it: liver is the richest dietary source of preformed vitamin A, and 目暗, dimness of vision, when it was deficiency, really did improve. The site's materia medica carries 兎肝 (togan) with three ingredient lines, in the eye formulas; the alias table already records the variant graph 菟肝 for it, which is the same 兎/菟/免 confusion this section's headword shows.
**Modern reading.** As at 1.15.3: night blindness and xerophthalmia from vitamin A deficiency are cured with vitamin A, and this is one of the public-health successes of the last forty years; but dimming vision has a differential that must be worked through — refractive error first, then cataract, glaucoma, diabetic retinopathy, age-related macular degeneration and optic neuropathy — and each has its own treatment, several of them time-critical. Liver is also contraindicated in pregnancy for the retinol load. Cook it: *Toxoplasma* and, in wild rabbits, *Francisella tularensis* (1.21.1).
1.21.4 Rabbit Fur 毛
譯 1.21.4.1 Translation영역
Burnt to ash, it governs moxibustion sores that will not heal.
Clinical note임상 주석
灸瘡不差 — a moxibustion sore that will not heal — is an iatrogenic burn, and its presence in the materia medica tells us how common they were. Moxibustion raises a blister or a full-thickness burn deliberately in some techniques and accidentally in others, and an untreated burn on an elderly or diabetic patient becomes a chronic ulcer.
**Modern reading.** A burn that has not healed in two weeks needs reassessment: depth, infection, and the systemic factors that prevent healing — diabetes, peripheral arterial disease, malnutrition, immunosuppression. Management is cleansing, debridement of slough, an appropriate moist dressing, treatment of infection where present, and offloading of pressure; a deep burn needs excision and grafting. Ash of fur is sterile after calcination, which is better than nothing, but it is an inert powder on a wound bed and does not promote healing. This is also a caution about the technique itself: moxibustion burns are preventable, and a non-healing one should not be treated with another traditional topical but referred.
1.21.5 Rabbit Droppings 屎
譯 1.21.5.1 Source원문
一名玩月砂. 治瘡及痔. 《本草》
Translation영역
One name for it is moon-gazing sand. It treats sores and haemorrhoids.
Clinical note임상 주석
**一名玩月砂 is the book glossing its own leaf name again**, and the name is worth keeping: 玩月砂, moon-gazing sand, because the rabbit was believed to conceive by gazing at the moon — the same piece of natural history that the headword's third passage draws on when it says the young come out of the mouth. The Chinese materia medica also calls it 望月砂. The site's materia medica carries this leaf as 兎屎 (tosi, Leporis Faeces) with two ingredient lines.
**Modern reading.** Rabbit droppings are a dry pelleted herbivore faeces, almost entirely undigested plant fibre, and that is the one reason the name 砂, sand, was apt. Applied to sores and haemorrhoids it is faecal material on broken skin: the tetanus mechanism described at 1.15.16 applies, and so does bacterial contamination of an open wound. *Encephalitozoon cuniculi* and *Eimeria* are shed in rabbit faeces, and a wild rabbit's droppings carry the tularaemia exposure of 1.21.1. Sores and haemorrhoids as at 1.18.4 and 1.18.11.
1.21.6 The Jumping Hare 蹶免
譯 1.21.6.1 Source원문
北方有跳免, 前足寸餘, 後足幾尺, 行則用後足跳, 一躍數尺, 止則蹶然仆地. 爾雅所謂蹶免, 亦曰蛩蛩駏驉. 《本草》
Translation영역
In the north there is a leaping hare whose forelegs are a little over an inch and whose hind legs are nearly a foot; when it travels it uses the hind legs to leap, clearing several feet at a bound, and when it stops it tumbles over on the ground. This is what the *Erya* calls the *gwolto*, also called *gonggong geogeo*.
Clinical note임상 주석
**This leaf is not a drug and not a part of a rabbit. It is a lexical entry**, and it is the clearest case of its kind in my share — there is no 性味, no 主治, no preparation, nothing but an identification and two citations. The name does not occur anywhere in the site's formula database, and nothing is proposed for the materia medica from it.
What is being described is recognisable: forelegs an inch or so, hind legs enormously longer, locomotion by bounding several feet at a time, and a collapse at the stop. That is a **jerboa** — *Allactaga* or a related genus of the Mongolian and Central Asian steppe — or possibly a jird or spring hare; the disproportion of the limbs and the ricochetal gait are diagnostic of the group, and 北方, the north, places it on the steppe beyond the Chinese frontier. 蹶然仆地, tumbling over when it halts, is what a bipedal saltatorial rodent looks like to an observer used to quadrupeds.
The two authorities are both literary. The *Erya*, the oldest Chinese lexicon, supplies the name 蹶免; 蛩蛩駏驉 is a compound from the same stratum of texts, a pair of fabulous mutually-dependent beasts of the north that later writers identified with real steppe animals. So the leaf records a philological identification — "the northern jumping animal the *Erya* names" — rather than a medicine, and the *Bencao* has carried it along because the character 免 is in the name.
It belongs here as a reminder that this chapter is a work of natural history as much as a pharmacopoeia, and that not every headword under it is something anyone proposed to give a patient.
1.22 Male Dog's Penis 牡狗隂莖
Leaf 051b carries two collation lines. The second, 개의 : 가ᄒᆡ(초간본), belongs to this hyangmyeong: the Kyujanggak transcription writes 수개의음ᄀᆡᆼ, reading 수개 + 의 ("of the male dog"), where the first printing has 수가ᄒᆡ. 가ᄒᆡ is the sixteenth-century form of 개, dog, so the first printing's reading is 수가ᄒᆡ 음ᄀᆡᆼ, "male-dog penis", with the animal's name in its older shape and no genitive particle. The later form folds 가ᄒᆡ into 개 and then supplies 의, which is how the transcription's 개의 arises. The locus is certain — 개의 occurs once on the leaf. The other line on this footer, 本 : 夲(초간본), points at a 本 standing before this one in the text and therefore falls in 1.21; see the report.
譯 1.22.1 Source원문
性平, 味醎, 無毒. 主傷中絶陽, 隂痿不起, 令強熱大, 生子, 除女子帶下十二疾. 《本草》
Translation영역
Its nature is balanced, its flavour salty, and it is without toxicity. It governs damage to the centre with severance of the yang, and yin wilt that will not rise; it makes the member strong, hot and large, brings about the begetting of children, and removes the twelve diseases of women's vaginal discharge.
Clinical note임상 주석
This is the headword that carries the dog through the chapter, and thirteen leaves hang beneath it — flesh, blood, skull, brain, milk, tooth, heart, kidney, liver, gall, the four feet, the white dog's dung, and the bezoar. In the materia medica of this site the drug is registered under the formulary's name, 黃狗外腎, and exactly two formulas call for it, each spelling it differently: 益壽固眞丹 of the 新方 writes 黃狗陰莖, three or five of them roasted in butter, standing in for seal genitalia where that is not to be had; and 續嗣丹 of the 醫學入門 writes 黃狗外腎, two pairs roasted in butter, alongside placenta. The book's own second name for it is given in the next passage. Across the whole dog group the formulary is thin — two formulas here, two for the skull, three for the gall, one for the bezoar and one for the tooth, and nothing at all for the other eight leaves.
傷中絶陽 is damage to the centre with the yang cut off, and 隂痿不起 is erectile failure; the drug is chosen for the organ it came from, which is the plainest form of the like-for-like reasoning in this chapter. 帶下十二疾 is the standard set of twelve gynaecological discharge disorders.
**Modern reading.** Nothing here is in use and nothing here should be. Three things have to be said about the whole dog group, and they are said once, here.
**Rabies.** Four of the thirteen leaves use dog tissue raw or fresh — the brain at 1.22.4, the hot blood at 1.22.2, the milk at 1.22.5, the tooth at 1.22.6 — and one of them, 1.22.7, is given specifically for the bite of a mad dog. Rabies virus is present in the saliva and concentrated in central nervous tissue; brain is the highest-titre material in the animal. Once clinical rabies begins, the case fatality rate is effectively 100 per cent, with a handful of survivors ever recorded. The only intervention that works is post-exposure prophylaxis before symptoms: immediate and thorough washing of the wound with soap and water, rabies immunoglobulin infiltrated into the wound where indicated, and the vaccine series. There is no treatment after onset. Any contact with a dog's brain, blood or saliva that could have carried the virus is a post-exposure prophylaxis question, to be decided the same day, and no part of this section bears on it. The book's own warning at 1.22.1 shows that the compilers knew the clinical picture in the animal; see the note there.
**Other infection.** Dog tissue also carries *Echinococcus granulosus* and *E. multilocularis*, *Toxocara canis*, *Capnocytophaga canimorsus*, *Campylobacter*, *Salmonella* and *Brucella canis*. The dung at 1.22.12 and the raw milk at 1.22.5 are the worst of these leaves on that count.
**Law and animal welfare.** This section treats a dog as a carcass to be taken apart, and three bodies of law bear on it in Korea today. The Animal Protection Act (동물보호법) governs killing and cruelty and carries criminal penalties. In January 2024 the National Assembly passed a special act prohibiting the raising, slaughter and distribution of dogs for food (개의 식용 목적의 사육·도살·유통 등 금지에 관한 특별법); it was promulgated the following month with a grace period of roughly three years before the slaughter and distribution prohibitions take full effect, so the ban was legislated in 2024 and comes fully into force in the latter 2020s. I am confident of the 2024 enactment and of the structure of a transitional period; **I am not confident of the exact commencement dates or of the penalty figures, and anyone who needs them should read the statute rather than this note.** Separately, veterinary and food-hygiene law governs what may be sold as a drug at all, and none of these preparations may be. Nothing in this chapter authorises obtaining any of it.
Translating the section is not endorsing it. The 1613 text is the record, and the record is kept whole.
譯 1.22.2 Source원문
一名狗精. 六月上伏日取, 隂乾百日. 《本草》
Translation영역
One of its names is 狗精, dog essence. It is taken on the first dog-day of the sixth month and dried in the shade for a hundred days.
Clinical note임상 주석
伏日, the dog days of summer, recur through this section as the collection date — here, at the tooth in 1.22.6, and at the gall in 1.22.10, which specifies 上伏日, the first of the three. The reasoning is calendrical and homophonic rather than material: the 伏 days are the days of the dog. 隂乾百日, a hundred days' shade-drying, is the one part of the preparation that does anything, since it dehydrates the tissue past the point where most bacteria grow; it does not inactivate a prion and it is not a reliable virucidal process.
1.22.1 Dog Flesh 肉
譯 1.22.1.1 Source원문
性温一云煖, 味醎酸, 無毒一云有毒. 主安五藏, 補五勞七傷, 補血脉, 厚腸胃, 塡骨髓, 煖腰膝, 起陽道, 益氣力. 《本草》
Translation영역
Its nature is warm — one source says mild-warm — its flavour salty and sour, and it is without toxicity — one source says it has toxicity. It governs the quieting of the five viscera, supplements the five taxations and seven damages, supplements the blood vessels, thickens the intestines and stomach, fills the bone marrow, warms the lumbus and knees, raises the yang pathway and boosts the strength of the qi.
Clinical note임상 주석
**The two interlinear glosses contradict the line they sit in.** 無毒 is followed immediately by 一云有毒, "one source says it has toxicity", in the same sentence; the chapter does not resolve it and neither should the translation. The same leaf carries three more positions the book sets against each other, in the passages below. The drug is registered in the materia medica of this site as 黃狗肉, yellow dog meat, which is the next passage's grading written into the name.
譯 1.22.1.2 Translation영역
A yellow male is best; white and black ones come after.
Clinical note임상 주석
The grading by coat colour is five-phase reasoning — yellow to earth, earth to the spleen and stomach, and this leaf's indications are 厚腸胃 and 補五勞 — and it is the reason the entry in the materia medica of this site is named 黃狗肉 rather than 狗肉. Coat colour is a single-locus pigmentation trait and says nothing about the composition of muscle.
譯 1.22.1.3 Translation영역
Of late people drain off the blood before eating it, which in fact does not benefit a person.
譯 1.22.1.4 Source원문
肥者血亦香美, 何要去血? 去血則都無效矣. 《本草》
Translation영역
In a fat animal the blood too is fragrant and good — why should it need draining? Drain the blood and the whole effect is lost.
Clinical note임상 주석
**The book argues against the practice of its own day.** 比來, "of late", marks a contemporary custom, and the text rejects it twice over: draining the blood does no good, and draining it destroys the effect entirely. The rhetorical 何要去血 is the compiler's voice carried through the 本草 quotation, and this is the only place in my three sections where the text is visibly annoyed.
**Modern reading.** The practice the book is attacking is the one that reduces risk. Blood is where *Brucella*, *Salmonella* and rabies virus are carried in quantity, and the retained blood that this passage insists on is the part of the preparation that most needs removing. The passage is worth keeping precisely because it shows the direction the old reasoning pushed: toward the fresher, bloodier, less-processed material.
譯 1.22.1.5 Source원문
春月目赤鼻燥欲狂者, 不可食. 《本草》
Translation영역
In the spring months an animal whose eyes are red and whose nose is dry and that is about to go mad must not be eaten.
Clinical note임상 주석
**This is the most valuable single sentence in my part of the chapter.** It is a prodromal description of rabies in the dog, written as a food prohibition: red eyes, a dry nose, and the behavioural change that precedes frank madness — 欲狂, "about to go mad". The seasonal framing is right for the historical epidemiology of canine rabies, which peaks with the spring breeding and roaming season. The compilers could evidently recognise a rabid dog before it was obviously rabid, and they wrote the recognition into the chapter as a contraindication.
Set it beside two other places in this section and the picture is complete: 1.22.7 gives the dog's heart for the bite of a mad dog, 狂犬咬, so the disease in humans was known and attributed to the bite; and 1.22.13 says the bezoar is found in dogs that bark at the moon and go mad, and is got from the belly of a 癩狗 — that is, the chapter tells the reader to open a mad dog to obtain a drug. **The book therefore holds, at once, that a mad dog must not be eaten, that its bite causes disease, and that it should be dissected for its bezoar.** The third of those is the one that would kill the practitioner.
**Modern reading.** 目赤鼻燥欲狂 in a dog in 2026 is a notifiable-disease question and a call to the municipal veterinary authority, not a culinary one. Do not handle the animal. Rabies virus is in the saliva and the nervous tissue; mucous membrane or broken-skin contact with either is an exposure. Post-exposure prophylaxis — wound washing, immunoglobulin where indicated, vaccine series — is effective before symptoms and useless after, and once encephalitic or paralytic rabies has begun, the case fatality rate is effectively 100 per cent. Korea has had no human case for about two decades and animal rabies has been pushed back by oral vaccine baiting in the northern provinces, but the exposure risk abroad is high and the arithmetic of a missed prophylaxis is absolute. **I have not tried to give the most recent Korean case or surveillance figures here; the national authority publishes them and they change.**
1.22.2 Dog's Blood 血
譯 1.22.2.1 Translation영역
Its nature is warm, its flavour salty, and it is without toxicity.
譯 1.22.2.2 Translation영역
A white dog's blood governs withdrawal-mania disease and difficult delivery.
譯 1.22.2.3 Source원문
黑狗血, 主産難橫生. 皆取熱血飮之. 《本草》
Translation영역
A black dog's blood governs difficult delivery with transverse presentation. In both cases the hot blood is taken and drunk.
Clinical note임상 주석
皆取熱血飮之 — the blood is drunk hot, straight from the animal, which is as raw as any preparation in this chapter gets. The colour-coding is the same five-phase device as the coat grading at 1.22.1, here with white and black distinguishing the indication rather than the quality. 橫生 is transverse or shoulder presentation.
**Modern reading.** Fresh animal blood drunk warm is the highest-risk route in the dog group: rabies virus is viraemic and present in blood and saliva at the time the animal is bled, and the handling itself brings hands and mouth into contact with both. *Brucella canis*, *Salmonella*, *Campylobacter* and *Capnocytophaga canimorsus* travel the same way. **Transverse presentation in labour is an obstetric emergency** — the management is external cephalic version where appropriate or caesarean section, and shoulder presentation at term with ruptured membranes risks cord prolapse and uterine rupture. A warm drink of any kind is a delay measured in the minutes that matter. Acute mania needs a psychiatric assessment and, where organic, a cause found.
1.22.3 Dog's Skull 頭骨
譯 1.22.3.1 Source원문
性平. 主久痢勞痢及崩中帶下, 血痢, 金瘡止血. 黃狗頭骨燒灰服.
Translation영역
Its nature is balanced. It governs enduring dysentery and taxation dysentery, and flooding and vaginal discharge, bloody dysentery, and the staunching of bleeding in a metal wound. A yellow dog's skull is burnt to ash and taken.
譯 1.22.3.2 Source원문
白狗骨, 療瘡瘻及妬乳癕腫, 燒灰用. 《本草》
Translation영역
A white dog's bone treats sores and fistula and the welling abscess and swelling of 妬乳; it is burnt to ash and used.
Clinical note임상 주석
黃狗頭骨 is registered in the materia medica of this site and two formulas call for it: 生肌散 of the 精要 and 平肌散 of the 直指 both use it where dragon bone is not to be had, 無則狗頭骨代之, and the second writes 老狗頭骨(煆), an old dog's skull, calcined. Both are powders for a sore that will not close. I have left `herb:` empty here because the leaf name is the bare 頭骨 and the checker cannot reach 黃狗頭骨 from 牡狗隂莖 + 頭骨; the pair is in the report. 妬乳 is mastitis of the nursing breast — literally the "jealous breast". The two bones are graded by coat colour again, yellow against white, with different indications.
**Modern reading.** 燒灰, calcination to ash, is worth noting on its own: burning destroys rabies virus, bacteria and parasites completely, so the burnt-bone leaves of this section are the ones that are microbiologically safe. What is left is calcium phosphate — hydroxyapatite with the organic matrix burnt out — which is inert and supplies nothing that acts on dysentery, uterine bleeding or a wound. Chronic bloody diarrhoea needs stool studies and endoscopy; inflammatory bowel disease, amoebiasis and colorectal cancer all present this way. Abnormal uterine bleeding needs a cause found. Mastitis needs continued milk drainage and, where infective, an antibiotic active against *Staphylococcus aureus*, with ultrasound if an abscess is forming. A bleeding wound needs pressure and closure.
1.22.4 Dog's Brain 腦
譯 1.22.4.1 Source원문
主下部𧏾瘡, 鼻中息肉. 《本草》
Translation영역
It governs erosive sores of the lower body and polyps in the nose.
Clinical note임상 주석
𧏾 is written for 䘌; 下部䘌瘡 are the eroding, ulcerating lesions of the anus and genitals. The brain is applied, not burnt — there is no 燒灰 here and no cooking.
**Modern reading. This is the single most dangerous leaf in the dog group and it must not be used.** Central nervous tissue carries the highest titre of rabies virus in an infected animal; brain is the tissue laboratories use for diagnosis because that is where the virus is. Handling raw dog brain with hands that have any break in the skin, and applying it to an ulcerated mucosal surface, is a direct inoculation route. If it has happened, it is a post-exposure prophylaxis decision for the same day — washing, rabies immunoglobulin where indicated, and the vaccine series — because prophylaxis works only before symptoms and clinical rabies is effectively always fatal.
Eroding anogenital ulceration has causes that are findable and treatable: syphilis, herpes simplex, chancroid, lymphogranuloma venereum, Behçet disease, Crohn disease, and squamous carcinoma. It needs examination, serology, swabs and often biopsy. Nasal polyps are managed with intranasal corticosteroids and, where obstructive, endoscopic surgery, and a unilateral polyp in an adult needs imaging and histology because it may not be a polyp.
1.22.5 Bitch's Milk 乳汁
譯 1.22.5.1 Source원문
主十年靑盲. 取白犬乳汁, 注目中. 《本草》
Translation영역
It governs blue blindness of ten years' standing. A white bitch's milk is taken and instilled into the eye.
Clinical note임상 주석
靑盲 is loss of sight with the eye looking outwardly normal — the classical category that covers optic atrophy, glaucoma and retinal disease. 十年, ten years, is the book conceding that the condition is long established, and still prescribing for it. A white animal again, as at 1.22.3.
**A checker trap belongs here.** The alias table of this site carries the bare string 乳汁 against `inyu`, human milk, so the automatic name check would accept `herb: inyu` for this leaf and for 1.23.19 without complaint. It would be wrong in both — a bitch's milk and a sow's milk are not human milk. Both are left empty and both are in the report.
**Modern reading.** Unpasteurised milk of any species carries *Brucella*, *Mycobacterium bovis*, *Listeria*, *Campylobacter*, *Salmonella* and Shiga-toxin *E. coli*; instilling it into an eye adds bacterial and fungal keratitis to that list, and the ocular surface is unforgiving of contaminated fluid. Long-standing visual loss needs a diagnosis before anything else: optic atrophy, chronic glaucoma, macular degeneration and diabetic retinopathy are distinguished by examination, fields, tonometry and imaging, and some of them are still treatable when the sight loss is old. Nothing may be put into a blind or failing eye on this authority.
1.22.6 Dog's Tooth 齒
譯 1.22.6.1 Source원문
性平. 主癲癎及小兒客忤. 伏日取之, 燒灰用. 《本草》
Translation영역
Its nature is balanced. It governs withdrawal-epilepsy and fright-offence in small children. It is taken on a dog-day and burnt to ash for use.
Clinical note임상 주석
狗齒 is an ingredient elsewhere in the book, in the four-tooth powder of the paediatric chapter: 人齒ㆍ猫齒ㆍ狗齒ㆍ猪齒 各等分, four kinds of tooth in equal parts, calcined in a sand crucible and given in hot wine for pox that will not erupt. That leaf has no ingredient list because none of the four teeth has an entry in the materia medica of this site, and 猪齒 at 1.23.18 is the same case. Both are in the report as entries to establish. 客忤 is the sudden fright-illness of infants, attributed to an encounter with something strange. 伏日 again — the dog-day, as at 1.22 and 1.22.10.
**Modern reading.** 燒灰 makes this leaf microbiologically safe and pharmacologically empty: calcined tooth is hydroxyapatite with the organic matrix burnt away, and it is inert. Epilepsy is diagnosed clinically with EEG and imaging and treated with anticonvulsants chosen by seizure type; a first seizure in a child needs a cause sought and a febrile seizure distinguished from an epilepsy. The four-tooth leaf states its own reasoning — black belongs to the kidney, teeth belong to the kidney, therefore teeth drive out kidney toxin — which is a chain of correspondences and not an observation of the material.
1.22.7 Dog's Heart 心
譯 1.22.7.1 Source원문
主憂恚氣, 療狂犬咬. 《本草》
Translation영역
It governs the qi of grief and rage, and treats the bite of a mad dog.
Clinical note임상 주석
**狂犬咬 is rabies, and this is the leaf that treats it with the dog.** The like-for-like reasoning is explicit: the madness came from the dog, so the dog's heart answers it. Nothing is said about burning or cooking, so the heart is used fresh. The chapter is consistent in attributing the human disease to the bite — which is correct — and in believing it treatable afterwards, which is not.
**Modern reading. This is the most consequential error in my part of the chapter, and it must be stated without hedging.** Rabies, once clinical signs appear, is effectively always fatal; a handful of survivors have ever been documented and intensive-care protocols for established disease have not produced reproducible survival. What works, and works almost completely, is post-exposure prophylaxis given before symptoms begin:
1. **Wash the wound at once**, thoroughly, with soap and running water for fifteen minutes, then apply a virucidal agent such as povidone-iodine. This step alone substantially reduces risk and is the one thing a bitten person can do immediately.
2. **Seek care the same day.** Rabies immunoglobulin infiltrated into and around the wound is indicated for category III exposures and for previously unvaccinated people, and it must be given with the first vaccine dose.
3. **Complete the vaccine series** on the schedule the treating authority uses. Do not stop it because the animal looks well; the animal is observed or tested, and the course is stopped only on that evidence.
Suturing may be deferred, tetanus cover and antibiotic prophylaxis for the bacterial flora of a dog bite — *Pasteurella*, *Staphylococcus*, anaerobes, *Capnocytophaga* — are decided separately. **A bite from an unknown or ill-seeming dog, anywhere rabies circulates, is an emergency on the day it happens.** The grief-and-rage indication, 憂恚氣, is a separate matter and belongs to the psychiatric register; it is where organ-for-organ reasoning is at its most visible, a heart for the seat of the spirit.
1.22.8 Dog's Kidney 腎
譯 1.22.8.1 Source원문
主産後腎勞如瘧, 又主腎虛冷. 《本草》
Translation영역
It governs postpartum kidney taxation with malaria-like alternation, and also kidney vacuity cold.
Clinical note임상 주석
腎勞如瘧 is a postpartum fever with rigors and sweats that alternate as in malaria. Organ for organ again.
**Modern reading. Fever with rigors after childbirth is puerperal sepsis until proved otherwise**, and it is a leading direct cause of maternal death worldwide. It needs cultures, prompt broad-spectrum intravenous antibiotics, and a source found — endometritis, retained products, wound or episiotomy infection, mastitis, pyelonephritis, septic pelvic thrombophlebitis. Malaria itself, where endemic or imported, is excluded by blood film or rapid test, and postpartum malaria is more severe. This is not a tonic situation. Raw dog kidney carries the same infection risks as the rest of the group.
1.22.9 Dog's Liver 肝
譯 1.22.9.1 Translation영역
It governs leg qi assailing the heart.
Clinical note임상 주석
脚氣攻心 is the fulminant form of 脚氣 in which the swelling and weakness of the legs ascends and the patient becomes breathless and collapses. 脚氣 appears again under the pig's liver at 1.23.9, which is one of several places where the dog and pig leaves share an indication.
**Modern reading.** 脚氣攻心 maps closely onto wet beriberi — thiamine deficiency with high-output cardiac failure, peripheral oedema and dyspnoea — which is a true emergency and responds to intravenous thiamine within hours. It is still seen in alcohol dependence, after bariatric surgery, in hyperemesis gravidarum and with prolonged unsupplemented parenteral nutrition, and giving glucose before thiamine can precipitate it. The differential also includes heart failure from other causes and, for the leg findings alone, peripheral neuropathy. Raw liver of any carnivore is not a thiamine source worth the risk and carries the group's infection profile.
1.22.10 Dog's Gall 膽
譯 1.22.10.1 Source원문
性平, 味苦, 有小毒. 主明目, 去眼中膿水, 又去腸中膿水, 療鼻齆瘜肉, 痂瘍惡瘡, 又治撲損金瘡瘀血.
Translation영역
Its nature is balanced, its flavour bitter, and it has slight toxicity. It governs the brightening of the eyes and removes purulent fluid from the eye, and also removes purulent fluid from the intestines; it treats nasal obstruction with polyps, scabbed sores and malign sores, and it also treats static blood from a blow, injury or metal wound.
譯 1.22.10.2 Source원문
上伏日採. 熱酒調下, 久陳瘀血盡下. 《本草》
Translation영역
It is gathered on the first dog-day. Stirred down in hot wine, it brings out long-stagnant static blood completely.
Clinical note임상 주석
狗膽 is registered in the materia medica of this site and three formulas use it — 香靈丸 of the 本事, where 五靈脂 is made into pills with 狗膽汁; 狗膽丸 of the 醫學入門, named for it; and 狗寶丸 of the 丹心, which takes 黑狗膽(臘月者), a black dog's gall gathered in the twelfth month, together with the bezoar of 1.22.13. 犬膽 appears as the variant name in 以雄犬膽汁和丸, "made into pills with the bile of a male dog". This makes the gall the best-attested leaf in the dog group. I have left `herb:` empty because the leaf name is the bare 膽 and the checker cannot reach 狗膽 from 牡狗隂莖 + 膽; the pair is in the report. **Note that the book itself calls the gall 有小毒, slightly toxic**, which is the only leaf in the dog group with a toxicity rating of its own and sits oddly beside the 無毒 of the headword and of the flesh.
**Modern reading.** The toxicity rating is in the right direction. Bile acids are cytotoxic membrane detergents; ingested in quantity they cause vomiting, diarrhoea and hepatic injury, and animal-gall poisoning is a recognised clinical entity. Instilled into an eye they are directly injurious to the corneal epithelium and carry bacterial and fungal keratitis — purulent discharge from an eye is bacterial conjunctivitis, keratitis or endophthalmitis, and the last two threaten sight within days. Purulent material in the stool means invasive colitis or an abscess and needs stool studies and imaging. Nasal polyps are managed as at 1.22.4. A bruise or crush needs the injury assessed, not a blood-moving draught, and hot wine on top of a fresh injury adds vasodilation and impaired judgement. Not in use.
1.22.11 The Four Feet and Hooves 四脚蹄
譯 1.22.11.1 Source원문
性平. 煮汁飮, 下乳汁. 《本草》
Translation영역
Its nature is balanced. The liquor is boiled and drunk, and it brings down the milk.
Clinical note임상 주석
A galactagogue by boiled decoction, which pairs with the pig's four feet at 1.23.21 and the wild boar's fat at 1.24.2 — three galactagogues in my three sections, all of them from feet or fat. 煮汁 means this leaf is cooked, which removes the infection hazard that the raw dog leaves carry.
**Modern reading.** Milk supply is governed by the frequency and completeness of milk removal, so the effective interventions are latch and positioning assessment, feeding or expressing more often, and treating the things that suppress supply — retained placenta, thyroid disease, significant blood loss, some medications. Galactagogue drugs such as domperidone are adjuncts with a modest and debated effect and real cardiac cautions, not a first step. A collagen broth is nourishing and inert.
1.22.12 White Dog's Dung 白狗屎
譯 1.22.12.1 Translation영역
It governs nail-sores and fistulous sores and the various toxins.
譯 1.22.12.2 Source원문
今治心腹積聚及落傷瘀血不下, 燒存性和酒服, 神效. 《俗方》
Translation영역
Nowadays it treats accumulations and gatherings in the heart and abdomen, and static blood from a fall that will not come down: burnt with its nature retained, mixed with wine and taken, with marvellous effect.
Clinical note임상 주석
《俗方》 marks this as local Korean practice rather than a Chinese materia medica citation, and 今, "nowadays", dates it to the compilers' own time. 燒存性 is charring that stops short of full ash so that the material's "nature" is kept — which matters here, because unlike the 燒灰 leaves this one is deliberately **not** burnt to completion. 丁瘡 is written for 疔瘡, the deep furuncle.
**Modern reading.** Carnivore faeces is the worst material in the dog group after the brain. It carries *Toxocara canis* eggs — visceral and ocular larva migrans, the latter a cause of childhood blindness — and *Echinococcus granulosus* and *E. multilocularis*, whose eggs are infective directly from dog faeces and cause cystic and alveolar echinococcosis, diseases that present years later as liver or lung masses and are managed with albendazole and surgery. *Campylobacter*, *Salmonella*, *Giardia* and *Cryptosporidium* travel the same route. **Charring that preserves the "nature" also preserves the risk**: incomplete burning does not reliably destroy helminth ova, and this is one of the few places where the preparation method named in the book makes the material more hazardous rather than less. A furuncle needs incision and drainage; a fistula needs imaging and surgery; an abdominal mass needs a diagnosis. Not in use, and not to be obtained.
1.22.13 Dog Bezoar 狗寳
譯 1.22.13.1 Source원문
膽中黃謂之狗寶. 治肺經風毒, 痰火癕疽惡瘡. 犬吠月發狂者多有之, 必自採乃眞. 用乾豆腐作竅, 入黃於中, 合定水煮半日, 細研用之. 《入門》
Translation영역
The yellow in the gall bladder is what is called 狗寶, dog's treasure. It treats wind toxin of the lung channel, and phlegm-fire welling abscess, flat abscess and malign sores. Dogs that bark at the moon and go mad often have it; one must gather it oneself for it to be genuine. A hole is made in dried bean curd, the yellow is put inside, the curd is closed up and boiled in water for half a day, and it is ground fine for use.
譯 1.22.13.2 Translation영역
狗寶 is obtained from the belly of a diseased dog.
Clinical note임상 주석
**This is a concretion, not a body part**, and it is the third of four such stones in the chapter: 牛黃 at 1.3 is the cattle gallstone, 猪黃 at 1.23.23 and 野猪黃 at 1.24 are the same material in the domestic pig and the wild boar, and this is the dog's. The book defines it in its own first clause — 膽中黃謂之狗寶, the yellow in the gall is what is called dog's treasure — so the identification is the text's, not an inference. 狗寶 is registered in the materia medica of this site and **one** formula uses it — 狗寶丸 of the 丹心, which is named after it and which also takes a black dog's gall gathered in the twelfth month. So the drug the book calls a treasure, and warns the reader against buying adulterated, has a single prescription to its name.
The bean-curd preparation is unusual enough to be worth reading closely: a cavity is cut in dried bean curd, the stone is sealed inside, and the whole is boiled for half a day. 合定 is the closing and fixing of the curd around it. The curd is a container that lets the stone be heated in a water bath without being lost or scorched, and the long gentle boil would soften a calcified concretion enough to grind. 必自採乃眞 — gather it yourself or it is not genuine — is an adulteration warning, which tells us the material was valuable enough to be faked.
**Modern reading, and this one has two halves.**
*The material.* Gallbladder and biliary concretions in animals are calcium bilirubinate, cholesterol and calcium carbonate in varying proportions, with a protein matrix. Bovine 牛黃 has been studied because it is commercially valuable, and the bile pigments and bile acids in it are real compounds with real effects on bile flow; nothing comparable has been shown for canine bezoars, and the indication here — lung-channel wind toxin with suppurative sores — has no route of action that the composition supports. Deep suppurative lesions need drainage and an antibiotic directed at the organism.
*The collection.* **The book tells the reader to open the abdomen of a mad dog.** 犬吠月發狂者多有之 says the stone is found in dogs that bark at the moon and go mad; 癩狗 is a mangy or diseased dog; 必自採 instructs the reader to do the gathering personally. Taken together, this is an instruction to dissect an animal with neurological signs, by hand, at the point of maximum viral load. Rabies virus is in the saliva and nervous tissue of such an animal and survives for a time in fresh tissue; the dissection route is a documented mode of human infection and is why rabies diagnosis is done under containment. Post-exposure prophylaxis before symptoms is effective; after onset, rabies is effectively always fatal. **Notice also that the chapter has already forbidden eating such an animal at 1.22.1 — 春月目赤鼻燥欲狂者不可食 — so the book holds the two positions at once: do not eat the mad dog, and do cut it open for the stone.** That contradiction is the most clinically important thing in this section, and it is the book's own.
1.23 Pig's Testicles 豚卵
돋ᄐᆡ불 돼지의 불알 a pig's testicles
譯 1.23.1 Source원문
性温, 味甘, 無毒. 除奔豚, 五癃邪氣, 攣縮及驚癎癲疾, 鬼疰蠱毒.
Translation영역
Its nature is warm, its flavour sweet, and it is without toxicity. It eliminates running-piglet qi, the evil qi of the five dribbling-urination disorders, hypertonic contracture, fright epilepsy and withdrawal-mania disease, and ghost-infixation and 蠱 toxin.
譯 1.23.2 Source원문
一名豚顚. 隂乾藏之, 勿令敗. 《本草》
Translation영역
One of its names is 豚顚. It is dried in the shade and stored so that it does not spoil.
Clinical note임상 주석
**This is the largest headword in the chapter and one of the largest in the whole 湯液篇: twenty-six leaves hang beneath it**, from the flesh and the lard through every viscus to the dung, the ear wax and the skin. The headword organ itself is almost unused — neither 豚卵 nor 豚顚 nor 猪卵 appears anywhere in the formulary — so the pig enters the book through its leaves, not through this entry. `herb:` is left empty on that measurement: a name with no use as an ingredient has no business in a table that grew out of formula composition.
奔豚 is the running-piglet disorder, a surging sensation that rises from the lower abdomen to the chest and throat; the pairing of a pig's part with a pig-named disease is the chapter's homophonic reasoning at its clearest, and it is reasoning about the name rather than about the material. 五癃 are the five dribbling-urination disorders.
**Modern reading, for the whole pig group.** The domestic pig is food, and properly cooked pork is safe and nutritionally ordinary. Everything that follows is about the raw and the offal, because that is what the chapter prescribes.
**1. *Taenia solium*.** Undercooked pork carrying cysticerci gives intestinal taeniasis — a mild infection in itself. The serious disease comes one step later: the person with the adult tapeworm sheds eggs, and ingestion of those eggs, by themselves or by others through the faecal-oral route, produces **cysticercosis**, with cysts in muscle, eye and brain. **Neurocysticercosis is one of the leading preventable causes of acquired epilepsy worldwide**, and that chain begins with eating raw or undercooked pork. Korea, through pig husbandry and sanitation, has pushed it to rarity, but it remains common across Latin America, sub-Saharan Africa and parts of Asia. Treatment is albendazole with corticosteroids and antiepileptics, decided on imaging, and is not simple.
**2. *Trichinella*.** Raw or undercooked pork and, far more so, wild boar, transmit *Trichinella* — fever, periorbital oedema, myalgia and eosinophilia, and in heavy infection myocarditis or encephalitis. Freezing kills *T. spiralis* in pork but **does not reliably kill the freeze-resistant species found in game**, which is why 1.24 is worse than this section.
**3. Hepatitis E.** HEV genotypes 3 and 4 are zoonotic and **raw or undercooked pig liver and offal are the classic vehicle**, with documented foodborne outbreaks in Japan and Korea from pig liver and wild boar. It is usually self-limiting, but it is severe in pregnancy — mortality in the third trimester is reported in the tens of per cent — and it causes chronic infection in the immunosuppressed. The liver at 1.23.9, the blood at 1.23.3, the brain at 1.23.6 and the marrow at 1.23.7 are the leaves this bears on.
Also present: *Salmonella*, *Yersinia enterocolitica*, *Campylobacter*, *Balantidium coli* and *Ascaris suum* in the dung, *Toxoplasma gondii* in undercooked muscle, *Streptococcus suis* in those who handle carcasses, and *Brucella suis* in feral and wild animals. **Cooking pork through to 71 °C or higher, with a rest, inactivates all of the parasitic hazards and the bacterial ones.** The leaves of this section that boil, roast or calcine the material are safe on that count; the ones that do not are named in their own notes.
1.23.1 Pork 肉
譯 1.23.1.1 Source원문
性寒一云凉, 味苦, 微毒. 解熱.
Translation영역
Its nature is cold — one source says cool — its flavour bitter, and it is slightly toxic. It resolves heat.
譯 1.23.1.2 Source원문
療熱閉血脉, 弱筋骨, 虛人肌, 殺藥, 動風, 不可久食.
Translation영역
It treats heat blocking the blood vessels; it weakens the sinews and bones, makes a person's flesh vacuous, kills the action of medicines, and stirs wind. It must not be eaten for long.
譯 1.23.1.3 Translation영역
It treats mercury wind and suppresses the toxicity of elixir minerals.
譯 1.23.1.4 Translation영역
Eating it can make one suddenly fat, and this is because the flesh it builds is vacuous.
譯 1.23.1.5 Source원문
猪, 水畜也. 其味甘美而醎, 其氣微寒, 先入腎. 《本草》
Translation영역
The pig is a water animal. Its flavour is sweet and good yet salty, its qi slightly cold, and it enters the kidney first.
譯 1.23.1.6 Translation영역
When eating pork, remove the brain.
Clinical note임상 주석
猪肉 is registered in the materia medica of this site; I have left `herb:` empty because the leaf name is the bare 肉 under the headword 豚卵 and the checker cannot reach 猪肉 from that pairing, and the pair 豚肉 → `jeoyuk` is in the report.
**The leaf is almost entirely against its own subject**, which is unusual in this chapter. 微毒 — slightly toxic. 弱筋骨, 虛人肌 — it weakens sinew and bone and makes the flesh vacuous. **殺藥** — it kills the action of medicines, which is the formal basis of the dietary prohibition on pork during a course of herbal treatment and is still advised in clinics today. 動風 — it stirs wind. 不可久食 — it must not be eaten for long. The observation at 食能暴肥 is sharper than it looks: the text notices that pork puts weight on quickly and then explains the weight away as 虛肌, vacuous flesh, rather than counting it a benefit.
猪水畜也, the pig as the water animal entering the kidney first, is the doctrinal core of the pig group, and it is repeated almost word for word at 1.23.25 under the pork skin — which is how the 猪膚湯 of the 傷寒論 is justified for a 少陰 disease. 水銀風 is the neurological syndrome of mercury poisoning and 丹石 are the mineral elixirs; pork as an antidote to both is in the same family as the cantharidin antidotes at 1.23.2 and 1.23.12.
**食豚去腦 — remove the brain when eating pork — is contradicted two leaves later**, where 1.23.6 lists the brain as a drug for wind dizziness. The chapter forbids and prescribes the same tissue within four leaves. See the note at 1.23.6.
**Modern reading.** Pork cooked through is safe, and the parasitic and viral hazards of raw pork are set out in full at 1.23. On the specific claims: pork is not an antidote to mercury or to mineral poisoning, and acute mercury or heavy-metal poisoning is managed with decontamination and, where indicated, chelation — dimercaprol, DMPS or succimer according to the metal and the exposure — under toxicological advice. Mercury-containing preparations still circulate in some traditional pharmacy and are a real cause of poisoning. The 殺藥 warning has a modern descendant worth keeping: food genuinely does alter drug handling — grapefruit and CYP3A4, high-fat meals and absorption, vitamin K and warfarin — but not in the way or direction this leaf means.
1.23.2 Lard 肪膏
譯 1.23.2.1 Translation영역
It gladdens the skin; made into a hand salve it prevents chapping and cracking.
譯 1.23.2.2 Source원문
主諸惡瘡癕疽, 殺䖝, 宜煎諸膏藥用.
Translation영역
It governs the various malign sores and welling and flat abscesses, kills worms, and is suitable for rendering into all the salve medicines.
譯 1.23.2.3 Translation영역
It resolves the toxicity of 斑猫 and 芫靑.
譯 1.23.2.4 Source원문
臘月亥日取之, 勿令中水, 經年不壞. 《本草》
Translation영역
It is taken on a boar day in the twelfth month; keep water out of it and it will not spoil for a year.
譯 1.23.2.5 Source원문
又治五疸, 下胞衣, 易産. 《入門》
Translation영역
It also treats the five kinds of jaundice, brings down the placenta and eases delivery.
Clinical note임상 주석
猪脂 is registered in the materia medica of this site and **eighteen formulas use it, which makes it the second most-used drug in my three sections after the gall at 1.23.16** — it is the ointment base of the corpus, exactly as 宜煎諸膏藥用 says. The pair 肪膏 → `jeoji` is in the report, left unlinked because the checker cannot reach 猪脂 from 豚卵 + 肪膏. 臘月亥日, a boar day in the twelfth month, is calendrical reasoning again — the pig's day for the pig's fat — but the instruction attached to it is not: **勿令中水, 經年不壞, keep water out and it keeps for a year, is a correct observation about rancidity and spoilage.** Water in rendered fat permits microbial growth and accelerates hydrolytic rancidity; water-free lard rendered in cold weather genuinely keeps.
斑猫 is *Mylabris*, the blister beetle, and 芫靑 another cantharidin beetle; the same antidote claim appears for the pig's lung at 1.23.12 with 地膽, a third. Three leaves of this section are given as antidotes to cantharidin, which tells us the poisoning was common enough to need them.
**Modern reading.** Lard as an emollient ointment base is the one genuinely sound thing in the pig group. Occlusive lipids reduce transepidermal water loss and are the mainstay of managing chapped and fissured skin; petrolatum and modern emollients do the same job with better stability and without the rancidity and oxidative irritants of animal fat, and a rendered fat is not sterile. It is not an antibacterial, and 主諸惡瘡癕疽 is wrong in a way that matters — an abscess needs incision and drainage, and an occlusive dressing over an undrained collection makes it worse. **Cantharidin poisoning is a medical emergency** — vesicating injury to the gastrointestinal and urinary tract, haematuria, renal failure — managed with decontamination, aggressive supportive care and renal protection; there is no specific antidote and fat does not bind it. Jaundice needs a cause found. A retained placenta needs manual removal with analgesia and antibiotic cover, because the bleeding and the sepsis risk are immediate.
1.23.3 Pig's Blood 血
譯 1.23.3.1 Translation영역
It governs running-piglet qi and the miasmal qi of overseas places.
Clinical note임상 주석
奔豚 again, as at the headword, and on the same homophonic logic — a pig part for the piglet disease. 海外瘴氣 is the miasma of foreign and southern places, the category that covers malaria and the other fevers of travel.
**Modern reading.** Raw pig blood is a vehicle for hepatitis E virus, *Salmonella*, *Yersinia*, *Streptococcus suis* and *Toxoplasma*. Pig blood is eaten in Korea as 선지, which is cooked, and that is the relevant distinction: cooked blood sausage is food, fresh blood is an exposure. **The fevers meant by 瘴氣 are, in the main, malaria** — a diagnosis made by blood film or rapid antigen test within hours, and treated with artemisinin-based combination therapy, or intravenous artesunate for severe disease. *Plasmodium falciparum* malaria kills quickly and a traveller's fever is a same-day investigation. Dengue, typhoid, rickettsial infection and leptospirosis occupy the same clinical space.
1.23.4 Fat of the Mane 鬐膏
譯 1.23.4.1 Translation영역
Its nature is slightly cold. It governs the growing of hair.
Clinical note임상 주석
猪鬐膏 is registered in the materia medica of this site and, like the intestine at 1.23.15, no formula uses it; `herb:` is left empty and the pair 豚鬐膏 → `jeogigo` is in the report. 鬐 is the mane and withers, so this is the fat from the back of the neck, distinguished from the general body fat at 1.23.2 — and the indication follows the site: fat from where the animal's bristles are thickest, for growing hair. Like-for-like reasoning by anatomical location rather than by organ.
**Modern reading.** Androgenetic alopecia responds to topical minoxidil and oral finasteride or dutasteride, with treatments needing months and continued use; alopecia areata is an autoimmune disease managed with corticosteroids and, in severe disease, JAK inhibitors; and hair loss is also the presenting sign of iron deficiency, thyroid disease, telogen effluvium after illness or childbirth, and traction. An occlusive fat on the scalp does nothing for the follicle and promotes folliculitis and seborrhoeic dermatitis.
1.23.5 A Large Pig's Head 大猪頭
譯 1.23.5.1 Source원문
補虛益氣, 去驚癎五痔. 《本草》
Translation영역
It supplements vacuity and boosts the qi, and removes fright epilepsy and the five kinds of pile.
Clinical note임상 주석
**This leaf is a measured negative and worth recording as one.** 猪頭 occurs three times in the formulary and not once as an ingredient: twice it is the name of a formula, 猪頭散, and once it is a story — 人以猪頭爲謝, "people gave a pig's head in thanks", which the formulary's own note identifies as the origin of that name. The formula itself is burnt hornet's nest in croton oil for a recurring boil, and contains no pig. So the words appear in the corpus and the drug does not, which is the trap this project keeps meeting: a word in the text is not an ingredient until the place it stands in has been read. `herb:` is empty and nothing is proposed for the table.
**Modern reading.** Pig's head is food — 돼지머리 is eaten in Korea and is unremarkable, cooked. Haemorrhoids are managed with fibre, fluid and stool softeners first, then with rubber-band ligation or surgery, and rectal bleeding must never be attributed to piles without the colon being examined, because colorectal cancer presents the same way. Epilepsy is managed as at 1.22.6.
1.23.6 Pig's Brain 腦
譯 1.23.6.1 Translation영역
It governs wind dizziness with ringing in the head, and frostbite sores.
Clinical note임상 주석
猪腦髓 is registered in the materia medica of this site though no formula calls for it; `herb:` is empty and the pair 豚腦 → `jeonoesu` is in the report. 腦鳴 is a ringing or roaring felt inside the head rather than in the ear.
**This is the clearest self-contradiction in my three sections.** Four leaves earlier, 1.23.1 ends with 食豚去腦 — when eating pork, remove the brain — and here the brain is the drug. The chapter sets out a prohibition and then prescribes against it within the same headword, and neither leaf acknowledges the other. Taken with the dog's case at 1.22.1 against 1.22.13, the pattern is the same in both animals: the tissue the chapter warns about is the tissue it also gives.
**Modern reading.** Raw pig brain is a route for hepatitis E virus and *Taenia solium*, and brain is among the tissues where HEV is found; it is also the material in the recognised occupational hazard of brain-harvesting work in pork plants. Cooked pig brain is eaten in several cuisines and is, as food, chiefly notable for its cholesterol. Dizziness needs the cause distinguished — benign paroxysmal positional vertigo, vestibular neuritis, Ménière disease, orthostatic hypotension, arrhythmia, anaemia, medication — because the treatments share nothing. Pulsatile or roaring noise in the head warrants examination for a vascular cause, including dural arteriovenous fistula and carotid disease, and one-sided tinnitus needs imaging. Frostbite is managed by rapid rewarming in water at 37–39 °C, analgesia, and avoidance of rubbing and of refreezing, with iloprost or thrombolysis considered for deep injury in the first hours; an applied fat or tissue does nothing and delays the rewarming that decides how much tissue survives.
1.23.7 Pig's Bone Marrow 骨髓
譯 1.23.7.1 Translation영역
Its nature is cold. It governs injury from a blow and malign sores.
Clinical note임상 주석
**This leaf has a measured use and no entry, and it is my one proposal for a new drug.** 猪骨髓 is a genuine ingredient in the formulary: the 瘰癧 version of 蝸牛散, from the 三因, is burnt snail powder worked up with a little calomel and **猪骨髓** to make it spreadable and plastered on a paper patch over the node. The worker who entered that formula left its ingredient list bare and wrote the reason into the record — 猪骨髓 has no herb id, 牛骨髓 and 猪脊髓 are registered but not this. Linking this leaf to 猪脊髓, pig spinal marrow, would be the error this project has met before with 錫 and 錫灰: bone marrow and spinal cord are not the same material. `herb:` is empty and the entry is proposed in the report.
**Modern reading.** Marrow is fat, haematopoietic tissue and collagen, and as a plaster vehicle it does what any fat does. The infection profile of raw pig tissue applies — hepatitis E among the rest. 撲損 needs the injury assessed for fracture and for compartment syndrome; a suppurating sore needs drainage and the organism identified. Cervical lymphadenopathy, the 瘰癧 the formula is for, is tuberculous in a substantial share of cases worldwide and that is a diagnosis to make, by aspiration or biopsy with culture and nucleic-acid testing, and to treat with a full antituberculous regimen — a poultice over tuberculous nodes achieves nothing and loses the time in which the disease is curable.
1.23.8 Pig's Bone 骨
譯 1.23.8.1 Source원문
解諸果毒, 燒灰和水服. 《本草》
Translation영역
It resolves the toxicity of the various fruits; it is burnt to ash, mixed with water and taken.
Clinical note임상 주석
諸果毒 is poisoning from fruit — which in the 本草 categories covers the genuinely toxic kernels and seeds among the fruit drugs as much as spoiled fruit. 燒灰 makes the material sterile and inert.
**Modern reading.** Calcined bone is hydroxyapatite and has no adsorptive capacity worth the name. **The relevant point is that an effective version of this idea exists**: activated charcoal, 50 g in an adult, adsorbs many ingested toxins and is the standard early intervention for a recent significant ingestion where it is indicated and the airway is protected. It is not universal — it does not bind alcohols, metals, lithium or corrosives — and the decision belongs to a poisons centre. Among fruit-kernel poisonings specifically, the one that matters is cyanide from the amygdalin of apricot, peach and bitter almond kernels, which has its own antidotes — hydroxocobalamin, or sodium thiosulfate with a nitrite — and will not wait for anything else. Ash and water is a delay.
1.23.9 Pig's Liver 肝
譯 1.23.9.1 Source원문
性温. 主冷泄久滑赤白, 去濕, 治脚氣. 《本草》
Translation영역
Its nature is warm. It governs cold diarrhoea and enduring slippery stool, red and white, removes dampness, and treats leg qi.
Clinical note임상 주석
猪肝 is registered in the materia medica of this site; `herb:` is empty and the pair 豚肝 → `jeogan` is in the report. 赤白 is the red-and-white stool of dysentery, blood and mucus together. 脚氣 here as under the dog's liver at 1.22.9 — liver for leg qi in both animals.
**Modern reading. This is the hepatitis E leaf, and it is the most specific infection warning in the pig group.** HEV genotypes 3 and 4 are zoonotic and **raw or undercooked pig liver and offal are the classic vehicle** — documented foodborne transmission from pig liver in Japan, from liver sausage in Europe, and from wild boar in Korea and Japan. Most infections are self-limiting, but HEV in the third trimester of pregnancy carries a mortality reported in the tens of per cent, it causes chronic infection and cirrhosis in transplant recipients and others immunosuppressed, and it causes extrahepatic neurological disease. Pig liver must be cooked through; 71 °C or above inactivates the virus. *Taenia solium* and *Trichinella* apply as elsewhere in this section.
On the indication: pig liver is in fact a dense source of haem iron, vitamin A, folate and vitamin B12, so cooked liver is a real treatment for iron and B12 deficiency, which can present with the lassitude this leaf's register would call vacuity. That is worth saying because it is the rare case in this chapter where the material has a nutritional action — and against it, vitamin A in liver is high enough that it is **avoided in pregnancy** because of teratogenic risk. Chronic diarrhoea needs stool studies and, where it persists, endoscopy; wet beriberi is managed as at 1.22.9, with intravenous thiamine before glucose.
1.23.10 Pig's Heart 心
譯 1.23.10.1 Source원문
性熱. 治驚邪驚癎, 補心血不足. 《本草》
Translation영역
Its nature is hot. It treats fright evil and fright epilepsy, and supplements insufficiency of the heart blood.
Clinical note임상 주석
猪心 is registered in the materia medica of this site, and so, separately, is 猪心血, the blood of the pig's heart — the table keeps the organ and its blood as two drugs, which is a distinction the formulary makes and this leaf does not. `herb:` is empty and the pair 豚心 → `jeosim` is in the report. Organ for organ: a heart for the heart blood.
**Modern reading.** Pig heart is muscle; cooked, it is food. Palpitations and fright-states need a cardiac cause excluded — arrhythmia, thyrotoxicosis, anaemia, phaeochromocytoma — before they are managed as anxiety, and an ECG is the first step. 心血不足 overlaps with anaemia, which has a cause that must be found rather than fed; iron deficiency in an adult means looking for blood loss, and in older adults that means looking at the gut.
1.23.11 Pig's Spleen 脾
譯 1.23.11.1 Source원문
主脾胃虛熱. 以薑橘參葱合陳米煮作羹食之. 《本草》
Translation영역
It governs vacuity heat of the spleen and stomach. It is boiled into a thick soup with ginger, tangerine peel, ginseng and scallion together with old rice, and eaten.
Clinical note임상 주석
**One of the few leaves in my three sections that is a cooked dish rather than a drug.** 薑ㆍ橘ㆍ參ㆍ葱ㆍ陳米 — ginger, tangerine peel, ginseng, scallion and old rice, boiled to a 羹 — is a recognisable restorative congee, and the abbreviated ingredient row is the book's habit of naming paired and grouped drugs compactly. Organ for organ once more, a spleen for the spleen.
**Modern reading.** Boiling removes the parasitic and viral hazards of the raw organ, so this leaf is safe as written, and a warm, digestible, protein-and-carbohydrate dish for someone who is unwell and not eating is sound supportive care that modern nutrition would endorse in its own language. Ginger has reasonable evidence as an antiemetic. What it is not is a treatment for whatever underlies the presentation, and persistent dyspepsia with weight loss, anaemia or dysphagia needs endoscopy, not nourishment. Note that ginseng interacts with warfarin and may lower blood glucose, which matters if the patient is anticoagulated or diabetic.
1.23.12 Pig's Lung 肺
譯 1.23.12.1 Source원문
性寒. 能補肺, 殺斑猫地膽毒. 《本草》
Translation영역
Its nature is cold. It can supplement the lung, and it kills the toxicity of 斑猫 and 地膽.
Clinical note임상 주석
Organ for organ, a lung for the lung, and the second cantharidin antidote of this section after the lard at 1.23.2 — 斑猫 is *Mylabris*, 地膽 *Meloe*, both blister beetles. 羊肺 is registered in the materia medica of this site and the pig's lung is not; no formula uses it.
**Modern reading. Cantharidin poisoning is an emergency and neither fat nor lung tissue is an antidote.** Cantharidin is a potent vesicant and protein-phosphatase inhibitor: ingestion causes burning of the mouth and gut, haematemesis, haematuria, acute tubular necrosis and death, and the toxic dose is small. Management is airway and circulatory support, gastrointestinal decontamination where appropriate, aggressive fluid resuscitation to protect the kidney, and renal replacement if needed, under poisons-centre advice. There is no specific antidote. Blister-beetle preparations are still used in some traditional pharmacy and this remains a live cause of poisoning. Pig lung as food is unremarkable cooked; the raw organ carries the group's hazards and, additionally, *Streptococcus suis* for those handling it.
1.23.13 Pig's Kidney 腎
譯 1.23.13.1 Source원문
卽腰子也. 性冷. 和理腎氣, 通利膀胱, 補水藏, 煖腰膝, 治耳聾腰痛. 雖補腎, 亦令少子.
Translation영역
This is the 腰子, the loin-piece. Its nature is cold. It harmonises and regulates the kidney qi, frees and disinhibits the bladder, supplements the water viscus, warms the lumbus and knees, and treats deafness and lumbar pain. Although it supplements the kidney, it also makes offspring few.
譯 1.23.13.2 Source원문
冬月不可食, 損人眞氣. 《本草》
Translation영역
It must not be eaten in the winter months; it damages a person's true qi.
Clinical note임상 주석
**The book glosses its own headword in the first three characters — 卽腰子也 — and that gloss settles a duplicate in the materia medica of this site.** Both 猪腎 and 猪腰子 are registered as separate drugs — nine formulas name 猪腰子 and four name 猪腎, with no overlap of indication that would justify the split — and the text here says in its own voice that they are one thing. That is reported as a pair to merge rather than decided here. `herb:` is empty and the pair 豚腎 → `jeosin` is in the report with the duplicate noted.
**The leaf then contradicts itself twice.** 雖補腎, 亦令少子 — it supplements the kidney and yet reduces offspring, which within this system is close to incoherent, since the kidney governs reproduction and 補腎 is the standard move for infertility. And 冬月不可食, 損人眞氣 sets a seasonal prohibition against a drug whose indications are all cold and vacuity, in the season when cold vacuity is at its worst; the pig's stomach two leaves on says the opposite about itself, 四季宜食, suitable in all four seasons. Where the book argues with itself the disagreement is the record, and it is kept.
**Modern reading.** Pig kidney cooked is food, high in purines and in cadmium relative to muscle, and the raw organ carries the group's hazards. Hearing loss is assessed with otoscopy and audiometry, and **sudden sensorineural hearing loss is time-critical** — corticosteroids work best within days of onset, so it is an urgent referral and not a tonic. Low back pain is managed with activity, analgesia and time, with imaging reserved for red flags — fever, weight loss, neurological deficit, cancer history, cauda equina symptoms. Reduced fertility has findable causes in both partners and begins with semen analysis and assessment of ovulation. Nothing in a kidney, eaten, addresses any of these.
1.23.14 Pig's Stomach 肚
譯 1.23.14.1 Source원문
性微温. 主骨蒸熱勞, 補虛羸, 助氣, 止渴止痢, 又治暴痢虛弱, 殺勞䖝, 四季宜食. 《本草》
Translation영역
Its nature is slightly warm. It governs steaming of the bones with taxation heat, supplements vacuity and emaciation, assists the qi, checks thirst and checks dysentery, also treats sudden dysentery with vacuity weakness, kills the taxation worm, and is suitable to eat in all four seasons.
Clinical note임상 주석
猪肚 is registered in the materia medica of this site; `herb:` is empty and the pair 豚肚 → `jeodu` is in the report. 四季宜食 stands directly against the seasonal prohibition on the kidney one leaf earlier.
**殺勞䖝 is the sentence to read closely: it kills the taxation worm.** 骨蒸熱勞 with emaciation is the classical picture of consumption, and the chapter here states a cause — a 蟲, a worm or creature, living in the patient. **That is an infectious theory of tuberculosis, arrived at six centuries before the bacillus**, and it recurs across the 寶鑑's 虛勞 material. The inference was drawn from the disease's running in households rather than from seeing anything, and the conclusion was right while the organism was out of reach.
**Modern reading.** The worm is *Mycobacterium tuberculosis*. Tuberculosis is diagnosed by sputum nucleic-acid amplification testing with rapid rifampicin-resistance detection, culture, and chest imaging, and it is **curable with a full multi-drug regimen taken to completion** — classically rifampicin, isoniazid, pyrazinamide and ethambutol, with shorter and newer regimens now available and with drug-resistant disease requiring specialist management. It is a notifiable disease, contacts must be traced, and Korea continues to have one of the higher incidences in the OECD. Weight loss with night sweats and a chronic cough is a same-week investigation. Tripe, cooked, is food and nothing more; incomplete treatment is how resistance is made.
1.23.15 Pig's Intestine 腸
譯 1.23.15.1 Source원문
主虛竭, 小便數, 補下焦虛竭. 《本草》
Translation영역
It governs vacuity exhaustion and frequent urination, and supplements vacuity exhaustion of the lower burner.
Clinical note임상 주석
猪腸 is registered in the materia medica of this site and **no formula in the book uses it** — it is one of the entries that stands in the table for reasons other than formula composition, as 碧海水 does in the water chapter, and it is left alone rather than questioned. `herb:` is empty and the pair 豚腸 → `jeojang` is in the report. Like-for-like by region rather than by organ: a lower-abdominal viscus for the lower burner. The chicken's intestine in the bird chapter carries the same indication of frequency and incontinence, so the reasoning is the chapter's rather than this animal's.
**Modern reading.** New or worsening urinary frequency needs a cause: urinary tract infection, diabetes mellitus or insipidus, bladder outlet obstruction from prostatic enlargement, overactive bladder, a bladder stone or tumour, or a neurological cause. Urinalysis and glucose are the first steps, and in an older man a prostate assessment with post-void residual. Overactive bladder responds to bladder training, antimuscarinics or mirabegron; obstruction needs the obstruction treated. Pig intestine, cooked, is food — raw, it is the most contaminated part of the carcass.
1.23.16 Pig's Gall 膽
譯 1.23.16.1 Source원문
性微寒一云大寒, 味苦. 主傷寒熱渴, 骨熱勞極, 大便不通, 療濕𧏾, 下膿血不止, 又主小兒五疳, 殺䖝. 《本草》
Translation영역
Its nature is slightly cold — one source says greatly cold — and its flavour bitter. It governs cold-damage with heat and thirst, bone heat and extreme taxation, and stool that will not pass; it treats damp erosion and the unceasing descent of pus and blood, and it also governs the five kinds of childhood 疳, and kills worms.
譯 1.23.16.2 Source원문
能潤燥通便, 入心通脉. 《入門》
Translation영역
It can moisten dryness and free the stool, and it enters the heart and frees the vessels.
譯 1.23.16.3 Source원문
性寒, 味苦醎, 與人尿同體. 《湯液》
Translation영역
Its nature is cold and its flavour bitter and salty; it is of one substance with human urine.
Clinical note임상 주석
猪膽汁 is registered in the materia medica of this site and **this is the most heavily used drug in the whole of my three sections: twenty-seven formulas name 猪膽, twenty of them in the fuller form 猪膽汁, and two are named after it.** `herb:` is empty and the pair 豚膽 → `jeodamjeup` is in the report. 𧏾 is written for 䘌. The interlinear 一云大寒 sharpens the nature from slightly cold to greatly cold; the reading is preserved.
The 《湯液》 line is the most interesting in the leaf: 與人尿同體, of one substance with human urine. Wang Haogu is grouping the two by the shared properties of cold, bitter and salty, and the grouping is not as strange as it sounds — bile and urine are both routes of excretion for the body's waste solutes, and both carry salts.
**Modern reading, and this is the place in the pig group where the old practice and the modern one touch.** 大便不通 with pig bile is the 猪膽汁 route of the 傷寒論, where bile is introduced per rectum for constipation — and that is a real mechanism. Bile acids in the colon are osmotically and secretorily active, which is precisely why bile-acid diarrhoea exists as a disease and why bile-acid sequestrants treat it. An administered bile enema would work, and the glycerine and sodium-citrate micro-enemas on the shelf today occupy the same place in therapy. What has changed is that the modern agents are sterile, dosed and non-cytotoxic.
Set against that: **bile acids taken by mouth in quantity are cytotoxic** — vomiting, diarrhoea and hepatic injury, with animal-gall poisoning a recognised entity — and raw pig gall carries the group's infection hazards. Ursodeoxycholic acid, the one bile acid that is a modern medicine, is **manufactured synthetically** and is given for primary biliary cholangitis, cholesterol gallstones and cholestasis of pregnancy; where bile is wanted as therapy, that is the form to use, and the same point applies with much greater force to bear bile at 1.4.2, which another worker has. Constipation is managed with fibre, fluid, osmotic laxatives such as macrogol, and stimulants, and new constipation with bleeding or weight loss needs the colon examined.
1.23.17 The Pancreas 𦚟
譯 1.23.17.1 Source원문
音夷. 性寒. 主肺痿喘急氣脹, 去皴皰䵟𪒟. 《本草》
Translation영역
Pronounced 夷. Its nature is cold. It governs lung wilting with hurried panting and qi distension, and it removes chapping, pimples and dark blotches of the skin.
Clinical note임상 주석
**The book supplies the reading of its own headword — 音夷, pronounced 夷, that is 이 — and that gloss is the key to the leaf.** 𦚟 is written for 胰: the pancreas. The chain is philological and holds well — 𦚟 and 胰 are both read 이, and 胰 is the standard character for the gland — but some commentators have read 𦚟 as the fatty midriff or suet rather than the pancreas proper, and the leaf gives no anatomical description that would settle it. **I take it as the pancreas with good but not complete confidence.** The transcription prints 音夷 as running text rather than inside 《》, so it is kept in the body here and not marked as an interlinear note.
The two indications are unrelated to each other, and the second is the one that repays attention. 皴 is chapped and fissured skin, 皰 are pimples, and 䵟𪒟 are the dark facial blotches — so half of this leaf is cosmetic, applied to the face. 肺痿 is the wasting lung disorder with thick sputum.
**Modern reading.** The cosmetic use has a mechanism, which is rare in this chapter and should be said carefully. Pancreatic tissue is dense in lipase, trypsin and chymotrypsin, and crude pancreatic extract applied to skin would digest sebum and the protein of the corneocyte layer — in effect a keratolytic and a desquamating agent. Enzymatic debridement is a real modern technique, and proteolytic enzymes are used cosmetically. **It would also be irritant and sensitising**, and raw pancreas is not sterile. So the direction of the old practice is not absurd, while the material is uncontrolled in potency and unsafe on the face. Modern management of acne is topical retinoids, benzoyl peroxide, topical or oral antibiotics by severity, and isotretinoin for severe or scarring disease; melasma and post-inflammatory pigmentation need sun protection first, then tyrosinase inhibitors, retinoids or procedural treatment; chapped skin needs an emollient.
Breathlessness with panting is not one disease. Asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, heart failure, bronchiectasis, interstitial lung disease, pulmonary embolism and anaemia present this way and are distinguished by spirometry, imaging, echocardiography and blood tests. Note also that pig pancreas is the historical source of **insulin** and of the pancreatin still prescribed for pancreatic exocrine insufficiency — the organ did become a medicine, by a route that has nothing to do with this leaf's indications.
1.23.18 Pig's Tooth 齒
譯 1.23.18.1 Source원문
性平. 主小兒驚癎及蛇咬. 《本草》
Translation영역
Its nature is balanced. It governs fright epilepsy in small children and snakebite.
Clinical note임상 주석
猪齒 is a genuine ingredient elsewhere in the book and has no entry in the materia medica of this site: it is one of the four teeth of the paediatric powder — 人齒ㆍ猫齒ㆍ狗齒ㆍ猪齒 各等分, calcined and given in hot wine for pox that will not erupt — whose ingredient list was left bare for exactly that reason. The dog's tooth at 1.22.6 is the same case and both are proposed in the report. The paediatric indication here, 小兒驚癎, matches the one the four-tooth leaf serves.
**Modern reading.** Snakebite is the serious claim. In Korea the medically important snakes are the pit vipers *Gloydius* and the kraits' relative *Rhabdophis*, and viper envenomation causes local necrosis, coagulopathy and, in severe cases, renal failure. **Management is immobilisation of the limb at heart level, urgent transfer, and antivenom where indicated**; do not cut, suck, apply a tourniquet or apply anything to the wound, because the traditional measures worsen local injury and delay the only treatment that works. Paediatric seizures are managed as at 1.22.6. Calcined tooth is inert.
1.23.19 Sow's Milk 乳汁
譯 1.23.19.1 Source원문
主小兒驚癎及天吊. 大人猪雞癎, 飮之. 《本草》
Translation영역
It governs fright epilepsy and 天吊 in small children. In adults it is drunk for the pig epilepsy and the chicken epilepsy.
Clinical note임상 주석
猪乳 is registered in the materia medica of this site and two formulas use it, one of them named after it; `herb:` is empty and the pair 豚乳汁 → `jeoyu` is in the report. **The same checker trap applies as at 1.22.5**: the alias table carries the bare 乳汁 against `inyu`, human milk, which would let the automatic check accept the wrong drug here. 天吊 is the infantile convulsion with the head drawn back and the eyes turned up.
猪癎 and 雞癎 are two of the five animal epilepsies, 五癎 — horse, ox, pig, sheep and chicken — named for the cry or the posture the seizure resembles. So a sow's milk for the pig epilepsy is the chapter's naming logic applied to a disease category that was itself built out of animal names: the resemblance that gave the seizure its name then selects the drug.
**Modern reading.** Unpasteurised milk of any species carries *Brucella*, *Mycobacterium bovis*, *Listeria*, *Campylobacter*, *Salmonella* and Shiga-toxin *E. coli*, and the last is a particular danger to children because of haemolytic uraemic syndrome. Sow's milk is in any case not obtainable in practice. **A seizure in a child needs a cause found** — febrile convulsion, infection, metabolic derangement, structural lesion, genetic epilepsy syndrome — and status epilepticus is an emergency treated with benzodiazepines and then second-line anticonvulsants on a timed protocol. Infantile spasms, which 天吊 may partly describe, are a specific and urgent diagnosis: the EEG is characteristic and early treatment with vigabatrin or hormonal therapy materially changes the developmental outcome.
1.23.20 Pig's Tongue 舌
譯 1.23.20.1 Translation영역
It fortifies the spleen and makes a person able to eat.
Clinical note임상 주석
The shortest leaf in my three sections and the one with no 性味 at all, which is the ordinary state of affairs in this chapter rather than an omission. Organ for function: a tongue, for being able to eat.
**Modern reading.** Tongue is food. Loss of appetite is a symptom with a long differential — depression, malignancy, chronic infection, uraemia, heart failure, medication, hypercalcaemia, and in older people loss of taste and smell, poor dentition and social isolation — and unintentional weight loss in an adult is an investigation, not a tonic indication. Where the cause is found and the problem is intake, dietetic support and energy-dense food do the work.
1.23.21 The Four Feet 四足
譯 1.23.21.1 Source원문
性寒, 味甘. 補氣, 下乳汁. 煎湯洗瘡, 可免乾痛. 《得效》
Translation영역
Its nature is cold and its flavour sweet. It supplements the qi and brings down the milk. Decocted and used to wash a sore, it spares the dry pain.
Clinical note임상 주석
猪蹄 is registered in the materia medica of this site and nine formulas use it, two of them named after it, among them the trotter decoction for washing wounds — which is exactly 煎湯洗瘡 here. `herb:` is empty and the pair 豚四足 → `jeoje` is in the report. The second galactagogue in this section after the dog's four feet at 1.22.11, and the third is the wild boar's fat at 1.24.2.
**Modern reading.** This leaf is better than most, for a reason the text half states. 可免乾痛, sparing the dry pain, is what a warm, gelatinous, isotonic-ish wash does to a wound: it loosens adherent slough and crust so that dressing changes hurt less, which is the principle behind soaking a dressing before removal and behind modern moist wound healing. A boiled decoction is also effectively sterile when fresh. **It is not an antiseptic and it does not replace debridement, and reused or stored broth is a culture medium.** Current practice cleanses with saline or tap water, debrides where needed, and keeps the wound moist under an appropriate dressing. For milk supply, see 1.22.11; collagen broth does not increase it.
1.23.22 The Dewclaw 懸蹄
譯 1.23.22.1 Source원문
性平. 主五痔, 腸癕內蝕. 《入門》
Translation영역
Its nature is balanced. It governs the five kinds of pile, and intestinal welling abscess with internal erosion.
Clinical note임상 주석
猪懸蹄 is registered in the materia medica of this site and three formulas use it, with two more using the 猪蹄甲 that the alias table already carries against the same id; `herb:` is empty and the pair 豚懸蹄 → `jeohyeonje` is in the report. 懸蹄 is the dewclaw, the hoof that hangs clear of the ground, distinguished from the trotter proper at 1.23.21 — and the book keeps them as two drugs, as does the formulary.
**Modern reading. 腸癕 is the one to take seriously**: intestinal welling abscess with internal erosion covers appendicitis with abscess, diverticular abscess and perforation, and these are surgical emergencies in which delay is measured against perforation and peritonitis. Diagnosis is by imaging, and management is antibiotics with drainage or resection. Haemorrhoids are managed as at 1.23.5, and rectal bleeding is never attributed to piles without the colon being seen. Keratin from a hoof is inert.
1.23.23 Pig's Gallstone 猪黃
譯 1.23.23.1 Source원문
主金瘡血痢. 膽中有黃, 和水服. 《本草》
Translation영역
It governs metal wounds and bloody dysentery. There is a yellow in the gall bladder; it is mixed with water and taken.
Clinical note임상 주석
**The second of the chapter's four gall concretions in my part of it**, and the book again defines it in its own words: 膽中有黃, there is a yellow in the gall bladder. 牛黃 at 1.3 is the cattle stone, 狗寶 at 1.22.13 the dog's, and the wild boar's at 1.24 is the headword of the next section — the same material in four animals, graded by the animal rather than by the stone. Nothing in the formulary uses 猪黃, so `herb:` is empty and nothing is proposed; it stands in contrast with 狗寶, which is used seven times, and with 牛黃, which is used throughout the book.
**Modern reading.** Biliary concretions are calcium bilirubinate, cholesterol and carbonate with a protein matrix. Nothing in that composition acts on a wound or on dysentery. A bleeding wound needs pressure, cleaning, closure and tetanus cover; bloody diarrhoea needs stool culture and testing for Shiga-toxin *E. coli*, because **antibiotics and antimotility agents are contraindicated where Shiga-toxin *E. coli* is suspected** — they increase the risk of haemolytic uraemic syndrome — and because amoebic and inflammatory causes need different treatment again.
1.23.24 Wax from the Pig's Ear 耳中垢
譯 1.23.24.1 Translation영역
It governs injury from snakebite.
Clinical note임상 주석
Ear wax for a bite is a chapter-wide pattern rather than a property of the pig: the ox's ear wax at 1.3.6 carries a comparable indication and the human chapter's 耳塞 is used the same way. The reasoning appears to be that a secretion which accumulates and plugs will likewise draw out and plug a venomous wound.
**Modern reading. The danger of this leaf is the time it takes.** Snakebite management is immobilisation of the limb, urgent transfer, and antivenom where envenomation is established, with airway and circulatory support and correction of coagulopathy. **Do not incise, suck, apply a tourniquet, apply ice, or apply any substance to the bite** — each of these is documented to increase local tissue loss or to delay antivenom, and applying an unsterile animal secretion to a necrotic wound adds infection to envenomation. Mark the leading edge of swelling and the time, and photograph the snake from a distance if it can be done safely.
1.23.25 Pork Skin 猪膚
譯 1.23.25.1 Source원문
性寒, 味甘, 無毒. 治傷寒客熱, 下利咽痛, 胷滿心煩. 《入門》
Translation영역
Its nature is cold, its flavour sweet, and it is without toxicity. It treats cold-damage with visiting heat, diarrhoea with sore throat, and fullness of the chest with vexation of the heart.
譯 1.23.25.2 Source원문
猪者, 水畜也. 其氣先入腎, 解少隂客熱. 所以言膚者, 肌膚之義也. 宜用燖猪皮上黑膚也. 《活人》
Translation영역
The pig is the water animal. Its qi enters the kidney first and resolves the visiting heat of the lesser yin. The reason 膚 is said is that it carries the sense of the skin of the flesh; one should use the black skin on the surface of a scalded pig's hide.
Clinical note임상 주석
**This is the 猪膚湯 of the 傷寒論**, the pork-skin decoction for 少陰 disease with diarrhoea, sore throat, chest fullness and vexation, and the 《活人》 passage beneath it is a philological argument about what the prescription actually calls for. 所以言膚者, 肌膚之義也 — the reason the character 膚 is used is that it means the skin of the flesh — and then the practical conclusion, 宜用燖猪皮上黑膚也, use the black scurf on the surface of the scalded hide. Zhu Gong is settling a dispute among commentators about whether 膚 meant the rind, the subcutaneous layer or the scalded surface, and he settles it in favour of the thin dark layer that comes up when the carcass is scalded for dehairing.
The doctrinal line, 猪者水畜也, repeats 1.23.1 almost exactly; it is the premise that lets a pig part treat a kidney-channel disease, and the book states it twice because the 傷寒論 prescription needs it.
猪膚 is registered in the materia medica of this site, the single formula that uses it is the 猪膚湯 named here, and it is one of only two leaves in my three sections whose name the automatic check can reach from its headword, so `herb:` is linked here.
**Modern reading.** Pork skin is collagen and gelatin and, boiled, a bland soothing drink — demulcent in the honest sense, coating an inflamed pharynx, which is what warm fluids and honey do for a sore throat. 下利咽痛 with chest discomfort and agitation in the 少陰 register describes a severely unwell febrile patient. The modern questions are: what is the infection, is the patient dehydrated, and is this sepsis? Sore throat with diarrhoea and systemic upset can be streptococcal pharyngitis, infectious mononucleosis, an enteric fever, or early sepsis; group A streptococcal infection needs penicillin, dehydration needs oral or intravenous rehydration, and sepsis needs cultures and prompt antibiotics. **A demulcent is comfort care and no part of the diagnosis.** Pork skin itself is safe as food and nutritionally poor — collagen without tryptophan, so not a complete protein.
1.23.26 Pig's Dung 屎
譯 1.23.26.1 Source원문
性寒. 治天行熱病, 黃疸, 濕痺, 蠱毒.
Translation영역
Its nature is cold. It treats the heat diseases that go abroad in season, jaundice, damp impediment and 蠱 toxin.
譯 1.23.26.2 Translation영역
The liquor of the dung is excellent for treating warm toxin.
譯 1.23.26.3 Source원문
東行牡猪者爲良. 水浸一宿, 去渣服. 《本草》
Translation영역
That of an east-walking boar is best. It is steeped in water for a night, the dregs are removed, and it is taken.
Clinical note임상 주석
猪糞 is registered in the materia medica of this site and two formulas use it; `herb:` is empty and the pair 豚屎 → `jeobun` is in the report. 東行牡猪 — an east-walking male pig — is sympathetic specification of the same kind as the coat colours in the dog group and the 伏日 collection dates: east is the direction of spring and of the liver, and the leaf's leading indication is jaundice. It carries no information about the material.
**Modern reading. This is the worst-constructed preparation in my three sections and the reason is the method, not the material alone.** 水浸一宿, 去渣服 — steeped in cold water overnight, strained, and drunk — applies no heat at any stage. Nothing is killed. Pig faeces carries *Salmonella*, *Yersinia enterocolitica*, *Campylobacter*, Shiga-toxin *E. coli*, *Balantidium coli*, *Cryptosporidium*, *Ascaris suum* and, where the animal is infected, hepatitis E virus; an overnight steep at ambient temperature is a bacterial enrichment step rather than an extraction. And the leading indication compounds it: **drinking a cold faecal infusion for jaundice means giving a heavy enteric inoculum to someone whose liver is already failing**, when portal bacteraemia and spontaneous bacterial peritonitis are among the things most likely to kill them.
Jaundice needs a cause found — viral hepatitis A, B, C or E, alcohol, drug injury, biliary obstruction from stone or tumour, haemolysis, autoimmune liver disease — by liver function tests, serology and ultrasound, and obstruction needs drainage. 天行熱病 and 温毒 are the epidemic febrile illnesses; those have their own diagnoses and treatments. Not in use, and nothing about it to retrieve.
1.24 The Wild Boar's Gallstone 野猪黃
묏돗ᄐᆡᄡᅳᆯ게예뭉긘것 멧돼지의 쓸개에 뭉친 것 the mass congealed in a wild boar's gall bladder
This is a gloss rather than a name — 묏돗ᄐᆡ (멧돼지의, of the wild boar) + ᄡᅳᆯ게예 (쓸개에, in the gall bladder) + 뭉긘 것 (뭉친 것, the thing congealed) — of the same descriptive kind as the water-chapter hyangmyeong, and it says what the drug is rather than what it is called. Leaf 054a carries two collation lines, and the first, 돗 : 도(초간본), belongs here: the transcription writes 묏돗ᄐᆡ where the first printing has 묏도ᄐᆡ. The locus is certain, 돗 occurring once on the leaf. The second line of that footer, 本 : 夲(초간본), stands after it and so points at a 本 at or beyond this hyangmyeong; it is recorded at the first passage below.
譯 1.24.1 Source원문
性平, 味辛甘, 無毒. 主鬼疰癎病, 惡毒風, 小兒疳氣客忤天吊. 《本草》
Translation영역
Its nature is balanced, its flavour acrid and sweet, and it is without toxicity. It governs ghost infixation and epilepsy disease, malign toxic wind, and 疳 qi, fright offence and 天吊 in small children.
譯 1.24.2 Source원문
膽中有黃, 研和水服. 《本草》
Translation영역
There is a yellow in the gall bladder; it is ground, mixed with water and taken.
譯 1.24.3 Source원문
形似家猪, 但腰脚長, 毛褐. 《入門》
Translation영역
Its form resembles the domestic pig's, but the loins and legs are longer and the hair is brown.
Clinical note임상 주석
**The book sets the wild boar up as a separate drug from the domestic pig, and this passage is where it says so.** 形似家猪, 但腰脚長, 毛褐 — like the house pig but longer in loin and leg and brown-haired — is a morphological distinction, and the flesh leaf at 1.24.1 then makes it a pharmacological one: 野猪肉勝家猪, wild boar flesh is superior to the house pig's. The two animals are *Sus scrofa* and its domesticate, so the chapter's separation is sound, and the twenty-six pig leaves at 1.23 and the six here must not be read as one set.
This headword is the fourth of the chapter's gall concretions — 牛黃 at 1.3, 狗寶 at 1.22.13, 猪黃 at 1.23.23 and this — and like the others the book defines it in its own voice at 膽中有黃. **Nothing in the formulary uses any wild-boar drug: 野猪, 野猪黃, 野猪肉, 野猪脂, 野猪膽, 野猪齒 and 野猪外腎 all occur zero times.** So all six items of this section have `herb:` empty, and none is proposed for the table — the whole section is a 本草 record with no formulary footprint, which is the ordinary and correct state for a chapter entry that the prescriptions never reached.
**Modern reading, for the whole wild-boar section.** Game is substantially more hazardous than farmed pork and the law is different too.
**1. *Trichinella*.** Wild boar is the classic vehicle. Species found in wildlife include freeze-resistant ones, so **freezing does not make game pork safe** the way it does farmed pork; only cooking through does. Trichinellosis presents with fever, periorbital oedema, myalgia and eosinophilia and can cause myocarditis.
**2. Hepatitis E.** Wild boar meat, liver and offal are a documented source of HEV genotype 3 and 4 infection, with foodborne cases traced to raw wild boar in Japan and Korea. Severe in pregnancy and in the immunosuppressed; see 1.23.9.
**3. *Brucella suis*.** Feral and wild swine carry it, and hunters, butchers and dog handlers acquire brucellosis through cuts and mucous membranes while dressing carcasses as much as by eating. It presents as undulant fever with sweats, arthralgia and hepatosplenomegaly, is easily missed, and needs prolonged combination antibiotic treatment.
**4. African swine fever.** ASF **is not a human pathogen** — that must be said plainly, since it is often misreported — but it has been present in Korean wild boar since 2019 and the carcass and movement controls around it are legal obligations, not advice. A dead wild boar found in the field is reported, not collected.
Also: *Toxoplasma*, *Streptococcus suis*, tick-borne infections including severe fever with thrombocytopenia syndrome from the carcass's ticks, and lead fragments from the bullet track in the meat.
**5. The law of taking one.** In Korea the wild boar is handled under the Wildlife Protection and Management Act (야생생물 보호 및 관리에 관한 법률); it may be designated 유해야생동물, harmful wildlife, and culled only under permit, and otherwise hunted only by a licensed hunter, with a registered firearm, in a designated 수렵장 and in the open season. ASF control zones add their own restrictions on moving carcasses. **Obtaining any of the six items in this section means killing a wild animal, and that is a permit question before it is anything else.** I am confident of this structure; I am **not** confident of the current designations, seasons or zone boundaries, which change by notice, and anyone acting on it must check with the local authority.
1.24.1 Wild Boar Flesh 肉
譯 1.24.1.1 Source원문
味甘美, 無毒. 補肌膚, 主腸風瀉血.
Translation영역
Its flavour is sweet and good and it is without toxicity. It supplements the flesh and skin, and governs intestinal wind with the discharge of blood.
譯 1.24.1.2 Source원문
肉赤色者, 補人五藏, 不發風虛氣也.
Translation영역
Flesh that is red in colour supplements the five viscera and does not rouse wind or vacuous qi.
譯 1.24.1.3 Translation영역
The flesh of a female is the better.
譯 1.24.1.4 Source원문
野猪肉勝家猪, 不動風氣, 所以勝家猪也. 《本草》
Translation영역
Wild boar flesh surpasses the domestic pig's; it does not stir the wind qi, and that is why it surpasses the domestic pig.
Clinical note임상 주석
**The book states the comparison directly and gives a reason for it**: wild boar is better than the house pig because it 不動風氣, does not stir the wind qi — which is the exact charge laid against pork at 1.23.1, 動風. So the two sections are not merely separated, they are ranked, and the ranking turns on a property the chapter has already pinned on the domesticate. 雌者肉美, the female's flesh being better, and the preference for red meat are the kind of butcher's judgement that recurs through this chapter and is, for once, about the material in front of the reader.
**Modern reading. Wild boar is the single most hazardous food in my three sections and must be cooked through.** *Trichinella* in game is the headline, and **freezing does not reliably kill the species found in wildlife** — this is the specific point on which game differs from farmed pork, and it has caused outbreaks in people who thought freezing had made raw game safe. Add hepatitis E from the meat and liver, *Brucella suis* acquired through cuts while dressing the carcass, *Toxoplasma*, tick-borne infection from handling, and lead fragments along the bullet track, which are a measurable source of lead exposure in game eaters and matter most for children and in pregnancy. Cook to 71 °C or above throughout, with a rest; wear gloves to butcher; do not feed raw trimmings to dogs.
On the indication: 腸風瀉血 is rectal bleeding, and it is never a tonic indication. It needs a cause — haemorrhoids, fissure, diverticular disease, inflammatory bowel disease, angiodysplasia, polyp, **colorectal cancer** — and in an adult, particularly over fifty or with any change in bowel habit, iron-deficiency anaemia or weight loss, that means colonoscopy. The one honest thing in the leaf is 補肌膚 as applied to the meat: game is lean, high-quality protein and a real source of iron and zinc.
1.24.2 Wild Boar Fat 脂
譯 1.24.2.1 Source원문
悅色, 除風腫毒瘡疥癬及婦人無乳.
Translation영역
It gladdens the complexion, eliminates wind swelling, toxic sores, scabies and lichen, and the absence of milk in women.
譯 1.24.2.2 Source원문
産婦無乳, 取煉脂和酒服, 乳卽下, 一婦可供五兒.
Translation영역
For a woman after childbirth who has no milk, rendered fat is taken mixed with wine; the milk comes down at once, and one woman can supply five children.
譯 1.24.2.3 Translation영역
Aged fat from the twelfth month is best.
Clinical note임상 주석
**一婦可供五兒 — one woman can supply five children — is the most extravagant claim in my three sections**, and it is worth recording as such: the chapter does not usually promise a multiple. The third galactagogue here, after the dog's four feet at 1.22.11 and the pig's at 1.23.21, and the only one of the three that is a fat taken in wine rather than a broth. 臘月, the twelfth month, matches the collection note on the domestic pig's lard at 1.23.2, where the reason given — keeping water out so it does not spoil — is a sound one about rancidity; here it is 陳, aged, which pushes the opposite way, since rendered fat held a long time oxidises.
**Modern reading.** Milk supply is governed by how often and how completely milk is removed, so the effective interventions are an assessment of latch and positioning, more frequent feeding or expressing, and treating what suppresses supply — retained placental fragments, significant postpartum haemorrhage, thyroid disease, some medications. Galactagogue drugs such as domperidone are adjuncts with a modest and contested effect and cardiac cautions. **The wine in this preparation is the active problem**: alcohol does not increase supply, it transiently reduces milk ejection, and it passes into milk, so alcohol taken for lactation works against the thing it is given for. Scabies is *Sarcoptes scabiei* and is treated with topical permethrin or oral ivermectin, with all household contacts treated at the same time and bedding laundered — a fat applied to it will not kill the mite and will prevent nothing. Tinea needs a topical or, for extensive or nail disease, oral antifungal. An emollient is reasonable for dry skin and that is the whole of what this leaf can do.
1.24.3 The Wild Boar's Gall 膽
譯 1.24.3.1 Translation영역
It governs malign heat and toxic evil qi.
Clinical note임상 주석
The shortest leaf in this section. The gall bladder is also the source of the stone that is the section's headword, so the book uses both the organ and its concretion, as it does for the dog at 1.22.10 and 1.22.13.
**Modern reading.** Bile acids are cytotoxic detergents: taken in quantity they cause vomiting, diarrhoea and hepatic injury, and animal-gall poisoning is a described clinical entity. Where a bile acid is wanted as a medicine, synthetic ursodeoxycholic acid is the form that exists, and the argument for using it rather than an animal's gall is set out at 1.23.16. An undifferentiated fever with systemic upset — which is what 惡熱毒邪氣 covers — needs a source found and, where sepsis is suspected, cultures and prompt antibiotics.
1.24.4 The Wild Boar's Tusk 齒
譯 1.24.4.1 Translation영역
It governs the sore of a snakebite; it is burnt to ash and taken.
Clinical note임상 주석
The third snakebite leaf in my three sections, with the pig's tooth at 1.23.18 and the pig's ear wax at 1.23.24 — and the second of the three to use a tooth, which suggests the reasoning is about the tooth rather than about the animal: a piercing thing against a piercing wound. 燒灰 makes the material sterile and inert.
**Modern reading.** Snakebite management is set out at 1.23.24, and the one point to repeat is the negative: **do not apply anything to the bite, do not cut, suck or tourniquet.** Immobilise, transfer urgently, and give antivenom where envenomation is established. In Korea the pit vipers *Gloydius* cause local necrosis and coagulopathy, and the time to antivenom is what determines tissue loss. Calcined tooth is hydroxyapatite and does nothing to venom, which is a protein mixture acting systemically.
1.24.5 The Wild Boar's Testicles 外腎
譯 1.24.5.1 Source원문
治崩中帶下, 幷腸風血痢. 和皮燒灰服. 《本草》
Translation영역
It treats flooding and vaginal discharge, together with intestinal wind and bloody dysentery. It is burnt to ash with the skin and taken.
Clinical note임상 주석
**A name-collision worth flagging.** 外腎 is also the leaf-name under which the materia medica of this site registers the *dog's* genitalia, as 黃狗外腎 — the drug this group's own headword at 1.22 is linked to. The two are different animals and must not be cross-linked; the bare 外腎 here is the boar's. The chapter reuses short part-names across animals constantly, which is why every leaf in these sections was checked against the table by hand rather than by string resemblance.
和皮燒灰, burnt to ash together with the skin, makes this one of the sterile preparations. The indication set — uterine flooding, discharge, rectal bleeding and bloody dysentery — is the same bleeding-and-discharge cluster given for the dog's skull at 1.22.3, and in both cases the material is a calcined animal part.
**Modern reading.** Calcined tissue is inert. **Abnormal uterine bleeding needs a cause found**, and in a postmenopausal woman any bleeding is an urgent investigation for endometrial cancer, by ultrasound and endometrial sampling; in a premenopausal woman the differential runs through fibroids, adenomyosis, polyps, anovulatory cycles, coagulopathy, thyroid disease and pregnancy complications. Heavy menstrual bleeding is treated effectively — tranexamic acid, a levonorgestrel intrauterine system, hormonal methods, or procedural treatment — and iron deficiency is corrected. Rectal bleeding is managed as at 1.24.1, which is to say the colon is examined. Bloody diarrhoea is managed as at 1.23.23, with the warning about antibiotics and antimotility agents in suspected Shiga-toxin *E. coli* infection.
1.24.6 The Pig's Throat Gland 猪靨子
譯 1.24.6.1 Source원문
生豚猪項下喉嚨絲一枚, 形如棗大, 微匾, 色紅. 《醫林》
Translation영역
It grows below the neck of the domestic pig, on the sinew of the throat: a single piece, shaped like a jujube in size, slightly flattened, and red in colour.
Clinical note임상 주석
**This leaf is pure description — the book says what the thing is and where it grows, and gives it no nature, flavour or indication at all.** That is the first thing to record, because it means any statement about what it was for comes from outside this text.
**The second thing is an anomaly in the chapter's own arrangement.** The leaf hangs under 野猪黃, the wild boar, yet its text names 豚猪, the domestic pig. Two leaves earlier the chapter was at pains to separate the two animals — 形似家猪, 但腰脚長, 毛褐 at the headword and 野猪肉勝家猪 at 1.24.1 — and here, inside the wild boar's section, it describes a part of the house pig. The citation is 《醫林》, the only use of that source in my three sections, so the likeliest explanation is that the compilers took the entry over whole from a text that placed it among the pig material and attached it where the pig and boar entries meet. I record the tension and do not resolve it: the leaf is where the book puts it, and the text says 豚猪.
**Identification, which is as far as the evidence goes.** 靨 is the hollow at the base of the throat, so 靨子 is the body lying there; 項下喉嚨 places it below the neck on the throat, 一枚 says there is one of it, and 形如棗大, 微匾, 色紅 gives a jujube-sized, slightly flattened, red body. That is a good description of the **thyroid gland**, and the detail that decides it is 一枚: in the pig, alone among the common domestic animals, the thyroid is a single compact median gland lying ventral to the trachea at the base of the neck rather than two lobes on either side. A dark-red, flattened, single body the size of a jujube at the throat of a pig is the porcine thyroid. **I hold this with reasonable but not complete confidence** — a large cervical lymph node or the thymus would also be single-seeming and reddish in a young animal — and the uncertainty is recorded rather than written out.
**Modern reading, and this is where the leaf earns its place.** If the identification is right, the material is thyroid tissue, and thyroid tissue is one of the few drugs in this whole chapter that became a real medicine rather than being abandoned. Desiccated animal thyroid was the first effective treatment for hypothyroidism, from the 1890s, and **desiccated thyroid extract is still a licensed drug**; the modern standard is synthetic levothyroxine, which is dosed precisely, absorbed predictably and monitored by TSH, while desiccated extract has a variable T3:T4 ratio and is not recommended as first-line therapy. Elsewhere in the 本草 tradition animal 靨 is used for 氣癘 and the neck swellings — goitre — which, if that use stands behind this entry, would make it organotherapy for the gland's own disease, arrived at by the chapter's like-for-like reasoning and right for once. **The 寶鑑 leaf itself does not say this**, and I have not put the indication into the translation on that basis.
What to do today: goitre and thyroid nodules are assessed with TSH, ultrasound and, where indicated, fine-needle aspiration; hypothyroidism is treated with levothyroxine titrated to TSH; hyperthyroidism with antithyroid drugs, radioiodine or surgery. Iodine deficiency, the historical cause of endemic goitre, is addressed by iodised salt. **Raw animal thyroid must not be eaten as a remedy** — uncontrolled thyroid hormone content causes thyrotoxicosis, and outbreaks of hamburger thyrotoxicosis from thyroid tissue left in neck trim are documented. The right version of this idea exists, is cheap, and is dosed in micrograms.
1.25 Donkey Flesh 驢肉
나귀고기 나귀 고기 donkey meat
`나귀고기` 는 두 낱말이 다 지금 말로 그대로 이어진다 — `나귀`(당나귀)와 `고기`다. 다음 절 1.26 騾肉의 `노새고기` 와 짝을 이루어 전사자가 당나귀와 노새를 **갈라** 적고 있음을 보여 준다. 한자만으로는 驢/騾 가 섞이기 쉬운데 향명이 둘을 못 박는다.
譯 1.25.1 Source원문
主風狂, 能安心氣, 釀酒服, 冶一切風.
Translation영역
It governs wind mania and can quiet the heart qi; ferment it into wine and take it, and it treats wind of every kind.
Clinical note임상 주석
The chapter's run of hoofed animals ends here and a short tail of twenty-one sections begins, most of them one or two passages long. 驢 is the domestic donkey, Equus asinus; the next section, 1.26 騾肉, is the mule, and the two are not the same animal.
風狂 is wind mania — the agitated, loud, sleepless presentation that this book treats under 癲狂. 安心氣, quieting the heart qi, is the sedative register. The preparation is a medicinal wine, which is how most of the donkey parts in this section are given.
**Modern reading.** Donkey meat is food — it is eaten in China, Italy and parts of Central Asia — and nothing in it is psychoactive. Mania is a psychiatric diagnosis with a differential that has to be worked through: bipolar disorder, substance-induced states, delirium, thyrotoxicosis, steroid effect, and autoimmune or infectious encephalitis all present as acute agitation with loss of insight. It is treated with antipsychotics and mood stabilizers, and the first task in a newly agitated patient is to exclude the organic causes. Ferment and alcohol are the opposite of what an agitated patient needs.
譯 1.25.2 Source원문
凡驢以烏者爲勝. 入藥用烏之意, 如烏雞子, 烏蛇, 烏鴉之類, 以治風者, 取其水色, 以制熱生風之義. 《本草》
Translation영역
Among donkeys the black is the best. The intent of using the black in medicine — as with the black chicken's egg, the black snake, the black crow and their kind, when they are used to treat wind — is to take its water colour, so as to restrain the heat that engenders wind.
Clinical note임상 주석
This passage is worth more than the indication above it, because it states the reasoning out loud. Black is the colour of water in five-phase correspondence; water restrains fire; heat engenders wind; therefore a black animal treats wind. The author then lists the parallel cases from elsewhere in the materia medica — the black chicken's egg (禽部), the black snake, the crow — and they are indeed all wind drugs chosen by colour.
It is a clean example of how an indication was generated in this literature, and it is generated from the correspondence system, not from observation of donkeys. The same logic chooses the nocturnal rat's eye for night vision at 1.38.2 and the wolf's throat for the blocked throat at 1.34.1. Reading these entries as empirical claims that happen to be wrong misses what they are; they are deductions from a model, and the model is explicit here.
1.25.1 Donkey Fat 脂
譯 1.25.1.1 Source원문
治積年聾, 多年瘧, 狂癲不識人, 和酒服, 幷付瘡疥. 《本草》
Translation영역
It treats deafness of years' standing, malaria of many years, and mania and withdrawal epilepsy with failure to recognize people; take it mixed with wine, and also apply it to sores and scab.
Clinical note임상 주석
Three chronic conditions and a topical use. 積年聾 is long-standing deafness; 多年瘧 is relapsing malaria; 狂癲不識人 is mania or epilepsy with failure to recognize people, which is to say with impaired awareness.
**Modern reading.** Each of these is now a separate problem with a separate answer and none of them answers to fat. Long-standing hearing loss needs audiometry to separate conductive from sensorineural causes — chronic otitis media, otosclerosis and cerumen impaction are treatable, and presbycusis and noise damage are managed with hearing aids; untreated hearing loss in later life carries a measurable association with cognitive decline and social isolation, which makes assessment worth having. Relapsing fever answering to 瘧 was Plasmodium vivax in Korea, where it was endemic until the mid-twentieth century, was declared eliminated, and then returned in the border provinces in the 1990s; it relapses from dormant liver hypnozoites and therefore needs primaquine or tafenoquine after the blood-stage cure, which is exactly why it looked like a disease of many years. Mania with failure to recognize people is a presentation requiring the organic screen set out at 1.25. Donkey fat on scabies does nothing for the mite; permethrin or oral ivermectin does, and household contacts are treated at the same time.
1.25.2 Donkey Hide 皮
譯 1.25.2.1 Source원문
治瘧, 煎膠服, 治一切風, 幷衂血, 吐血, 腸風, 血痢, 崩中, 帶下.
Translation영역
It treats malaria. Boiled down into a glue and taken, it treats wind of every kind, and also nosebleed, blood vomiting, intestinal wind, bloody dysentery, flooding and vaginal discharge.
Clinical note임상 주석
**This leaf is the raw material of 阿膠, and that is the most consequential cross-reference in my portion.** 煎膠服 — boiled down into a glue and taken — is the preparation, and 1.7 阿膠 earlier in this chapter spells out the relation in its own words: 煮牛皮作之, 驢皮膠主風爲最, 出東阿故名阿膠 — it is made by boiling hide, the donkey-hide glue is the best for wind, and it is called 阿膠 because it comes from Dong'e. The indications here are the 阿膠 indications: wind, and then the whole range of bleeding — epistaxis, haematemesis, rectal bleeding, bloody dysentery, uterine flooding, discharge.
The hide and the glue are nevertheless two different drugs and are kept apart here. 阿膠 (agyo, Asini Corii Colla) is a registered drug in the herb list and appears in a hundred and eleven prescription places; the raw hide of this leaf appears in none, and linking the leaf to the glue's identifier would merge a material with the preparation made from it. The identifier is left empty and the interlock recorded instead.
**Modern reading, and a live supply problem.** 阿膠 is not a historical curiosity: it is a current pharmacopoeial medicine, manufactured at scale, used for anaemia and bleeding, and the demand for it is now large enough to be the main driver of the global trade in donkey skins. Donkey populations have fallen sharply in several African and Asian countries, working animals have been stolen and slaughtered for their skins, and in 2024 the African Union adopted a continent-wide ban on the slaughter of donkeys for skin. This is the kind of place the chapter has to be read carefully rather than coloured in one shade: the drug works on its indications to the extent that gelatin does, it is legally available, and the problem is at the supply end rather than in the pharmacology. A practitioner prescribing it should know where it comes from, and donkey-free gelatin alternatives exist.
Clinically, the symptom list is a list of bleeding sites and every one of them needs a source found. Recurrent epistaxis needs nasal examination and a coagulation screen; haematemesis is an emergency (varices, ulcer, malignancy) requiring endoscopy; rectal bleeding is dealt with at 1.37; postmenopausal or heavy uterine bleeding needs imaging and endometrial sampling. Gelatin is not a haemostatic when swallowed.
譯 1.25.2.2 Source원문
煎膠用皮, 取其發散皮膚之義. 《本草》
Translation영역
That it is the hide which is used in boiling the glue takes the sense of its dispersing and effusing at the skin.
Clinical note임상 주석
The reasoning again, stated as openly as the colour argument at 1.25. The hide is the part used because the hide is the outermost layer of the animal, and the drug made from it therefore acts at the outermost layer of the patient — 發散皮膚, dispersing and effusing at the skin, which is the action wanted in a wind disorder. Part corresponds to part.
It is the same structure as the stomach element in the character at 1.37.1 and the nocturnal eye at 1.38.2, and it is worth keeping in view when reading 阿膠's indications in the prescriptions: the drug entered the formulary carrying this justification rather than a pharmacological one. What gelatin actually is — hydrolysed collagen, a protein with no systemic haemostatic action — has nothing to do with the skin.
1.25.3 Donkey's Head 頭
譯 1.25.3.1 Source원문
煮汁, 止消渴, 洗頭風風屑. 《本草》
Translation영역
Boil it and the liquid stops dispersion-thirst; wash with it for head wind and scurf.
Clinical note임상 주석
消渴, dispersion-thirst, is the Bogam's category for thirst with copious urination and wasting, and it corresponds to diabetes mellitus — the Bogam describes the sweet urine and the emaciation. **It is not treated by broth.** Diabetes is diagnosed on fasting glucose, HbA1c or an oral glucose tolerance test and managed by diet, weight, exercise and medication, with surveillance of eyes, kidneys, feet and cardiovascular risk; untreated it causes the retinopathy, nephropathy and neuropathy that make it the leading cause of adult blindness and of non-traumatic amputation. Thirst and polyuria of recent and rapid onset in a thin young person is type 1 diabetes and is an emergency — diabetic ketoacidosis follows within days.
頭風 and 風屑 are the external use: headache or scalp disorder, and flaking. Seborrhoeic dermatitis and scalp psoriasis respond to ketoconazole, coal tar or topical steroid; washing with a meat broth leaves a greasy residue that favours Malassezia, which is the organism behind the flaking.
1.25.4 Donkey's Milk 乳
譯 1.25.4.1 Source원문
性冷利, 味甘. 主消渴, 熱急黃, 小兒驚癎客忤. 《本草》
Translation영역
Its nature is cold and freeing, its flavour sweet. It governs dispersion-thirst, heat with acute jaundice, and fright epilepsy and the visitation-affliction of small children.
Clinical note임상 주석
性冷利 — cold and freeing — means it loosens the bowel, which is a real property of donkey milk: it is low in casein and high in lactose relative to cow's milk, and the lactose load is laxative.
**Donkey milk is a current product**, sold as a food and widely as a cosmetic ingredient, and the entry is not describing something unobtainable. The caution is that it is often sold raw: unpasteurized milk of any species transmits Brucella, Mycobacterium bovis, Salmonella, Campylobacter, Listeria and Shiga-toxin E. coli, and the people to whom it is most often given — infants, the frail, the pregnant — are the ones least able to withstand them. Donkey milk is sometimes recommended for infants with cow's-milk protein allergy; that is a decision for a paediatric allergist, and pasteurized product is the only acceptable form.
急黃 is fulminant jaundice: rapid-onset deep jaundice with fever and collapse, which is acute liver failure. **It is an intensive-care diagnosis** — viral hepatitis, drug and herbal hepatotoxicity, Wilson's disease, autoimmune hepatitis — assessed by INR and encephalopathy grade, and transplantation is the definitive treatment for those who meet criteria. Milk is not treatment and the hours spent on it are the hours that matter. 小兒驚癎 is convulsion in a child: febrile seizure is the common cause and is benign, but meningitis, encephalitis, hypoglycaemia and electrolyte disturbance present identically and are excluded first. 客忤, visitation-affliction, is the sudden unexplained collapse or screaming of an infant, and in a modern setting that phrase should prompt the sepsis and intussusception questions rather than a diagnosis.
1.25.5 Donkey's Urine 尿
譯 1.25.5.1 Source원문
性平, 味醎, 有小毒. 主胃反吐不止, 又主齒痛. 《本草》
Translation영역
Its nature is balanced, its flavour salty, and it has slight toxicity. It governs stomach reflux with unceasing vomiting, and also governs toothache.
Clinical note임상 주석
**有小毒 is the book's own.** The Bogam marks this leaf as slightly toxic and the marking should be carried forward rather than smoothed away; it is one of a dozen places in my portion where the text limits itself.
胃反, stomach reflux — food taken in the morning vomited in the evening, in the classical description — is gastric outlet obstruction. The causes are peptic stricture, pyloric scarring and **gastric carcinoma**, and persistent vomiting of this pattern in an adult requires endoscopy without delay, because Korea has among the highest gastric cancer incidences in the world and the national screening programme exists for this reason. Vomiting that will not stop is also a dehydration and electrolyte emergency in its own right: hypokalaemic, hypochloraemic metabolic alkalosis, and in the prolonged or alcohol-associated case thiamine depletion with Wernicke's encephalopathy.
Urine therapy has no evidential basis and is not recommended. Urine is not sterile, it carries the drugs and metabolites the donor excreted, and swallowing it is a route for enteric organisms. Toothache is dental: caries, pulpitis, apical abscess or cracked tooth, relieved definitively by dental treatment, and a spreading dental infection with facial swelling, trismus or airway involvement is an emergency.
1.25.6 Donkey's Dung 屎
譯 1.25.6.1 Source원문
主心腹卒痛, 諸疰忤, 絞汁服. 《本草》
Translation영역
It governs sudden pain in the heart and abdomen and the various infixations and afflictions; wring out the juice and take it.
Clinical note임상 주석
絞汁服 — wring out the juice of fresh dung and swallow it. The preparation is raw.
**Modern reading.** Dung juice carries E. coli including Shiga-toxin strains, Salmonella, Campylobacter, Clostridium perfringens, Clostridium tetani and the eggs of whatever helminths the animal carried. There is no circumstance in which it should be swallowed.
More importantly, the indication names an emergency. 心腹卒痛 — sudden severe pain in the chest and upper abdomen — is the presentation of myocardial infarction, perforated peptic ulcer, acute pancreatitis, mesenteric ischaemia, ruptured abdominal aortic aneurysm and aortic dissection. Each has a time window measured in hours and each is survivable if it is recognized. The one thing that must not happen is that the patient is given something by mouth and watched. Sudden severe chest or abdominal pain is an emergency-department presentation: ECG, troponin, lactate and imaging.
1.25.7 Grime from Under the Tail-Root 尾下軸垢
譯 1.25.7.1 Source원문
療瘧, 無久新, 發無期者. 《本草》
Translation영역
It treats malaria, whether long-standing or new, and that whose onset keeps no fixed period.
Clinical note임상 주석
發無期者 — the fever whose onset keeps no fixed period — is a real and clinically important distinction. The tertian and quartan patterns that gave 瘧 its classical descriptions belong to Plasmodium vivax and P. malariae; P. falciparum, the species that kills, is characteristically irregular and often continuous. A fever that will not settle into a pattern is therefore the more dangerous fever, and the entry has noticed this even though it has no way of explaining it.
**Modern reading.** Any fever in a person who has been in a malarious area is a malaria question until a blood film or rapid antigen test says otherwise, and falciparum malaria is treated as an emergency with artemisinin-based combination therapy or intravenous artesunate when severe; cerebral malaria, severe anaemia and acute kidney injury develop within a day. The drug here, scraped filth from under an animal's tail, has nothing in it, and the material is a tetanus and enteric exposure. This leaf and 1.41, 1.44 and 1.45 are the places where the chapter reaches for whatever is at hand; they are recorded as part of the text and not carried into practice.
1.26 Mule Flesh 騾肉
노새고기 노새 고기 mule meat
`노새고기` 의 두 낱말이 다 지금 말로 그대로 이어진다. 앞 절 1.25 驢肉의 `나귀고기` 와 **짝으로 적혀** 있어, 전사자가 驢(당나귀)와 騾(노새)를 다른 짐승으로 가려 읽고 있음이 향명 쪽에서 분명하다.
譯 1.26.1 Source원문
性温, 味辛, 有小毒. 食之不益人, 孕婦忌食. 《入門》
Translation영역
Its nature is warm, its flavour acrid, and it has slight toxicity. Eating it does not benefit a person, and pregnant women are to avoid eating it.
Clinical note임상 주석
**The shortest section in the chapter, and the only one that is wholly negative.** There is no indication at all: slight toxicity, no benefit, and a prohibition in pregnancy. It is a section that exists to tell the reader not to use the thing.
The mule is the sterile hybrid of a jack donkey and a mare, Equus asinus × Equus caballus, and it must not be run together with the donkey of 1.25 — the Bogam gives them separate headwords and separate natures, and the Korean glosses 나귀고기 and 노새고기 keep them apart. Note also that the horse occupies a long section of its own earlier in the chapter (1.10 白馬莖 with seventeen parts), so all three equids are present and distinguished.
**Modern reading.** Mule meat is ordinary meat, eaten where mules are kept, and there is nothing toxic in it. The pregnancy prohibition looks like an inference from the animal rather than an observation about the meat: the mule is sterile, and a sterile animal was held to carry that sterility into whoever ate it — the same associative reasoning that chooses a black animal for wind at 1.25 and a nocturnal animal's eye for night vision at 1.38.2. The real cautions in pregnancy about any meat are the ones that apply to all of it: Toxoplasma and Trichinella from undercooked muscle, and Listeria from cured and ready-to-eat products. Those are addressed by cooking, not by species.
1.27 Fox Penis 狐隂莖
여의음빙 여우의 음경 fox's penis
`여의` 는 `여우의` 의 준 꼴이고 지금 말 `여우` 로 이어진다. `음빙` 은 한자 `隂莖` 을 우리 음으로 적은 것이다 — 곧 이 향명은 앞은 우리말, 뒤는 한자음인 섞인 꼴이다.
전사본은 `빙` 으로 적고, 잎 055a 의 발에 교감줄 `빙 : ᄀᆡᆼ(초간본)` 을 달아 初刊本이 `ᄀᆞᆼ`이 아니라 **`ᄀᆡᆼ`** 으로 읽었음을 보여 준다. 그 `ᄀᆡᆼ` 이 이 문의 다른 두 자리와 **꼴이 같다** — 1.10 白馬莖의 `흰ᄆᆞᆯ음ᄀᆡᆼ` 과 1.22 牡狗隂莖의 `수개의음ᄀᆡᆼ` 이 둘 다 `음ᄀᆡᆼ` 이다. 그러므로 전사본의 `빙` 이 이 문에서 홀로 벗어난 꼴이고 初刊本 쪽이 고른 읽기다. 전사본 글자를 싣고 初刊本의 읽기를 여기 적었다.
譯 1.27.1 Source원문
性微寒, 味甘, 有毒. 主女子絶産, 隂痒, 小兒隂㿉卵腫.
Translation영역
Its nature is slightly cold, its flavour sweet, and it is toxic. It governs barrenness in women, genital itch, and shan bulge with swelling of the testicles in small children.
Clinical note임상 주석
**有毒 — the book's own toxicity marking**, and it stands over the whole section.
The fox is Vulpes vulpes, the red fox. **It is functionally extinct in Korea**: the wild population collapsed in the twentieth century under hunting, poisoning campaigns and habitat loss, and since 2012 the National Institute of Ecology has been releasing captive-bred foxes in Sobaeksan National Park. It is an Endangered Wildlife Class I species, and taking, killing or trading one is an offence under the Wildlife Protection and Management Act. With the wolf at 1.34 and the dhole at 1.33, this is one of three large Korean canids that the chapter treats as available and that are now gone or nearly gone — three sections of this portion are pharmacology about animals the country has lost.
Clinically, the three indications are separate problems. 絶産, barrenness — infertility is investigated as a couple, with semen analysis, ovulatory assessment and tubal patency, and the treatable causes (anovulation, tubal disease, male factor, thyroid and prolactin disorders) are found by that workup and not by a drug. 隂痒, genital itch — candidiasis, bacterial vaginosis, lichen sclerosus, contact dermatitis, scabies and, in the older patient, vulval intraepithelial neoplasia; persistent vulval itch that does not settle needs examination and often biopsy, because lichen sclerosus and VIN are missed for years when treated as thrush. 隂㿉卵腫 in a boy — scrotal swelling — is inguinal hernia, hydrocele or, when it is acutely painful, **testicular torsion, which has about six hours before the testis is lost**. A boy with a suddenly painful, swollen, high-riding testicle goes to surgery, not to a pharmacy. That warning is repeated at 1.42, 1.43 and 1.44, because the chapter keeps returning to this region.
譯 1.27.2 Translation영역
The fox is good at bewitching.
Clinical note임상 주석
Four characters, and they set up a thread that runs through my portion. 魅 is possession or bewitchment, and 狐魅 — fox-possession — recurs at 1.27.2, where the raw heart and liver are given for it, and at 1.32, where the fur seal's genitalia treat 鬼魅狐魅夢與鬼交. The fox in this literature is not only a drug; it is an agent of illness, and the drug made from it is an apotropaic against the illness it causes. The same inversion governs the head and tail at 1.27.5 and the dung at 1.27.7, both of which are burnt to ward off what the living animal brings.
譯 1.27.3 Source원문
形似黃狗而小, 鼻尖尾大. 《本草》
Translation영역
In form it resembles a yellow dog but is smaller, with a pointed muzzle and a large tail.
Clinical note임상 주석
An accurate description — the pointed muzzle and the heavy brush are the fox's two field characters — and it is the kind of sentence that makes the identifications in this part of the chapter secure. Compare 1.31, where the book admits it cannot tell three animals apart, and 1.39, where the description of the mole is good enough to identify the species without the name.
1.27.1 Fox Flesh 肉
譯 1.27.1.1 Source원문
性煖一云温, 味甘, 有小毒. 主五藏邪氣, 精神恍惚, 徤忘, 補虛勞, 療蠱毒疥瘡, 作羹食.
Translation영역
Its nature is warming one says warm, its flavour sweet, and it has slight toxicity. It governs evil qi in the five viscera, abstraction of the spirit and forgetfulness, supplements vacuity taxation, and treats gu toxin and scab sores; make it into a soup and eat it.
Clinical note임상 주석
精神恍惚 and 徤忘 — abstraction of the spirit, and forgetfulness. Cognitive and attentional complaints in an adult are not a single illness: delirium (which is acute, fluctuating, and always has a cause to find), depression, thyroid disease, B12 and folate deficiency, obstructive sleep apnoea, medication effect, alcohol, and the dementias. The reversible causes are common and are found by a basic screen, which is why new cognitive change is worth investigating rather than supplementing.
譯 1.27.1.2 Source원문
作膾生食, 甚煖去風. 《本草》
Translation영역
Made into a raw dish and eaten uncooked, it is strongly warming and dispels wind.
Clinical note임상 주석
**作膾生食 — made into 회 and eaten raw. This instruction has to be met head-on, because eating raw fox is a route to four serious infections at once.**
**Rabies.** Canids are the classical reservoir, and the fox is a rabies host across Eurasia and North America. Rabies is transmitted by bite, scratch and mucosal or broken-skin contact with saliva or nervous tissue — so butchering is itself the exposure, before anything is eaten. Once symptoms appear the case fatality is effectively one hundred per cent, and there is no treatment. The only intervention is post-exposure prophylaxis given promptly: immediate and thorough wound washing with soap and water, rabies immunoglobulin infiltrated around the wound, and the vaccine series. Anyone bitten or scratched by a wild mammal, or who has handled one that behaved abnormally, needs that assessment the same day. In Korea the principal wildlife reservoir is the raccoon dog of 1.30.
**Echinococcus multilocularis.** The fox is the definitive host of this tapeworm, and human infection — alveolar echinococcosis — produces a slowly invasive, tumour-like hepatic lesion that is fatal if untreated and is still often only partly resectable; treatment is prolonged or lifelong albendazole with surgery where feasible. Infection is by ingesting eggs from fox faeces or fur, which means that handling the carcass and the pelt is the exposure, not only the meat. This is the reason the dung at 1.27.7 is also dangerous.
**Trichinella**, from raw carnivore muscle, giving fever, periorbital oedema, myositis and eosinophilia; and **Toxoplasma gondii**, which matters most in pregnancy and in immunosuppression. Freezing does not reliably kill Trichinella in wild carnivores, and nothing short of thorough cooking makes this meat safe.
There is no modern use for this leaf. The entry is translated as it stands because it is a record of what was done, and the note says what would happen now.
1.27.2 Fox's Five Viscera 五臟
譯 1.27.2.1 Source원문
性微寒, 味苦, 有毒. 主蠱毒及小兒驚癎.
Translation영역
Its nature is slightly cold, its flavour bitter, and it is toxic. It governs gu toxin and fright epilepsy in small children.
Clinical note임상 주석
有毒 again, and the organs are marked more toxic than the flesh of 1.27.1, which was 有小毒. The book is grading within the animal.
譯 1.27.2.2 Translation영역
The heart and liver taken raw treat fox-possession.
Clinical note임상 주석
**心肝生服 — raw heart and liver.** Everything said at 1.27.1 applies and the liver makes it worse: raw carnivore liver is the single highest-risk tissue for Echinococcus eggs picked up in dressing the animal and for Toxoplasma tissue cysts, and the organ is where parasite burden concentrates. Rabies virus is present in nervous tissue rather than viscera, but the butchering exposure is the same.
狐魅, fox-possession, is a culture-bound illness category, and the presentations gathered under it are real presentations: sudden personality change, dissociative states, hallucination, and the acute psychoses. **The modern differential matters because several entries in it are both treatable and time-critical** — delirium from infection or metabolic derangement, temporal-lobe epilepsy with post-ictal confusion, thyrotoxicosis, and autoimmune encephalitis, of which anti-NMDA-receptor encephalitis is the one to know: it presents in young people as florid psychiatric illness with movement disorder and autonomic instability, is diagnosed on antibody testing of serum and CSF, and responds to immunotherapy, having been treated as primary psychosis for the first weeks in many reported cases. An acute behavioural change is a medical question before it is a psychiatric one.
譯 1.27.2.3 Translation영역
The liver burnt to ash treats wind.
1.27.3 Fox Gall 膽
譯 1.27.3.1 Source원문
主人暴亡, 温水硏灌喉中卽活. 臘月收雄者佳. 《本草》
Translation영역
It governs a person's sudden death: ground in warm water and poured down the throat, he revives at once. One collected in the twelfth month from a male is good.
Clinical note임상 주석
**This is the most dangerous instruction in my portion and it should be read as a warning rather than a remedy.**
暴亡, sudden death, is cardiac arrest. What the collapsed patient needs is recognition within seconds, chest compressions started immediately, and defibrillation as early as possible: survival from witnessed out-of-hospital arrest falls by roughly seven to ten per cent for every minute that compressions and a shock are delayed, and bystander CPR roughly doubles or triples survival. The sequence is to check for responsiveness and normal breathing, call emergency services, start compressions at 100–120 per minute to a depth of 5–6 cm, and get an automated external defibrillator onto the chest.
**Pouring liquid into the throat of an unresponsive person does nothing therapeutic and causes aspiration**, which fills the lungs and kills people who would otherwise have been resuscitated. An unconscious patient has no protective airway reflexes; that is precisely why nothing is given by mouth. The instruction here is not a harmless superstition — it occupies the minutes that decide the outcome and it adds an injury of its own.
Why it survived in the literature is worth saying, because it explains a whole class of these entries: 卽活, "he revives at once", reflects the recoveries that do happen. Vasovagal syncope, seizure, hypoglycaemia, breath-holding and simple faints all look like sudden death from outside and all resolve spontaneously within a minute or two. Whatever was done in that minute acquired the credit. A remedy for sudden death can accumulate centuries of apparent success without ever having worked.
1.27.4 Fox's Intestines and Stomach 腸肚
譯 1.27.4.1 Source원문
性微寒. 主瘡疥及小兒驚癎, 大人見鬼. 《本草》
Translation영역
Its nature is slightly cold. It governs sores and scab, fright epilepsy in small children, and the seeing of ghosts in adults.
Clinical note임상 주석
大人見鬼 — an adult who sees ghosts — is a visual hallucination, and in a clinical setting it is a specific and useful symptom because the differential is short and much of it is treatable. **Delirium** is the first consideration and the commonest: acute, fluctuating, with inattention, and caused by infection, hypoxia, drugs, retention, constipation or metabolic derangement. **Alcohol withdrawal** with delirium tremens follows one to three days after cessation and is lethal untreated; it is managed with benzodiazepines and thiamine. **Dementia with Lewy bodies** presents with well-formed, recurrent visual hallucinations, fluctuating cognition and parkinsonism, and matters to identify because antipsychotics — especially the typical ones — can cause severe sensitivity reactions in it. **Charles Bonnet syndrome** gives complex visual hallucinations in people with significant sight loss and intact cognition, and the reassurance that it is not psychiatric is itself the treatment. Add medication effects (dopamine agonists, anticholinergics, steroids), temporal-lobe and occipital seizures, and migraine aura.
The entry puts the symptom alongside children's convulsions under one organ, which is the viscera-for-spirit logic of the fox sections; the value now is in the list of things to look for.
1.27.5 Fox's Head and Tail 頭尾
譯 1.27.5.1 Translation영역
Burn it to ward off the noxious.
Clinical note임상 주석
Purely apotropaic — there is no pharmacological claim at all, and the section is four characters long. 辟惡, warding off the noxious, belongs with the burnt head and tail here, the burnt dung of 1.27.7, and the burnt drum-skin of 1.41; in each the agent is the smoke and the reasoning is that the animal's power repels what the animal brings. Burning animal remains releases particulates and, in the case of hair and horn, hydrogen cyanide and sulphur compounds; it is harmful in an enclosed room and useless in an open one. Recorded as what it is.
1.27.6 Fox's Lip 唇
譯 1.27.6.1 Translation영역
It draws out a malignant splinter.
Clinical note임상 주석
惡剌 is a splinter or thorn that has gone bad — a retained foreign body with surrounding infection. The modern handling is worth stating because the folk impulse to draw it out with a poultice is still common: organic foreign bodies (wood, thorn, plant material) are the ones that must come out, because they are not sterile and they seed infection and granuloma; they are frequently radiolucent on plain X-ray and are better found on ultrasound; and a retained thorn near a joint or tendon sheath can cause septic arthritis or tenosynovitis. A wound with a retained splinter needs exploration and removal, irrigation, and tetanus status checked. Rose and blackthorn punctures are a recognized cause of plant-thorn synovitis. Nothing applied to the surface pulls out a buried fragment.
1.27.7 Fox Dung 屎
譯 1.27.7.1 Translation영역
Burn it to ward off epidemic pestilence and noxious qi.
Clinical note임상 주석
Burning dung as epidemic prophylaxis. It has no effect on transmission of any infection, and the smoke itself — particulate matter, carbon monoxide, aldehydes — is a respiratory hazard, which is why household solid-fuel smoke is counted among the larger global causes of respiratory disease. Epidemic control is case-finding, isolation, ventilation, hand and respiratory hygiene, and vaccination.
譯 1.27.7.2 Translation영역
That of a male fox, collected in the first month, is good.
譯 1.27.7.3 Source원문
在木石上尖頭堅者是也. 《本草》
Translation영역
It is the kind found on wood and stone, pointed at the end and hard.
Clinical note임상 주석
**The identification is accurate field observation.** Fox scat is deposited conspicuously on raised objects — logs, rocks, path edges — as scent-marking, and it is characteristically tapered to a point at one end and dries hard. Someone had looked at it carefully. The same precision of observation turns up at 1.38.6, where the male rat's droppings are identified as the ones pointed at both ends, and at 1.39, where the mole's eyes and forelegs are described well enough to name the animal.
**The hazard is the other side of the same accuracy: this is the material that carries Echinococcus multilocularis eggs.** The fox is the definitive host, the eggs are shed in the faeces, they are immediately infective, they survive cold and desiccation for months, and human infection follows ingestion or inhalation of egg-laden dust. Collecting fox scat by hand and then grinding or burning it is a direct exposure, and the resulting alveolar echinococcosis presents years later as a liver lesion mistaken for malignancy. Anyone handling fox faeces occupationally wears gloves and a mask and does not create dust.
1.28 Otter Liver 獺肝
멍우릐간 otter's liver
두 낱말로 갈라진다 — `멍우릐` + `간`. 뒤의 `간` 은 한자 `肝` 의 음이고 지금 말 `간` 으로 그대로 이어진다. 앞의 `멍우릐` 는 `멍우리` 의 관형꼴(`-의`)인데, **`멍우리` 가 지금 말로 이어지지 않는다** — 지금 수달을 가리키는 말은 한자말 `수달`(水獺)이다. 그러므로 `hyangmyeong_mod` 를 **비웠다.** 낱말이 풀리지 않아서가 아니라, 꼴이 풀려도(`멍우릐` = 멍우리의) 그 낱말이 지금 말에 남아 있지 않기 때문이다. 억지로 `수달의 간` 으로 적으면 **옛말을 현대화한 것이 아니라 다른 낱말로 바꾼 것**이 된다.
다만 **어느 짐승인지는 확실하다** — 낱말이 아니라 **책이 말해 준다**: `一名水狗卽今水獺也`(일명 水狗이니 곧 지금의 水獺이다). 종을 모르는 자리가 아니고 **낱말만 모르는 자리**다.
譯 1.28.1 Source원문
性微熱一云平, 味甘一云醎, 有毒一云無毒. 主鬼疰病相染一門悉患者, 又療傳尸勞疾, 止久嗽, 治蠱毒.
Translation영역
Its nature is slightly hot one says balanced, its flavour sweet one says salty, and it is toxic one says without toxicity. It governs the ghost-infixation disease that infects one another so that a whole household falls ill, and it further treats corpse-transmitted taxation disease, stops enduring cough, and treats gu toxin.
Clinical note임상 주석
**The clinically most interesting sentence in my portion, and it is an epidemiological observation rather than a pharmacological claim.**
相染一門悉患者 — "they infect one another, so that a whole household all fall ill" — and 傳尸勞疾, "corpse-transmitted taxation disease", with 久嗽, enduring cough, beside it. This is pulmonary tuberculosis, and the Bogam has recorded two of its defining features: that it clusters in households, and that it passes from the dying to the living. 傳尸 — transmitted from the corpse — names contagion explicitly, in 1613, more than two and a half centuries before Koch identified the organism. The category is built on an accurate observation about how the disease behaves.
**What follows from it now is quite different from what follows in the text.** Tuberculosis is treated with combination chemotherapy — rifampicin, isoniazid, pyrazinamide and ethambutol for two months, then rifampicin and isoniazid for four, with drug-susceptibility testing to guide it, and much longer regimens for multidrug-resistant disease. The correct response to the household observation is contact tracing and screening of everyone in that household, which is standard public-health practice and is the direct modern descendant of what this sentence noticed. Korea still carries one of the highest tuberculosis incidences in the OECD, and a chronic cough of more than two or three weeks, with weight loss, night sweats or haemoptysis, is a tuberculosis question — sputum smear, culture, nucleic-acid amplification and chest imaging. Otter liver does nothing for it, and the hours it costs are the hours in which the household is still being infected.
**Legal position, and it is the heaviest in this part of the chapter.** The Eurasian otter, Lutra lutra, is in Korea **Natural Monument No. 330**, an **Endangered Wildlife Class I** species, and **CITES Appendix I**. Killing, keeping, transporting or trading it, or any part of it, is a criminal offence under the Wildlife Protection and Management Act and under the domestic legislation implementing CITES; Appendix I listing means commercial international trade is prohibited outright. This is not a drug that is difficult to obtain. It is a drug that it is a crime to obtain, and the same applies to all seven leaves below.
譯 1.28.2 Source원문
一名水狗, 卽今水獺也. 入藥當以取魚祭天者.
Translation영역
It is also called the water dog, and it is what is now the water otter. For use in medicine one should take the animal that catches fish and offers them to heaven.
Clinical note임상 주석
**一名水狗卽今水獺也 is the book identifying its own headword**, and by the principle that the Bogam's own gloss outranks a later standard name, this settles the species: the otter, not any other aquatic mammal. It also explains the vernacular difficulty above — the Korean word in the gloss has not survived, but the animal is named unambiguously in the Chinese.
取魚祭天者 — the otter that catches fish and lays them out as an offering to heaven — is a real behaviour read as ritual. Otters cache and arrange prey on banks and rocks, and the classical literature made this a sacrifice; the 獺祭魚 of the seasonal calendars marks a point in the first month. The instruction is therefore to take an adult animal in the fishing season, dressed up as a requirement of ritual purity.
譯 1.28.3 Source원문
獺五藏及肉皆寒, 惟肝性温, 主傳尸勞極, 亦主産勞. 諸畜肝皆葉數定, 惟此肝一月一葉, 十二月十二葉, 其間又有退葉, 須見形乃可驗, 不爾多僞也. 《本草》
Translation영역
The otter's five viscera and its flesh are all cold; only the liver is warm in nature, and it governs the extremity of corpse-transmitted taxation, and also governs taxation after childbirth. In all domestic animals the number of lobes of the liver is fixed, but in this liver alone there is one lobe in the first month and twelve lobes in the twelfth month, and in between there are lobes that recede again. One must see the thing itself before it can be verified; otherwise there is much counterfeiting.
Clinical note임상 주석
**The lobe count is an authenticity test, and it is false.** The otter's liver has fixed lobation like that of any other mammal; it does not gain a lobe each month. What the passage records truthfully is the state of the trade — 不爾多僞也, otherwise there is much counterfeiting — and the test exists because the drug was expensive and routinely faked. The same pattern governs 1.32 膃肭臍, where almost the entire entry is authentication, and 1.28.2, where the book reports that a famous test for otter gall failed when it tried it.
This is worth noticing as a structural feature of the chapter rather than a curiosity. The costly animal drugs attract elaborate verification procedures; the verification procedures do not work; and the book sometimes says so. A sceptical reading of the chapter is available from inside the chapter.
産勞, taxation after childbirth, is postpartum exhaustion. The modern concerns in that period are postpartum haemorrhage, anaemia, infection, thromboembolism, pre-eclampsia presenting after delivery, and postnatal depression — all of which have specific management, and the last of which is screened for because it is common and treatable.
1.28.1 Otter Flesh 肉
譯 1.28.1.1 Source원문
性寒一云平, 無毒. 主骨蒸熱勞, 血脉不行, 及女子經脉不通, 大小腸秘澁. 然消陽氣, 不益男子, 宜少食.
Translation영역
Its nature is cold one says balanced and it is without toxicity. It governs steaming-bone heat taxation, blood and vessels that do not move, blocked menses in women, and constriction of the large and small intestine. But it wastes the yang qi and does not benefit men, so it should be eaten sparingly.
Clinical note임상 주석
The flesh is marked 無毒 where the liver above was 有毒 — the book grades within the animal, as it did in the fox sections.
骨蒸熱勞 — steaming-bone heat taxation — is the fever-and-night-sweat picture of the consumptive illness the headword treated, which is to say tuberculosis again. 經脉不通, blocked menses: secondary amenorrhoea needs a pregnancy test first and then assessment for polycystic ovary syndrome, thyroid disease, hyperprolactinaemia, premature ovarian insufficiency and the energy-deficit amenorrhoea of athletes and of eating disorders, since each has a different treatment and two of them carry bone loss.
然消陽氣不益男子宜少食 — the qualification at the end is the useful part: a limit the book places on its own recommendation.
譯 1.28.1.2 Source원문
下水脹, 熱脹卽差, 冷脹益甚, 只治熱不治冷故也.
Translation영역
It brings down water distension. Heat distension is cured at once, but cold distension is made worse by it, because it treats only heat and not cold.
Clinical note임상 주석
**This is a genuine clinical discrimination and the best reasoning in the section.** The drug is cold in nature; it therefore helps a hot presentation of swelling and aggravates a cold one. The author has noticed that the same complaint can have opposite constitutions behind it and that a remedy effective in one will harm the other, and has written the harm down.
The modern parallel is exact in structure if not in content. Oedema and abdominal distension are a sign, not a diagnosis, and the treatment depends entirely on the cause: a diuretic helps the oedema of heart failure and of cirrhotic ascites, is useless in lymphoedema, and is actively harmful in the hypovolaemic patient and in oedema from constrictive or hypoalbuminaemic states where intravascular volume is already low. New ascites requires diagnostic paracentesis with cell count and albumin gradient, because spontaneous bacterial peritonitis is common and lethal and is found no other way. Treating the sign rather than the cause is the error, and the passage is pointing at it.
譯 1.28.1.3 Source원문
療瘟疫時氣及牛馬疫, 煮屎灌亦良. 《本草》
Translation영역
It treats epidemic pestilence and seasonal qi, and also the murrain of cattle and horses; boiling the dung and pouring it in is likewise good.
Clinical note임상 주석
A veterinary use alongside the human one, which is normal in this literature — the same drug is given to the sick household and the sick byre. 牛馬疫, the murrain of cattle and horses, covers rinderpest (now globally eradicated), anthrax, foot-and-mouth disease and the haemorrhagic septicaemias. Modern livestock epidemics are managed by notification, movement restriction, vaccination and culling, and Korea's foot-and-mouth and avian influenza responses are run on exactly that basis. Drenching an animal with boiled dung has no effect and spreads the agent on the hands and equipment of whoever does it.
1.28.2 Otter Gall 膽
譯 1.28.2.1 Source원문
主眼翳黑花飛蠅, 上下視物不明.
Translation영역
It governs screens over the eye, black flowers and flying flies, and unclear vision looking up and down.
Clinical note임상 주석
**黑花飛蠅 — black flowers and flying flies — is floaters, and it is described well.** Vitreous opacities drift across the visual field and are seen as specks and threads that move with the eye; the Chinese term is as good as the English "floaters" and rather better than "muscae volitantes", which says the same thing in Latin. 眼翳, a screen over the eye, covers corneal opacity, pterygium and cataract.
**The one urgent thing in this entry is hidden inside its chief indication, and it should be stated plainly: a sudden increase in floaters, especially with flashes of light, or a curtain or shadow coming across part of the field, is retinal detachment or a retinal tear and needs same-day ophthalmic assessment.** Detachment repaired before the macula is involved usually preserves useful vision; once the macula has come off, it often does not. Long-standing, stable floaters in an otherwise well eye are benign and need no treatment. The distinction is onset and change, and it is the reason this symptom should never be treated with a remedy and watched.
Cataract is treated surgically and is the commonest reversible cause of visual loss worldwide. Nothing instilled or swallowed clears a lens opacity.
譯 1.28.2.2 Translation영역
It is most effective in treating nodules and scrofula.
Clinical note임상 주석
結核瘰癧 is cervical lymphadenopathy with suppuration and sinus formation — tuberculous lymphadenitis, scrofula, and in this chapter it recurs at 1.34.2 under wolf dung. It is the extrapulmonary form of the disease the headword section described, and the chapter is circling the same illness through a series of animals.
Modern management is anti-tuberculous chemotherapy after tissue diagnosis — fine-needle aspiration or excision biopsy with culture and nucleic-acid amplification, since treatment is six months of multidrug therapy and drug resistance has to be known. A persistent neck lump in an adult is also the presentation of lymphoma and of metastatic head-and-neck carcinoma, so a node that does not resolve in a few weeks is biopsied rather than observed.
This passage, marked 俗方, is a Korean addition to the inherited text.
譯 1.28.2.3 Source원문
古云獺膽分盃, 甞試不驗, 惟塗盞面, 使酒稍高而已. 《本草》
Translation영역
The old books say that otter gall divides a cup of wine. I have tried it and it does not hold; it only coats the face of the cup and makes the wine stand a little higher.
Clinical note임상 주석
**This is the most valuable passage in my portion, and it belongs with 禽部 鸛骨 among the places where the book turns on its own tradition.**
The claim being tested is a famous one — that otter gall smeared in a cup will part the wine into separate portions — and the author says he tried it, it did not work, and he reports what actually happened: a film on the inside of the cup and the liquid standing slightly higher. **That is a correct observation of surface chemistry.** Bile acids are surfactants; a bile film alters the wetting of the vessel wall and changes the meniscus, raising the apparent level. The author has no theory for it, describes it accurately, and refuses the inherited claim on the strength of a test.
Three things follow. First, the Bogam preserves a negative result, which almost nothing in this literature does; the usual fate of a failed test is to go unrecorded. Second, it preserves it **in the same entry that recommends the drug**, so that the reader meets the enthusiasm and the disproof together — the editorial decision is the significant act, as it was at 天靈蓋 in the human chapter, where the text that condemns the drug is printed beneath it. Third, it gives a standard by which the rest of the chapter can be read: the authentication tests at 1.28 and 1.32, the lobe count, the startled dog, the water that will not freeze, are all of the same kind as this one, and this is the one that was checked.
1.28.3 Otter Kidney 腎
譯 1.28.3.1 Translation영역
It governs benefiting the male.
Clinical note임상 주석
Four characters, and they name no disease. 益男子 is the organ-for-organ claim that runs through the chapter: a kidney supplements the kidney, and in this book's physiology the kidney holds the essence, so a kidney benefits male sexual and reproductive function. The fur seal's genitalia at 1.32, the dog's testis, the deer's kidney and the rat's kidney elsewhere in the chapter all make the same claim by the same route.
There is no evidence that eating any animal's kidney has androgenic or fertility effects; the hormones in animal tissue are peptide or steroid and are either digested or present in quantities far below any physiological dose. Where the complaint behind this indication is real — erectile dysfunction, low libido, subfertility — each has a workup and effective treatments, set out at 1.32. The protected status of the species applies to this leaf as to the others.
1.28.4 Otter Bone 骨
譯 1.28.4.1 Translation영역
It stops vomiting and retching, and treats a fish bone caught in the throat.
Clinical note임상 주석
魚骨鯁, a fish bone lodged in the throat, chosen for an animal that eats fish — the same associative logic as the rest of the chapter, and here it has put a real emergency under a useless drug.
**A lodged fish bone is not a trivial thing.** Most impact in the tonsil, base of tongue or valleculae and are removed under direct vision; those that pass lower can impact in the oesophagus, and an impacted sharp bone can perforate, causing retropharyngeal abscess, mediastinitis or, rarely, aorto-oesophageal fistula. Persistent pain, odynophagia, drooling, fever, neck swelling or surgical emphysema after a fish meal means imaging and endoscopy. **The common folk manoeuvres are the harmful part**: swallowing rice balls, bread or liquid to push the bone down drives it deeper and converts a removable pharyngeal foreign body into an oesophageal perforation. The right action is to stop eating and be examined. This repeats at 1.28.6, where the instruction is to scratch the neck with the otter's claw.
1.28.5 Otter Marrow 髓
譯 1.28.5.1 Source원문
滅瘢痕, 取白獺髓, 雜玉與琥珀屑塗之. 《本草》
Translation영역
It erases scars: take the marrow of a white otter, mix it with jade and amber powder, and apply it.
Clinical note임상 주석
白獺, a white otter — an albino or leucistic animal, which is vanishingly rare — compounded with powdered jade and amber. **The recipe is effectively unobtainable, and that is informative rather than incidental.** A preparation whose ingredients cannot be had is a prestige formula rather than a working one, and the chapter has several: the twelve-lobed liver of 1.28, the fur seal that startles a sleeping dog at 1.32, the lightning-struck beast at 1.45. They mark the boundary where materia medica becomes display.
**Modern reading.** Scars do respond to treatment, and the effective measures are known: silicone gel sheeting worn consistently for months, pressure therapy, intralesional corticosteroid for hypertrophic scars and keloids, 5-fluorouracil, cryotherapy, and fractional laser for texture and colour. Prevention matters more than correction — tension-free closure, sun protection of the fresh scar, and early intervention in those prone to keloid. Topical vitamin E and onion extract are widely sold and poorly supported. Mineral powders in a fat base do nothing beyond occlusion, which is the one mechanism silicone sheeting shares with them and the reason such preparations seemed to help.
1.28.6 Otter's Four Feet 四足
譯 1.28.6.1 Source원문
主魚骨鯁, 煮汁服, 又取爪爬項下卽下. 《本草》
Translation영역
It governs a fish bone caught in the throat: boil it and take the liquid, or take the claw and scratch below the neck and the bone goes down at once.
Clinical note임상 주석
爬項下 — scratch the outside of the neck with the claw. A sympathetic gesture: the claw of the fish-eating animal drawn down the throat from outside to draw the bone down inside.
It does nothing, and the delay is the harm; see 1.28.4 for what an impacted fish bone can do and for why the impulse to push it down is the dangerous one. Scratching the neck skin with a dried claw also breaks the skin with contaminated material, which is a tetanus and soft-tissue infection route in its own right.
1.28.7 Otter Skin 皮
譯 1.28.7.1 Source원문
今人以皮飾毳服領袖, 云垢不着. 如風塵眯目, 以皮拭目卽出. 又毛端果不染塵, 亦一異也. 《本草》
Translation영역
People today trim the collars and cuffs of fur garments with this skin, saying that grime will not cling to it. If wind-borne dust gets into the eye, wipe the eye with the skin and it comes out at once. And the tips of the hairs truly do not take dust, which is another oddity.
Clinical note임상 주석
**The observation is correct, and it is the reason the species is now endangered.**
Otter pelt is among the densest mammalian fur — of the order of fifty to a hundred thousand hairs per square centimetre in places — with fine underfur locked beneath stiff guard hairs, and the structure is what keeps the skin dry in water. 毛端果不染塵, the hair-tips truly do not take dust, is a real property: the pelt is water- and dirt-repellent, which is exactly why it was used to face collars and cuffs, the parts of a garment that soil first. The author is describing a material he has handled and marking it 一異, an oddity, because he has no explanation for it.
That use is the history of the animal. The otter was trapped for its pelt across Eurasia into the twentieth century, and the combination of fur trapping, river pollution, dam construction and loss of bankside habitat is what reduced Lutra lutra to the status recorded at 1.28 — Natural Monument No. 330, Endangered Wildlife Class I, CITES Appendix I. This passage is where the chapter's pharmacology and the species' decline meet, and it is worth reading as such: the most admiring sentence about the animal in the whole section is about its skin as a commodity.
**On the eye.** Wiping the eye with fur to remove a foreign body is the wrong manoeuvre. Rubbing drives loose particles across the cornea and abrades it, and a fur fibre left in the fornix becomes the foreign body. The correct handling is copious irrigation with clean water or saline, eversion of the upper lid to look in the sulcus where particles lodge, and slit-lamp examination with fluorescein if pain, photophobia or a sensation of something present continues — an embedded or metallic corneal body needs removal by someone equipped to do it, and a high-velocity injury raises the question of penetration, which is a surgical emergency.
1.29 Badger Meat 猯肉
`오ᄉᆞ리` 는 지금 말 `오소리` 로 그대로 이어진다 — 아래아(ㆍ)가 ㅗ 로 바뀐 것이고, 이 문의 다른 향명들과 같은 꼴이다. `고기` 는 그대로다.
전사본은 `오ᄉᆞ리` 로 적고, 잎 056b 의 발에 교감줄 `리 : ᄅᆡ(초간본)` 을 달아 初刊本이 `오ᄉᆞᄅᆡ` 로 읽었음을 보여 준다. 이 잎의 향명 셋 가운데 `리` 를 쥔 것은 이것뿐이다(1.30 은 이미 `ᄅᆡ` 를 쓰고 1.31 은 `뷔` 다).
**이 향명이 이 문에서 가장 값진 자리의 하나다.** 1.29 猯 · 1.30 獾 · 1.31 貉 · 1.42 貂鼠 · 1.43 黃鼠 다섯 절에서 오소리ㆍ너구리ㆍ담비ㆍ족제비가 서로 섞이는데, 한자도 흔들리고 지금 이름도 흔들린다. 가려 주는 것은 **향명뿐**이다 — 禽部에서 `가마괴`/`ᄀᆞᆯ가마괴` 가 까마귀와 갈까마귀를 못 박은 것과 같은 꼴이다.
譯 1.29.1 Source원문
性平, 味甘一云酸, 無毒. 主久水脹垂死者.
Translation영역
Its nature is balanced, its flavour sweet one says sour, and it is without toxicity. It governs long-standing water distension in one who is on the point of death.
Clinical note임상 주석
**This section opens the tangle, and the tangle has to be set out before anything else, because five sections of my portion turn on it.**
1.29 猯, 1.30 獾, 1.31 貉, 1.42 貂鼠 and 1.43 黃鼠 are five short sections covering the badger, the raccoon dog, the marten and the weasel, and **neither the Chinese characters nor the modern Korean names line them up consistently.** The vernacular glosses are the only thing that separates them, and they give: 1.29 오ᄉᆞ리 = 오소리, the badger; 1.30 너구ᄅᆡ = 너구리, the raccoon dog; 1.31 담뷔 = 담비, the marten; 1.42 돈피, the sable or marten pelt; 1.43 죡져비 = 족제비, the weasel.
**In standard Chinese usage the assignment runs the other way** — 獾 is conventionally the badger and 貉 the raccoon dog — so the Korean gloss at 1.30 inverts the Chinese convention. The Bogam then blurs the pair itself: this section calls 猯 一名獾豚, "also called the 獾 pig", while giving 獾 a section of its own at 1.30. And at 1.31 the book concedes the whole problem in one line: 猯貛貉三種大抵相類而形色差別也 — the three are much alike and differ only in form and colour.
**The contradiction is the Bogam's own and is not resolved here.** What can be said is that the glosses pin the three animals that Korean distinguishes, and that where the character tradition and the gloss disagree the gloss is the better evidence of what a Korean practitioner in 1613 understood himself to be using. The species are recorded at the level the evidence supports and no further.
The badger of Korea is the Asian badger, Meles leucurus. Note that the herb list already holds two separate identifiers in this area — danyuk 猯肉 (Melis Caro) and toje 土猪 (Arctonycis Caro, the hog badger Arctonyx collaris) — while this section's own gloss below says 俗名土猪, that is, the book treats them as one animal. That collision is reported rather than decided.
Clinically, 久水脹垂死者 — long-standing water distension in a patient on the point of death — is decompensated oedema or ascites, and the causes are cirrhosis, heart failure, nephrotic syndrome and advanced malignancy. Each is treated differently and the first task is to identify which: new ascites requires diagnostic paracentesis with cell count and serum-ascites albumin gradient, because spontaneous bacterial peritonitis is common, lethal and found no other way. See 1.28.1, where the book itself notices that the same distension can need opposite treatments.
譯 1.29.2 Source원문
一名獾豚. 似犬而矮, 尖喙黑足, 褐色極肥, 蒸食甚美. 《本草》
Translation영역
It is also called the badger-pig. It resembles a dog but is squat, with a pointed snout and black feet, brown in colour and extremely fat, and steamed and eaten it is very good.
Clinical note임상 주석
似犬而矮, 尖喙黑足, 褐色極肥 — like a dog but squat, pointed snout, black feet, brown, very fat. That is a badger, and the description is good; the squat build, the long snout and the dark legs are its field characters, and 極肥 records the autumn fat that badgers lay down before winter dormancy.
一名獾豚 is the problem named at the head of the section: the book gives 獾 as an alternative name for 猯 here and then makes 獾 a separate headword at 1.30.
蒸食 — steamed — is in the entry's favour. Badger is eaten as game in parts of Asia and Europe, and the hazards are those of any wild carnivore eaten: Trichinella, Toxoplasma, Echinococcus and Salmonella, all addressed by thorough cooking, which this is. Badgers are also the recognized wildlife reservoir of Mycobacterium bovis in Britain and Ireland — bovine tuberculosis, which infects humans through unpasteurized milk and through direct contact with infected tissue — and they are susceptible to rabies, which in Korea circulates mainly in the raccoon dog of the next section. Handling and skinning are the higher-risk steps, not the eating.
譯 1.29.3 Source원문
獾猪肉甘美, 作羹食之, 下水腫. 瘦人食之, 長肌肉, 令肥白, 治久痢大效. 《入門》
Translation영역
The flesh of the badger-pig is sweet and good; made into a soup and eaten it brings down water swelling. When a thin person eats it, it builds up the flesh and makes him plump and fair, and it treats enduring dysentery with great effect.
Clinical note임상 주석
A nutritional indication, and on its own terms a reasonable one: a fat, protein-dense meat given as soup to a wasted patient with chronic diarrhoea. 久痢, enduring dysentery, with wasting is the picture of chronic infective or inflammatory bowel disease, and refeeding is genuinely part of the management — though the cause has to be found, since amoebiasis, giardiasis, tuberculous enteritis, inflammatory bowel disease and, in an adult, colorectal cancer all present as chronic diarrhoea with weight loss. Chronic diarrhoea lasting more than four weeks needs stool studies and endoscopy rather than diet alone, and refeeding a severely malnourished patient requires attention to refeeding syndrome — phosphate, potassium and thiamine — in the first days.
令肥白, making the patient plump and fair, is a cosmetic as well as a clinical goal and belongs to its period.
譯 1.29.4 Translation영역
Commonly called the earth pig.
Clinical note임상 주석
**俗名土猪 — "commonly called the earth pig" — is the book identifying its own headword with a vernacular Chinese name, and it collides with the herb list.**
The herb list carries 土猪 as a separate drug, toje, glossed "hog badger" with the Latin Arctonycis Caro — that is, Arctonyx collaris, a different genus from the Eurasian and Asian badgers of Meles. But this section, registered as danyuk 猯肉 with Melis Caro, says in its own words that 土猪 is what people call it. **So either the two identifiers are one animal and one of them should be an alias, or the book is using 土猪 loosely for any badger.** The question is not settled by anything in the text and is reported rather than decided; what is clear is that a reader following the herb list alone would take them for two drugs, and the Bogam here says they are one name for one thing.
1.29.1 Badger Fat 脂膏
譯 1.29.1.1 Source원문
主傳尸鬼疰, 反上氣咳逆. 《本草》
Translation영역
It governs corpse-transmitted consumption and ghost infixation, and also qi rising upward with cough and counterflow.
Clinical note임상 주석
傳尸 and 鬼疰 are the tuberculosis categories of 1.28, and the badger's fat is being given for the same illness as the otter's liver — the chapter works through one animal after another against the consumptive disease. 上氣咳逆, qi rising with cough and counterflow, is the dyspnoea-and-cough presentation.
**A supply note that bears on the herb list.** 猯油, badger oil, is used as a prescription ingredient in this corpus — in the Korean 俗方 frost-sore salve, where it stands beside lard at two and a half nyang each — and it has no identifier, so the formula's own textual note records that it was left out of the ingredient list because 猯肉, the meat, is a different drug. **This leaf is that fat**, and it is the clearest candidate in my portion for a new herb entry; it is reported rather than linked, since the name the formula uses (猯油) is not the name this leaf carries (脂膏).
Clinically, rendered animal fat taken internally for a cough does nothing beyond its calories. Chronic cough with wasting is the tuberculosis question of 1.28; cough with rising breathlessness also covers heart failure, asthma, COPD and lung cancer, and a cough of more than eight weeks in an adult, or any cough with haemoptysis or weight loss, needs imaging.
1.29.2 Badger's Bladder 胞
譯 1.29.2.1 Source원문
乾之, 湯摩如雞卵許, 空腹服之, 吐蠱毒. 《本草》
Translation영역
Dry it, rub it down in hot water to about the bulk of a hen's egg, and take it on an empty stomach; it makes one vomit out gu toxin.
Clinical note임상 주석
An emetic given for poisoning. **Deliberate induction of vomiting has been abandoned in the management of poisoning and should not be revived.** Syrup of ipecac was withdrawn from recommendation because it does not meaningfully reduce absorption, it delays the treatments that do work, and it causes aspiration — which in a patient already drowsy from a poison is the injury that kills. Gastric lavage likewise has essentially no place now.
What is done instead: contact the poisons centre, establish what and how much and when, protect the airway, and give activated charcoal where the agent binds to it and the presentation is early and the airway secure. Specific antidotes exist for a limited set — N-acetylcysteine for paracetamol, naloxone for opioids, atropine and pralidoxime for organophosphates, fomepizole for ethylene glycol and methanol — and the rest is supportive care. **Two situations in which vomiting must never be induced** are corrosive ingestion, where the oesophagus is re-exposed to acid or alkali, and hydrocarbon ingestion, where aspiration causes a chemical pneumonitis.
蠱毒 as a category spanned deliberate poisoning, parasitic disease and unexplained wasting, and it recurs at 1.27, 1.29.2 and 1.41, where the drum-skin makes the patient name the poisoner. Where there is a real poisoning the route above applies; where the category is covering something else, the something else needs finding.
1.30 Raccoon-Dog Flesh 獾肉
너구ᄅᆡ고기 너구리 고기 raccoon-dog meat
`너구ᄅᆡ` 는 지금 말 `너구리` 로 그대로 이어진다(`ᄅᆡ`→`리`). `고기` 는 그대로다. 이 문의 다섯 절이 섞이는 자리에서 **가장 또렷하게 풀리는 향명**이고, 임상으로도 가장 무거운 자리다 — 한국에서 야생 광견병의 주된 숙주가 너구리다.
한자 쪽과 **어긋난다는 것을 적어 둘 것**: 중국 전통에서 `獾` 은 대개 오소리(Meles)이고 `貉` 이 너구리다. 여기서는 향명이 그 둘을 **뒤집는다.** 그리고 1.29 猯 절이 스스로 `一名獾豚` 이라 하여 獾 을 猯 의 딴 이름으로 쓴다 — 책 안에서 이미 어긋나 있다.
譯 1.30.1 Translation영역
It governs wasting from gan in small children; eaten, it kills roundworms.
Clinical note임상 주석
**殺蚘䖝 — it kills roundworms — is one of the places in the chapter where the book is pointing at an organism that genuinely exists and genuinely causes the picture described.** 蚘䖝 is Ascaris lumbricoides, and 疳瘦, the wasting of children with a swollen belly, is what heavy ascariasis looks like, along with the other soil-transmitted helminths. Korea had very high ascariasis prevalence into the 1960s — surveys found the majority of schoolchildren infected — and the national mass deworming and sanitation programmes of the following decades brought it to near zero, which is one of the clearest public-health successes of the period.
The modern treatment is albendazole as a single dose, or mebendazole, with the household treated together and attention to sanitation and hand hygiene; heavy worm loads can cause intestinal and biliary obstruction and are a surgical problem when they do. Eating raccoon-dog meat has no anthelmintic action. What it does have is a risk of acquiring parasites rather than losing them, which is the subject of the next note.
譯 1.30.2 Source원문
俗名山獺. 毛微灰色, 嘴尖黑, 尾短闊. 《本草》
Translation영역
It is commonly called the mountain otter. Its fur is faintly grey, its snout pointed and black, and its tail short and broad.
Clinical note임상 주석
俗名山獺 — "the mountain otter" — is how the name slid. The raccoon dog is called an otter in the vernacular Chinese, 1.28 is the actual otter, and 1.33 and 1.34 are dogs; the group's names move freely between dog, otter, pig and rat, which is why the Korean glosses carry the identification.
The description fits: greyish coat, dark pointed muzzle, and a short broad tail, which is the raccoon dog's and not a badger's or a marten's.
**This is the one section in the group where the identification carries real clinical weight, and it carries it because of rabies.** Nyctereutes procyonoides, 너구리, **is the principal wildlife reservoir of rabies in Korea.** Wildlife rabies on the peninsula has been maintained in raccoon dogs, concentrated in the northern provinces near the border, and the national control programme is built around distributing oral rabies vaccine baits aimed at them, alongside compulsory vaccination of dogs and cats. This section's instructions put a person in contact with that species in the two highest-risk ways: 啖之, eating it, and — in the next passage — skinning it for fur.
**Rabies: what matters.** Transmission is through saliva or nervous tissue entering a bite, a scratch, or broken skin or mucous membrane. The incubation period is typically one to three months but ranges from days to more than a year. Once clinical symptoms begin the disease is effectively always fatal, with only a handful of survivors ever recorded. **Post-exposure prophylaxis works, and it is the whole of the management**: immediate washing of the wound with soap and water for fifteen minutes, rabies immunoglobulin infiltrated into and around the wound for category III exposures in the previously unvaccinated, and the vaccine series. It should be started the same day; it is never "too late" to start while the patient is still well. Any bite or scratch from a wild mammal, from an unvaccinated dog or cat, or from a bat, and any contact of a wound or mucosa with such an animal's saliva, is an exposure to be assessed — and so is finding a dead wild canid and handling it.
Raccoon dogs also carry Trichinella, Echinococcus multilocularis, sarcoptic mange, and canine distemper, and they were implicated as an intermediate host in the live-animal trade from which SARS-related coronaviruses reached people.
譯 1.30.3 Source원문
山狗卽貛也. 味甘美, 皮可爲裘. 《食物》
Translation영역
The mountain dog is the badger. Its flavour is sweet and good, and its skin can be made into a fur garment.
Clinical note임상 주석
山狗卽貛也 — "the mountain dog is the 貛" — is the book trying to fix the name and adding a third one to the pile; this animal is now the mountain otter, the mountain dog and the 貛 within two passages. 皮可爲裘, the skin makes a fur garment: raccoon dog is still a major fur species, traded as "Asiatic raccoon" or "finnraccoon", and the skinning step is where the rabies exposure of the previous note is highest, since it involves handling the head and nervous tissue of an animal that may have died of the disease.
1.31 Marten Flesh 貉肉
담뷔고기 담비 고기 marten meat
`담뷔` 는 지금 말 `담비` 로 이어진다(`뷔`→`비`, ㅟ>ㅣ). `고기` 는 그대로다. 낱말은 풀린다.
**그러나 종은 못 가린다.** 셋이 엇갈린다 — ⑴ 한자 `貉` 은 중국 전통에서 대개 **너구리**이고 그것은 1.30 의 짐승이다. ⑵ 향명 `담뷔` 는 **담비** (Martes)다. ⑶ 1.42 貂鼠의 향명 `돈피` 도 담비 가죽이니, 지금 말로는 **두 절이 같은 짐승을 가리킨다.** 책 스스로도 이 절 끝에서 `猯貛貉三種大抵 相類而形色差別也` 라 하여 못 가린다고 적는다. 그러므로 `hyangmyeong_mod` 는 낱말대로 적고 **종은 정하지 않았다.**
譯 1.31.1 Translation영역
It governs debility of the original viscera and exhaustion in women.
Clinical note임상 주석
元藏虛劣 and 女子虛憊 — debility of the original viscera, exhaustion in women. Neither names a disease; they are the vacuity register at its broadest, and the section has nothing more specific to offer.
**Fatigue is nevertheless worth a note, because it is the commonest presentation in which a tonic gets used in place of a diagnosis.** Persistent fatigue in a woman has a short list of findings that are common and treatable: **iron-deficiency anaemia**, usually from menstrual loss and in the older patient from gastrointestinal bleeding, which must be investigated rather than simply replaced; **hypothyroidism**; **vitamin D and B12 deficiency**; **coeliac disease**; **diabetes**; **obstructive sleep apnoea**, under-recognized in women because the presentation is fatigue rather than snoring; **depression and anxiety**; and **perimenopause**. A basic panel — full blood count, ferritin, thyroid function, HbA1c, B12, coeliac serology — finds most of what is findable, and fatigue that remains after that, with the characteristic post-exertional worsening, raises ME/CFS, which has its own management and in which graded exertion can do harm.
譯 1.31.2 Translation영역
In form it resembles a small fox, with yellow-brown fur.
Clinical note임상 주석
形似小狐毛黃褐色 — like a small fox, yellow-brown — is the one piece of evidence in the section about what the animal is, and it fits a marten better than a raccoon dog: the yellow-throated marten, Martes flavigula, is slender, fox-like in outline and tawny, while a raccoon dog is thickset with a masked face and would not be described as a small fox. The gloss and the description agree with each other and disagree with the character. The yellow-throated marten is **Endangered Wildlife Class II in Korea**; martens are also fur species, which is the trade behind 1.42.
譯 1.31.3 Source원문
猯貛貉三種大抵相類而形色差別也. 《本草》
Translation영역
The 猯, the 貛 and the 貉 are three kinds, broadly alike, differing in form and colour.
Clinical note임상 주석
**The book admitting it cannot separate them, in its own words, and the admission is the most useful sentence in the group.** It is placed at the third of the three sections, after the reader has been given 猯 at 1.29 with 獾 as its alternative name and 獾 at 1.30 as a headword of its own, and it concedes that the distinctions are of form and colour rather than of kind.
That concession licenses the treatment adopted here. Where a later standard name would force a choice, the Bogam has declined to make one, and §3.2's rule applies: a place where the book contradicts itself is not nailed down to one side. The Korean glosses are recorded because they are evidence of what was understood locally; the species are left at the level the text supports; and the collision between danyuk 猯肉, toje 土猪 and this section is reported for the herb list rather than resolved inside it.
1.32 Fur-Seal Genitalia 膃肭臍
譯 1.32.1 Source원문
性大熱一云熱, 味醎, 無毒. 主五勞七傷, 腎氣衰弱, 隂痿少力, 面黑精冷, 幷男子腎精衰損, 多色成腎勞瘦悴, 又療鬼魅狐魅, 夢與鬼交, 中惡邪氣, 助陽氣, 煖腰膝.
Translation영역
Its nature is greatly hot one says hot, its flavour salty, and it is without toxicity. It governs the five taxations and seven damages, weakening of the kidney qi, yin wilting with little strength, a blackened face and cold essence, and in men the decline and loss of kidney essence, and the kidney taxation with emaciation and haggardness that comes of excessive sexual activity. It further treats ghost-possession and fox-possession, intercourse with ghosts in dreams, and being struck by evil qi; it assists the yang qi and warms the lower back and knees.
Clinical note임상 주석
**해구신 — the fur seal's "navel", meaning the penis and testes taken together with the attached skin, and the most heavily traded aphrodisiac in this chapter.** The animal is the northern fur seal, Callorhinus ursinus. The entry has no vernacular gloss, which fits an imported drug, though it carries no 唐 mark either.
**Legal position.** Marine mammals are protected. In Korea fur seals fall under the protected marine-species provisions administered by the Ministry of Oceans and Fisheries; in the United States the Marine Mammal Protection Act prohibits import, sale and possession of pinniped parts outright; several southern fur seals of the genus Arctocephalus are CITES-listed, and the northern fur seal is classed as Vulnerable by the IUCN after a long decline in the Pribilof population. **Trade in 해구신 is prosecuted**, and market surveys and seizures have repeatedly found that what is sold under the name is dog, cattle or pig tissue — which is exactly what the five authentication passages below are about, four hundred years earlier. The entry's own closing line, 甚貴難得, says it was already scarce and dear in 1613.
**Clinically, the core indication is erectile dysfunction, and the modern reading of that symptom is the most useful thing to put here.** 隂痿 is impotence, and it is **a vascular and endocrine sign rather than a deficiency of vitality**: the penile arteries are small, and endothelial dysfunction shows up in them before it shows up in the coronary arteries, so new erectile dysfunction is an independent marker of cardiovascular risk and warrants assessment of blood pressure, lipids, glucose, smoking and waist circumference, along with morning testosterone, prolactin and thyroid function. It is also commonly drug-induced — thiazides, beta blockers, SSRIs, antiandrogens, finasteride — and commonly psychogenic, in which case nocturnal and early-morning erections are preserved. **PDE5 inhibitors (sildenafil, tadalafil) are effective first-line treatment** and are contraindicated with nitrates. Treating the symptom as a vitality problem is what loses the cardiovascular warning it contains.
There is **no evidence that any animal genital tissue, eaten, has androgenic activity.** Testosterone taken by mouth as tissue is degraded by gut and first-pass hepatic metabolism, and the quantities in such tissue are in any case negligible. The persistence of the trade is driven by sympathetic reasoning — the organ for the organ — and it has cost populations of seals, rhinoceros, tiger and deer.
夢與鬼交, intercourse with ghosts in dreams, is **sleep paralysis with hypnagogic or hypnopompic hallucination**: the sleeper wakes atonic, aware, and experiences presence, pressure on the chest and sometimes sexual assault — the incubus and succubus of European tradition and the 가위눌림 of Korean. It is a REM-sleep intrusion, it is common and benign, and it is provoked by sleep deprivation, irregular schedules, supine sleep and alcohol; recurrent episodes with daytime sleepiness and cataplexy raise narcolepsy, which is diagnosable and treatable. Explaining the mechanism is itself effective reassurance, and it is more use to a frightened patient than a drug. 鬼魅狐魅 ties the entry back to the fox sections at 1.27.
譯 1.32.2 Source원문
新羅國海狗外腎也. 連卵取之, 其臍紅紫色, 其皮上自有肉黃毛三莖共一穴. 取其外腎, 隂乾百日, 置密器中, 常濕潤如新. 採無時. 《本草》
Translation영역
It is the external genitalia of the sea dog of the country of Silla. It is taken together with the testicles; the navel is red-purple in colour, and on the skin there are of itself flesh-yellow hairs, three stalks growing from one follicle. Take the external genitalia, dry them in the shade for a hundred days, and keep them in a sealed vessel, where they stay constantly moist as if fresh. It may be gathered at any season.
Clinical note임상 주석
**新羅國海狗 — the Chinese materia medica names Korea as the source of the drug.** Silla was the kingdom the Tang-period sources knew, and the attribution stuck; this is one of the places where the inherited Chinese text is describing a Korean export, and the 俗方 passage at the end of the section brings it up to date with a Korean county.
**三莖共一穴 — three hairs from a single follicle — is a real anatomical character and is the only one of the five authentication tests in this entry that is checkable.** Pinniped pelage does grow in bundles, with a guard hair and underfur sharing a follicle group, and in the fur seal the arrangement is distinctive enough to identify the family. Whoever wrote this had looked at the skin under good light. The rest of the tests below are not of this kind.
隂乾百日 — shade-dried a hundred days, then kept sealed and remaining moist — describes the fatty, slow-drying tissue accurately.
譯 1.32.3 Source원문
其外腎上有紅紫斑點, 兩重薄膜褁其肉核. 《入門》
Translation영역
On the external genitalia there are red-purple spots, and two layers of thin membrane wrap the flesh core.
譯 1.32.4 Source원문
須酒浸一日, 紙褁微火上灸令香, 細剉單搗用. 《本草》
Translation영역
It must be steeped in wine for a day, wrapped in paper and roasted over a low fire until fragrant, then finely chopped and pounded alone for use.
譯 1.32.5 Source원문
凡使火燎去毛, 酒浸一日, 微微火上灸令香, 細剉另硏用. 如無眞者, 以黃狗腎三枚可代一枚. 《入門》
Translation영역
In using it, singe off the hair in a flame, steep it in wine for a day, roast it over a very low fire until fragrant, then chop it finely and grind it separately for use. If no genuine article is to be had, three dog testes may substitute for one of these.
Clinical note임상 주석
**如無眞者以黃狗腎三枚可代一枚 — the book supplies its own substitute, and that is the most useful sentence in the entry.** Where a drug is unobtainable, illegal or endangered, the most practical note is the one that names the replacement, and here the text has done it: three dog testes for one fur-seal preparation. Dog testis is a separate drug in this chapter and is registered in the herb list as hwangguoesin 黃狗外腎.
The same structure appears elsewhere in the chapter and is worth following where it does. At 天靈蓋 in the human chapter the text proposes tiger or yellow-dog skull in place of a human one; bear bile has a synthetic replacement in ursodeoxycholic acid, which is a licensed medicine; musk has synthetic muscone. **A substitution that moves the demand off a protected species is the single most effective thing a note on this material can say** — though in this case neither the original nor the substitute has any demonstrated effect, and the honest advice for the underlying complaint is at the head of the section.
譯 1.32.6 Source원문
欲驗其眞, 取置睡犬傍, 其犬忽驚跳若狂者爲佳. 又於臘月當風處置盂水浸之, 不凍者爲眞也. 《本草》
Translation영역
To test whether it is genuine, set it beside a sleeping dog; if the dog suddenly starts up and leaps as though mad, it is good. Again, in the twelfth month put it in a bowl of water in a windy place; the one whose water does not freeze is genuine.
Clinical note임상 주석
**Two tests, and neither is a test.** A sleeping dog startles at a strange animal smell, and any seal, dog or pig tissue will do it, so the procedure cannot discriminate among the very substitutions the previous passage has just described. The freezing test is worse: no quantity of animal tissue in a bowl of water prevents it freezing in a Korean twelfth month, and whatever was observed — a bowl sheltered from the wind, a salty tissue depressing the freezing point by a fraction of a degree — had nothing to do with authenticity.
The tests matter as evidence about the trade rather than about the drug. An expensive animal product attracts authentication rituals in proportion to how often it is faked, and the rituals are generated by the same associative reasoning as the indications: the drug is hot, therefore it resists freezing; the drug rouses the yang, therefore it rouses a sleeping dog. **The chapter contains the correction to this way of thinking in its own pages — at 1.28.2 the author tried the famous test for otter gall, found it failed, and printed the failure.** That is the standard against which these two should be read.
譯 1.32.7 Source원문
今出江原道平海郡, 甚貴難得. 《俗方》
Translation영역
At present it comes from Pyeonghae county in Gangwon province, and it is extremely costly and hard to come by.
Clinical note임상 주석
The Korean note that localizes the drug: Pyeonghae, on the East Sea coast — the county is now part of Uljin in Gyeongsangbuk-do, having been in Gangwon at the time. 甚貴難得, extremely costly and hard to get, in 1613.
**That scarcity is the beginning of the story whose end is the legal position at the head of this section.** A marine mammal taken for a single organ, already rare and expensive at the start of the seventeenth century, is exactly the kind of species that commercial sealing then reduced further; the northern fur seal was hunted to the edge of commercial extinction in the nineteenth century, became the subject of one of the first international wildlife conservation treaties in 1911, recovered under it, and is in decline again. The entry records a drug that was already too scarce to supply, and the four hundred years since have not made it less so.
1.33 Dhole Hide 豺皮
두 낱말이 다 풀린다 — `승냥의` 는 `승냥이의` 의 준 꼴로 지금 말 `승냥이` 로 이어지고, `가족` 은 `가죽` 으로 이어진다(ㅗ>ㅜ). 같은 `가족` 이 1.41 敗鼓皮의 `붑메워오라ᄒᆞ여딘가족` 에도 쓰인다.
譯 1.33.1 Source원문
性熱, 有毒. 主冷痺脚氣, 灸熱褁脚卽差.
Translation영역
Its nature is hot and it is toxic. It governs cold impediment and leg qi; warm it at the fire and wrap the leg in it, and the condition is cured at once.
Clinical note임상 주석
**有毒 — the book's own, and the entry goes on to forbid the flesh outright at the third passage. This is a self-limiting section and the warning is what carries forward, not the indication.**
승냥이 is the dhole, Cuon alpinus. **It is extinct in Korea** — there has been no confirmed wild dhole on the peninsula for many decades — and across its remaining range it is IUCN Endangered and listed on **CITES Appendix II**. With the fox of 1.27 and the wolf of 1.34, this is the third large wild canid in my portion that the chapter treats as a routine material and that Korea no longer has.
**脚氣 is the clinically important term here and it needs care, because it covers two quite different things.** In this book 脚氣 takes in the leg disorders generally, but its classical core description — swelling of the legs, numbness, weakness, breathlessness and, in the severe case, cardiac failure — is **beriberi, thiamine deficiency**, and that identification was made historically in exactly the East Asian rice-eating populations this text served. Wet beriberi with high-output cardiac failure **responds to intravenous thiamine within hours** and is fatal if missed; dry beriberi gives a peripheral neuropathy. The modern patients in whom it is still seen are those with alcohol dependence, hyperemesis, bariatric surgery, prolonged vomiting or parenteral feeding without supplementation, and in any of them thiamine is given **before** glucose, because a glucose load in a thiamine-deficient patient precipitates Wernicke's encephalopathy. That is the one thing in this section worth more than the text.
The other readings of leg swelling and numbness — heart failure, venous insufficiency, lymphoedema, diabetic and other peripheral neuropathies, lumbar radiculopathy, peripheral arterial disease — each need their own assessment, and unilateral calf swelling with pain is deep vein thrombosis until proven otherwise. A warmed hide wrapped round the leg treats none of it; applied hot to a neuropathic or ischaemic limb it causes burns, because the limb cannot feel the heat.
譯 1.33.2 Translation영역
It further governs worm-eaten teeth and sores; burn it to ash and apply.
Clinical note임상 주석
𧏾齒 is the tooth with a worm in it — dental caries, explained by the cavity's appearance and by the belief in a tooth worm, which is one of the most widespread and longest-lived etiological ideas in medicine and appears from Mesopotamia to East Asia. The cavity is demineralization by acid from bacterial plaque, chiefly Streptococcus mutans, and the treatment is restorative dentistry, with fluoride and sugar reduction for prevention. Ash applied to a cavity does nothing and abrasive tooth powders of this kind wear enamel.
譯 1.33.3 Source원문
肉味酸, 不可食, 消脂肉, 損精神. 《本草》
Translation영역
The flesh is sour in flavour and must not be eaten; it wastes the fat and flesh and damages the spirit.
Clinical note임상 주석
**不可食 — must not be eaten. One of the clearest prohibitions the book places on itself in this chapter**, and it belongs with 1.37.3, where the hedgehog's bone is said to make a person waste and the joints shrink, and 1.38.5, where the rat's bone is forbidden in the same words. In each case the part is listed as a headword or leaf and then refused in its single line. These are the places where the materia medica is doing the opposite of what it is usually accused of: narrowing its own range.
消脂肉, 損精神 — it wastes the fat and flesh and damages the spirit. Whatever observation lies behind it, the prohibition is the content, and it should be printed as such rather than treated as a curiosity.
There is also a hazard in the hide itself that the entry does not know about. Wild canids are rabies reservoirs, and a hide taken from an animal that died of unknown cause is handled, scraped and warmed against the skin in this procedure; rabies virus does not survive long in a dried hide, but the butchering that produced it is the exposure, and the general rule stands that a wild mammal found dead is not handled without gloves and a reason. See 1.30 for the post-exposure sequence.
1.34 Wolf Flesh 狼肉
일희고기 이리 고기 wolf meat
`일희` 는 지금 말 `이리` 로 이어진다 — `ㅎ` 이 떨어지고 `일희`>`이리` 가 된 것으로, 중세 국어의 ㅎ 탈락 꼴 가운데 잘 알려진 자리다. `고기` 는 그대로다. 낱말과 종이 함께 풀리는 자리다.
譯 1.34.1 Source원문
味辛, 可食. 老狼頷下有懸肉, 行善顧, 疾則不能, 鳴則諸孔皆涕. 《入門》
Translation영역
Its flavour is acrid and it may be eaten. An old wolf has a pendulous flesh beneath the jaw; it is given to looking back as it goes, and when sick it cannot; when it howls, all its orifices run.
Clinical note임상 주석
**The description in the second half is of a sick animal, and read with modern eyes it is a description of rabies.** 疾則不能 — when sick it cannot look back, that is, it loses the normal wariness — and 鳴則諸孔皆涕, when it howls all its orifices run. Loss of fear of humans, abnormal vocalization and profuse salivation and lacrimation are the signs of rabies in a wild canid, and they are the signs that should keep a person away from the animal rather than bring them to it. The entry has recorded the syndrome accurately and drawn the opposite conclusion from it.
The grey wolf, Canis lupus, is **extinct in the wild in Korea** — the last confirmed animals were taken around the middle of the twentieth century — and is a candidate for reintroduction alongside the fox of 1.27. It is listed on **CITES Appendix II**, with some populations on Appendix I.
味辛可食 — "it may be eaten". Wolf is a canid, and the hazards are those set out at 1.27.1 and 1.30: rabies above all, then Echinococcus granulosus and E. multilocularis, Trichinella, and Toxoplasma. Nothing here should be eaten, and the animal may not lawfully be taken.
譯 1.34.2 Source원문
豺狼一類, 大如狗, 蒼色. 狼尾黃黑色, 長大, 武上取以懸槖鞬爲餙. 《本草》
Translation영역
The dhole and the wolf are of one kind, the size of a dog, grizzled in colour. The wolf's tail is yellow-black, long and large, and warriors take it to hang on the quiver as an ornament.
Clinical note임상 주석
豺狼一類 — the dhole and the wolf are of one kind — groups 1.33 and 1.34, and it is zoologically reasonable: both are canids, though in different genera. 蒼色, grizzled, is the wolf's agouti coat.
The second half is not medicine at all. 槖鞬 is the bow case and quiver, and the wolf's tail hung from it is a military ornament — the passage has drifted from materia medica into material culture, as the chapter does at 1.28.7 with the otter-skin collar, at 1.41 with the drum, and at 1.44 with the writing brush. These are among the most informative passages in the chapter for anything other than pharmacology.
譯 1.34.3 Source원문
狼壽八百歲, 三百歲則善變人形. 《入門》
Translation영역
The wolf lives eight hundred years, and at three hundred it is able to change into human form.
Clinical note임상 주석
Transformation lore, recorded because the materia medica tradition records it. The chapter has a set of these — the monkey becoming an ape and then a toad at 1.36, the bear living five hundred years and turning into a fox, the deer at a thousand — and they travel in the same sentences as the pharmacology without being distinguished from it. They are printed here as the book has them.
It is worth noticing what they do to the drug, though. An animal that lives eight hundred years is an animal whose parts confer longevity, and the lore is doing argumentative work: the lifespan is the warrant for the indication. The same move is visible at 1.25, where black confers wind-restraint, and at 1.37.1, where the composition of the written character is the warrant. These are the chapter's reasons, and they are not empirical ones.
1.34.1 Wolf's Throat 喉
譯 1.34.1.1 Translation영역
It treats the obstruction disease.
Clinical note임상 주석
The wolf's throat for the blocked throat: organ for organ, like the rat's eye at 1.38.2 and the otter's fish-eating feet at 1.28.6.
**噎 — food sticking or arresting on swallowing — is the most important single symptom in my portion, because it is the presenting complaint of oesophageal cancer and it is treated here with a drug.** Progressive dysphagia in an adult, especially where it began with solids and has moved to softer food, with weight loss behind it, requires **upper gastrointestinal endoscopy**, and requires it promptly: the disease is curable when it is found early and very rarely curable when it is not. Korea has a high incidence of both gastric and oesophageal cancer and runs a national screening programme for the former. The other causes of dysphagia — peptic stricture, eosinophilic oesophagitis (increasingly recognized in younger patients with food impaction), achalasia, extrinsic compression, and the oropharyngeal dysphagia of stroke and neurodegenerative disease, which carries aspiration risk — are also diagnoses that require investigation, not symptomatic treatment.
噎 in the Bogam's own usage is broad enough to include globus, the sensation of a lump in the throat without true obstruction, which is benign and common. The distinction is whether food actually arrests, and it is made by asking, which is the beginning of the assessment the symptom deserves.
1.34.2 Wolf Dung 屎
譯 1.34.2.1 Source원문
治瘰癧. 又狼屎燒之, 烟直上, 故烽火用之. 《入門》
Translation영역
It treats scrofula. And when wolf dung is burnt the smoke goes straight up, which is why it is used in beacon fires.
Clinical note임상 주석
**The second sentence is the origin of a word.** 狼烟, "wolf smoke", is the Chinese and Korean term for a signal fire, and the explanation given here — that wolf dung burns with a column of smoke that rises straight rather than drifting — is the traditional etymology. Beacon fires on the Korean peninsula were a working military communication system, the 봉수 network, maintained along fixed lines of hilltop stations into the nineteenth century. Whether wolf dung actually produces a more vertical column is doubtful; dense dry organic fuel produces a thick plume, and the association is likely to have run from the name to the explanation rather than the other way.
瘰癧 is cervical tuberculous lymphadenitis, treated at 1.28.2 — tissue diagnosis then multidrug anti-tuberculous therapy, and biopsy rather than observation for a persistent neck node in an adult, because lymphoma and metastatic carcinoma present the same way. Burnt dung is not a treatment for it, and the dung of a wild canid is the Echinococcus material described at 1.27.7: collecting and grinding it is a genuine exposure to eggs that cause hepatic alveolar echinococcosis years later.
1.34.3 Wolf Sinew 狼筋
譯 1.34.3.1 Source원문
如織絡袋子, 大小如鴨卵. 人有犯盗者, 熏之當脚攣, 因獲賊. 《本草》
Translation영역
It is like a woven net-bag, the size of a duck's egg. Where a person has committed theft, fumigate with it and his legs will cramp, and so the thief is taken.
Clinical note임상 주석
**Not a drug. A procedure for producing an accusation**, and with the drum-skin of 1.41 — which makes the patient call out the name of whoever poisoned him — these are the two such procedures in my portion. They are printed because they are in the book, and the note should say what they are: ordeals, in which the appearance of a sign in a suspect's body is taken as proof of guilt. What they produce is not evidence. A person fumigated under accusation, watched by a room expecting his legs to cramp, is in the position that every ordeal and every coerced interrogation places a suspect in, and the sign duly appears. The same mechanism — suggestion under pressure, in a frightened and often sick person — is what produces the name at 1.41.
The anatomy does not work either. A structure like a woven net-bag the size of a duck's egg is not a sinew; it is more likely a gall bladder, a bladder, or a vascular or nerve plexus, and the book does not say which. 筋 in this literature covers sinew, fascia and what we would call connective tissue generally, which is part of why the identification cannot be recovered.
1.35 Wild Camel Fat 野駝脂
唐 imported 약대기름 약대 기름 camel fat
`기름` 은 지금 말 그대로다. `약대` 는 낙타를 가리키는 **옛 우리말**이고 꼴 자체는 바뀌지 않고 지금까지 사전에 남아 있으나 **쓰이지 않는 말**이 되었다 — 지금은 한자말 `낙타`(駱駝)를 쓴다. 그러므로 `hyangmyeong_mod` 에는 낱말이 이어지는 꼴대로 `약대 기름` 을 적고, 지금 쓰는 말이 `낙타` 라는 것을 여기 적어 둔다. 낱말을 모르는 자리가 아니고 **낱말이 밀려난 자리**다.
唐材 표시(`唐`)와 향명을 **함께** 가진 절이다 — 湯液篇 전체에 다섯뿐인 꼴이고 그 가운데 둘(野駝脂ㆍ獮猴)이 내 몫에 있다.
譯 1.35.1 Source원문
性温, 無毒. 療諸風頑痺及惡瘡腫毒. 其脂在兩峯間.
Translation영역
Its nature is warm and it is without toxicity. It treats the various winds and stubborn impediment, and malign sores with swelling and toxin. The fat lies between the two humps.
Clinical note임상 주석
**其脂在兩峯間 — the fat lies between the two humps — settles the animal.** Two humps means a Bactrian camel, not the single-humped dromedary, and 野駝 is the wild form: Camelus ferus, which survives in the Gobi and the Taklamakan in a few hundred animals, is **IUCN Critically Endangered** and listed on **CITES Appendix II**. The domestic Bactrian, Camelus bactrianus, is not threatened, and camel fat, hump and milk are ordinary foods across Central Asia.
**One of only two 唐材 in my portion.** The single character 唐 stands on its own line above the entry in the transcription, marking a drug imported from China — which is what one expects of a desert animal, and the mark is the reason this chapter's import list is worth preserving: it maps what a Korean physician in 1613 could and could not get locally. Camel fat and macaque at 1.36 are the two; everything else in these twenty-one sections is a Korean animal or a Korean object.
Clinically, rendered camel fat applied to a sore is an occlusive emollient, which is what it is used as, and nothing more. 惡瘡腫毒 — malign sores with swelling and toxin — is cellulitis and abscess, which need antibiotics and drainage; a spreading cellulitis with systemic features, or pain out of proportion to the appearance with crepitus or rapidly advancing margins, is necrotizing fasciitis and is a surgical emergency measured in hours. Occluding an undrained abscess with grease makes it worse.
譯 1.35.2 Source원문
峯蹄最精, 人多煮熟醋啖. 《本草》
Translation영역
The hump and the feet are the finest parts, and people mostly boil them until done and eat them with vinegar.
Clinical note임상 주석
A food note rather than a drug note — boiled hump and feet with vinegar — and 煮熟, boiled until done, is in its favour.
**Camels carry two infections worth knowing about, and both come from the raw product rather than the cooked.** Brucella melitensis is transmitted in unpasteurized camel milk and causes undulant fever with sacroiliitis, orchitis and endocarditis, and it is both difficult to diagnose and slow to treat. **MERS-CoV** — Middle East respiratory syndrome coronavirus — has dromedary camels as its reservoir, and documented human infections have followed contact with camels and consumption of raw camel milk and undercooked meat; the 2015 Korean MERS outbreak, which began with a traveller returning from the Arabian peninsula and spread through hospitals, is the reason the virus is familiar here. Camel products should be pasteurized or thoroughly cooked, which is what this passage happens to describe.
1.36 Macaque 獮猴
唐 imported ᄌᆡᆫ납 monkey
`납` 은 원숭이를 가리키는 **옛 우리말**이고 지금은 `원숭이`(猿猩이)에 밀려났다. 앞의 `ᄌᆡᆫ-` 은 **확실하게 풀리지 않는다** — 남부 방언의 `잔나비`ㆍ`잰나비`(원숭이)가 가장 가까운 이어짐으로 보이나 `ᄌᆡᆫ-` 이 무엇인지 못 박을 근거가 내게 없다. 그러므로 `hyangmyeong_mod` 를 **비웠다.** 뒤의 `납` 만으로 `원숭이` 를 적으면 앞 낱말을 버리는 것이 되고, `잔나비` 로 적으면 방언형을 지어 붙이는 것이 된다.
唐材이면서 향명도 있는 다섯 절 가운데 하나다(§5.1 의 `龍骨ㆍ野駝脂ㆍ獮猴ㆍ 蝎ㆍ蘇方木`).
譯 1.36.1 Source원문
肉性平, 味酸, 無毒. 主諸風勞, 作脯主久瘧.
Translation영역
The flesh is balanced in nature, sour in flavour, and without toxicity. It governs the various wind taxations, and made into dried meat it governs enduring malaria.
Clinical note임상 주석
**A macaque, Macaca sp. — and the genus is as far as this note goes.**
**All Macaca species are listed on CITES Appendix II**, so international commercial trade in a macaque or its parts requires permits and is in practice closed for this purpose; no macaque is native to Korea, which is why the section carries the 唐 mark — the second and last of the two imports in my portion.
The book's own description at the next passage, 色黃尾長面赤 — yellow, long-tailed, red-faced — rules out the Japanese macaque, which is short-tailed, and points toward the rhesus group; but the section names no species and neither does this note. Supplying a binomial here would be inventing one.
**Primate tissue is not usable, and the reason is specific rather than general.** Macacine herpesvirus 1 — B virus — is carried asymptomatically by a large proportion of adult macaques and shed in saliva and other fluids; human infection, from bites, scratches or mucosal and broken-skin contact, causes an encephalomyelitis with a case fatality around seventy per cent untreated, and survivors are commonly left with severe neurological damage. It is the reason primate handling in research facilities is done under strict protocols with immediate wound-scrubbing and antiviral prophylaxis. Macaques also carry **tuberculosis** (to which they are highly susceptible and in which they are a known source of human infection), simian retroviruses including SFV, Shigella, Campylobacter and hepatitis A. **Butchering a primate is the step at which these are transmitted**, and primate bushmeat is the route by which HIV-1 and HIV-2 entered human populations from chimpanzees and sooty mangabeys, and by which Ebola outbreaks have repeatedly started. There is no preparation that makes this material safe.
Note also that **獮猴桃 is a different drug** — the hardy kiwi, Actinidia arguta, in the fruit chapter, registered as mihudo — and the two must not be collapsed because they share the characters. The herb list already records that the transcriptions divide between 獮 and 獼 for this graph.
譯 1.36.2 Source원문
此物有數種, 取色黃尾長面赤者. 《本草》
Translation영역
This creature is of several kinds; take the one that is yellow in colour, long-tailed and red-faced.
Clinical note임상 주석
此物有數種 — the author knows there is more than one kind and is choosing among them, which is better than the chapter usually does; compare 1.31, where three animals are conceded to be indistinguishable. The three characters he selects on — coat colour, tail length and facial colour — are the three a field guide would use, and the long tail with the red face is a real combination within the genus.
譯 1.36.3 Source원문
獼猴八百歲化爲猿, 猿五百歲變爲玃, 玃一千歲變爲蟾蜍. 《入門》
Translation영역
At eight hundred years the macaque changes into an ape; the ape at five hundred years turns into a jue; the jue at a thousand years turns into a toad.
Clinical note임상 주석
A transformation chain, and the fourth such passage in my portion — the wolf living eight hundred years and taking human form at 1.34, the bear and the deer earlier in the chapter, and this. The series runs macaque to ape to 玃, a large legendary ape, and finally to a toad, the lifespans accumulating well past two thousand years.
These passages travel in the same sentences as the pharmacology and are not marked off from it, and they do argumentative work rather than merely decorating: an animal that lives for centuries and ascends through a series of forms is an animal whose parts confer longevity, so the lore is the warrant for the indication. The 久瘧 of the first passage — enduring malaria, the fever of years — is being treated by an animal that endures for centuries.
They are printed as the book has them. The toad at the end of the chain belongs to the insect chapter, where 蟾蜍 is a real and much-used drug, so the sequence also ties the two chapters together.
1.36.1 Macaque Skull 頭骨
譯 1.36.1.1 Source원문
主瘴瘧鬼瘧, 燒灰酒服. 又辟小兒驚鬼魅. 《本草》
Translation영역
It governs miasmal malaria and ghost malaria; burn it to ash and take it in wine. It further wards off fright and ghost-possession in small children.
Clinical note임상 주석
瘴瘧 and 鬼瘧 — miasmal malaria and ghost malaria — are two of the Bogam's named fever patterns. 瘴 is the miasma of hot wet country, which is a correct association with the mosquito's habitat reached by a wrong mechanism; 鬼瘧 is the irregular, unpredictable fever, the same observation as 發無期者 at 1.25.7.
**Modern reading.** Malaria is confirmed by blood film or rapid diagnostic test and treated by species: artemisinin-based combination therapy for P. falciparum, intravenous artesunate for severe disease, chloroquine or ACT for P. vivax, and then **primaquine or tafenoquine to clear the liver hypnozoites**, without which vivax relapses for years — which is the whole explanation of 久瘧, enduring malaria, at 1.36 above. G6PD status is checked before primaquine. Korea's own vivax transmission in the northern provinces makes this a local and not only a travel diagnosis.
Burnt primate skull in wine has no antimalarial activity, and the preparation carries the B virus and tuberculosis exposures of 1.36 — handling and processing the skull of a macaque is precisely the contact that transmits them. The species is CITES-listed and the material cannot lawfully be traded.
1.37 Hedgehog Skin 蝟皮
`고솜돗ᄐᆡ` 는 지금 말 `고슴도치의` 로 이어지고, `겁질` 은 `껍질` 로 이어진다. 두 낱말이 다 또렷하다.
전사본은 `고솜돗ᄐᆡ` 로 적고, 잎 057b 의 발에 교감줄 `돗 : 도(초간본)` 을 달아 初刊本이 `고솜도ᄐᆡ` 로 읽었음을 보여 준다. 같은 짝(`돗 : 도`)이 잎 054a 의 발에도 찍혀 있는데 그것은 1.24 野猪黃의 `묏돗ᄐᆡ…`(내 몫이 아니다) 자리이고, 이 잎의 것이 이 절 것이다 — 057b 에서 `돗` 을 쥔 향명은 이것뿐이다.
譯 1.37.1 Source원문
性平, 味苦一云甘, 無毒一云[누락]毒. 主五痔, 隂蝕, 下五色血汁, 及腸風瀉血痔疾, 又療腹痛疝積.
Translation영역
Its nature is balanced, its flavour bitter one says sweet, and it is without toxicity one says [missing] toxicity. It governs the five haemorrhoids, yin erosion, discharge of blood and fluid of the five colours, intestinal wind with bleeding and haemorrhoidal disease, and it further treats abdominal pain and shan accumulation.
Clinical note임상 주석
**The most-used drug in my portion by a wide margin: 蝟皮 appears in eighteen places in the prescription corpus, and it is still a pharmacopoeial medicine in Chinese practice — for exactly what this entry says, haemorrhoidal bleeding.** The animal is the Amur hedgehog, Erinaceus amurensis, in Korea.
**The 細註 overturns the body text and should be respected.** The body says 無毒 and its own gloss says 一云小毒, slightly toxic; where the book disagrees with itself about toxicity, the cautious reading is the one that is recorded rather than the one that is convenient.
**The clinical point is that rectal bleeding is not a diagnosis, and this is the entry where that has to be said.** 五痔 and 腸風瀉血 — the five haemorrhoids and intestinal wind with bleeding — cover bright red bleeding with defecation, and in a young adult that is usually haemorrhoidal. But the identical symptom is the presentation of **colorectal cancer**, inflammatory bowel disease, diverticular disease, angiodysplasia and anal fissure, and colorectal cancer is among the most common cancers in Korea, which runs a national screening programme for it. **Rectal bleeding needs investigation — colonoscopy — in anyone over the age at which screening begins, and at any age where there is a change in bowel habit, weight loss, iron-deficiency anaemia, a family history, or bleeding that is dark, mixed with stool, or not clearly related to defecation.** Treating it as piles and watching is how the diagnosis is missed, and it is missed often.
Haemorrhoids themselves are managed by fibre and fluid to soften stool, avoiding straining and prolonged sitting, topical preparations for symptom relief, and rubber-band ligation or surgery for higher grades; thrombosed external piles are acutely painful and may be excised early. 疝積 — shan accumulation — is the groin and lower abdominal region again, for which see 1.42.
**And there is a current hazard here rather than a historical one: hedgehogs are now pets.** Pet hedgehogs are an established source of human **Salmonella** infection — multistate outbreaks of Salmonella Typhimurium have been traced to them, with children most affected — and they also transmit **Trichophyton erinacei**, a ringworm that causes a strikingly inflamed dermatitis on the hands and forearms of handlers, and Caparinia mites. The advice is straightforward: wash hands after handling the animal or anything in its enclosure, keep it out of kitchens and away from food preparation, and do not keep one in a household with children under five, the elderly or the immunocompromised.
譯 1.37.2 Source원문
生田野, 取無時. 猪蹄者妙, 鼠脚者次, 勿使中濕.
Translation영역
It lives in fields and open country and may be taken at any season. The pig-footed kind is excellent, the rat-footed kind is second, and it must not be allowed to get damp.
Clinical note임상 주석
猪蹄者妙鼠脚者次 — pig-footed better, rat-footed second — is a grading by foot form, and it is the kind of distinction that suggests more than one species was being taken, or that an age or regional difference was being read as a kind. The chapter does the same at 1.36 with the macaque's coat and face.
勿使中濕, do not let it get damp, is sound storage practice: a dried skin that takes up moisture moulds, and the same instruction appears at 1.15 羖羊角 earlier in the chapter, where damp is said to make the horn toxic.
譯 1.37.3 Source원문
狀類猯㹠, 脚短多剌, 尾長寸餘. 人觸近便藏頭足, 外皆剌, 不可嚮邇. 《本草》
Translation영역
In shape it is like the badger-pig, with short legs and many spines, the tail something over an inch long. When a person comes near it tucks away its head and feet, and the outside is all spines, so that one cannot approach it.
Clinical note임상 주석
An accurate description of a hedgehog rolling up, and 狀類猯㹠 — shaped like the badger-pig — ties this section back to the 1.29–1.31 group by way of the same 㹠/豚 "pig" element that gave 猯 its alternative name 獾豚. The chapter's names for all these small, squat, ground-living mammals circulate among pig, dog, otter and rat.
譯 1.37.4 Source원문
入藥燒灰, 或灸黃, 或炒黑, 或水煮用, 得酒良. 《入門》
Translation영역
For use in medicine it is burnt to ash, or roasted until yellow, or stir-fried until black, or boiled in water; taken with wine it is good.
Clinical note임상 주석
Four preparations for one drug — carbonized, roasted to yellow, stir-fried to black, or decocted — and the choice among them is the 炮製 question that governs how this material is actually used. 蝟皮 appears in eighteen places in the prescription corpus, more than any other item in my portion, and the processing specified in each is what distinguishes the intended action: charring was held to make a drug astringent and staunching, which is the form wanted for the rectal bleeding of the headword, while the decoction keeps it moving.
得酒良, taken with wine, is the usual vehicle in this chapter and recurs at 1.25, 1.36.1, 1.42 and 1.43. Alcohol does increase the absorption of some constituents, and it is also the reason several of these preparations would now be contraindicated in exactly the patients they were given to — the bleeding patient, in whom alcohol worsens both portal pressure and platelet function.
1.37.1 Hedgehog Flesh 肉
譯 1.37.1.1 Translation영역
It enriches the lower burner and regulates the stomach qi.
譯 1.37.1.2 Source원문
善開胃氣, 止嘔逆, 止血汗, 令人能食. 從䖝從胃, 有義焉. 《入門》
Translation영역
It is good at opening the stomach qi, stops retching and counterflow, stops the sweating of blood, and makes a person able to eat. That the character is written with the insect element and the stomach element has a meaning in it.
Clinical note임상 주석
**從䖝從胃有義焉 — "that the character is written with 䖝 (insect) and 胃 (stomach) has a meaning in it" — is the warrant for the indication, and it is worth preserving precisely because it is so explicit.** The drug acts on the stomach because the graph 蝟 contains the stomach element. This is not a stray remark; it is the reason given, in a line of its own, for why the flesh regulates the stomach qi.
Put beside the colour argument at 1.25 (black restrains the wind-engendering heat), the lifespan argument at 1.34 and the organ-for-organ choices at 1.28.6, 1.34.1 and 1.38.2, it completes a picture of how indications were generated in this literature: from correspondence, from the written character, and from the animal's habits — and only sometimes from what happened to patients. Reading these entries as failed empiricism misses what they were. The reasoning is visible and it is not empirical.
止血汗, stopping the sweating of blood: haematohidrosis is reported but vanishingly rare, and what is usually meant is bleeding into the skin or from a lesion, or the blood-tinged sweat of a severe coagulopathy. 止嘔逆 — persistent retching and vomiting needs a cause, and the gastric outlet obstruction and malignancy warning at 1.25.5 applies.
1.37.2 Hedgehog Fat 脂
譯 1.37.2.1 Source원문
可煮五金八石. 主耳聾及腸風瀉血五痔. 《本草》
Translation영역
It can boil the five metals and the eight minerals. It governs deafness, intestinal wind with bleeding, and the five haemorrhoids.
Clinical note임상 주석
可煮五金八石 — "it can boil the five metals and the eight minerals" — is an alchemical claim, not a medical one: the fat was held to soften or dissolve metals and minerals so that they could be compounded, which is the kind of property the 煉丹 literature attributes to particular animal fats and plant juices. It is false — no animal fat dissolves metal — and it is informative about where this material came from. The mineral chapters of this book carry the other end of the same tradition.
The haemorrhoidal indication repeats 1.37, where the rectal-bleeding warning is set out. Deafness is at 1.25.1 and 1.38.1; a sudden sensorineural hearing loss is the one that is time-critical, because high-dose corticosteroid has a chance of recovering it if given within days and little chance afterwards, and it is often mistaken for wax or a blocked ear.
1.37.3 Hedgehog Bone 骨
譯 1.37.3.1 Source원문
食之則令人瘦, 諸節漸縮小. 《本草》
Translation영역
Eating it makes a person waste, and the joints gradually shrink and grow small.
Clinical note임상 주석
**A leaf that consists of nothing but a prohibition.** The part is listed under its mother and then refused in its single line, with no indication at all — the same shape as 1.38.5, where the rat's bone is forbidden in nine characters, and 1.33, where the dhole's flesh is 不可食. **These are the book limiting itself, and they are the parts of the chapter that carry forward unchanged** (§9): where the Bogam says a thing is not to be eaten, the note has nothing to correct.
諸節漸縮小 — the joints gradually shrinking and growing small — is a recognizable clinical picture, even if its attribution here is not. Progressive joint deformity with wasting describes **rheumatoid arthritis** with its characteristic deformities and periarticular muscle loss, **psoriatic arthritis** with its most destructive form, arthritis mutilans, in which digits visibly shorten as bone resorbs, and **systemic sclerosis** with skin tightening, flexion contracture and digital shortening. Each is treatable and the window matters: in rheumatoid arthritis, early disease-modifying treatment within the first months of symptom onset substantially changes the amount of joint destruction that eventually occurs. A patient with progressive joint deformity and weight loss needs rheumatological assessment, not a dietary explanation.
1.38 Male Rat Flesh 牡鼠肉
세 낱말이 다 지금 말로 그대로 이어진다 — `수-`(암수의 수), `쥐`, `고기`. 한자 머리말 `牡鼠肉` 을 낱말마다 그대로 옮긴 꼴이고, 본문도 `牡鼠父鼠也` (牡鼠는 아비쥐다)로 암수를 다시 못 박는다 — 1.38.6 糞 이 **수쥐의 것**으로 가려지기 때문에 성별이 뜻이 있는 자리다.
譯 1.38.1 Source원문
性微温一云凉, 味甘, 無毒. 療踒折, 續筋骨, 搗付.
Translation영역
Its nature is slightly warm one says cool, its flavour sweet, and it is without toxicity. It treats sprains and fractures and knits sinew and bone; pound it and apply.
Clinical note임상 주석
**The three rat sections, 1.38 to 1.40, are the most hazardous material in my portion — and Korea is where the hazard was first characterized, which makes this the one place in the chapter where the modern note has a local history behind it.**
**Hantaan orthohantavirus**, the cause of haemorrhagic fever with renal syndrome, was isolated in 1976 from the striped field mouse Apodemus agrarius caught near the Hantan river in Gyeonggi province, and it is named for that river. **Seoul orthohantavirus**, carried worldwide by the brown rat Rattus norvegicus, is named for this city for the same reason. HFRS was the disease that took thousands of United Nations casualties during the Korean War without anyone knowing what it was, and it remains a notifiable disease here with a seasonal autumn peak among farmers and soldiers. **Transmission is by inhaling aerosolized rodent urine, droppings and nesting material, and by bites** — which is to say, by exactly the handling that this section and 1.38.6 describe. There is a Korean-developed vaccine, Hantavax, used in high-exposure groups; treatment of established disease is supportive, with dialysis for the oliguric phase.
Alongside the hantaviruses: **leptospirosis**, the other classic disease of Korean autumn fieldwork, acquired through skin and mucosal contact with rodent urine in water and mud, progressing in its severe form to Weil's disease with jaundice and renal failure or to pulmonary haemorrhage, and treated with penicillin or doxycycline; **rat-bite fever** from Streptobacillus moniliformis and Spirillum minus, with relapsing fever, rash and arthritis, fatal in around ten per cent untreated and curable with penicillin; **Salmonella**, **Yersinia**, lymphocytic choriomeningitis virus, and rat-mite dermatitis. None of this is avoidable while the drug is a rat.
Clinically, 踒折續筋骨 — fractures and the knitting of bone — is not something a poultice does. A fracture needs examination for deformity, neurovascular compromise and compartment syndrome, imaging, reduction and immobilization, and an open fracture needs antibiotics and surgical debridement urgently. Applying pounded animal tissue to an open fracture contaminates it directly.
譯 1.38.2 Source원문
主小兒疳疾腹大貪食, 灸食之. 牡鼠, 父鼠也. 又主骨蒸勞極, 四肢羸瘦, 殺䖝, 去骨酒熬入藥. 《本草》
Translation영역
It governs gan disease in small children with a large belly and ravenous appetite; roast it and eat it. The 牡鼠 is the father rat. It further governs steaming-bone taxation at its extremity with emaciation of the four limbs, and kills worms; remove the bones, simmer it in wine, and put it into medicine.
Clinical note임상 주석
**疳疾腹大貪食 — childhood wasting with a distended belly and a ravenous appetite — is a precise clinical picture and the book has the right explanation for it at the end of the same passage: 殺䖝, it kills worms.**
A thin child who eats constantly and has a protuberant abdomen is the classic presentation of heavy intestinal helminth infection — Ascaris, hookworm, Trichuris — and of **coeliac disease**, and of giardiasis and tropical enteropathy. Korea's own history here is the relevant one: ascariasis and the other soil-transmitted helminths were near-universal in Korean children into the 1960s, and the mass deworming and sanitation campaigns of the following two decades reduced prevalence to almost nothing. The modern treatment is albendazole or mebendazole, given to the household together; coeliac disease is diagnosed on serology and duodenal biopsy and treated by gluten exclusion, and it is underdiagnosed in Korea rather than absent. Either way the point stands that the symptom has a findable cause.
骨蒸勞極四肢羸瘦 is the tuberculosis picture of 1.28 and 1.29.1, reached through a fourth animal.
**牡鼠父鼠也 — the 牡鼠 is the father rat — fixes the sex of the animal, and that matters downstream**: the droppings at 1.38.6 are identified as the male's by their shape, and the prescription corpus repeats the same identification in the formula text for 猳鼠糞湯, 猳鼠, 雄鼠也, 糞兩頭尖者是也. The herb list registers this section's flesh as seoyuk 鼠肉, with the formula note recording that 雄鼠, the male rat, is entered under that identifier.
1.38.1 Rat Gall 膽
譯 1.38.1.1 Source원문
主目暗及耳聾, 但纔死膽便消, 故不可得. 《本草》
Translation영역
It governs dimness of vision and deafness, but as soon as the animal dies the gall vanishes, so it cannot be obtained.
Clinical note임상 주석
**纔死膽便消故不可得 — as soon as it dies the gall vanishes, so it cannot be got. The instruction concealed in that sentence is to take the gall from a living animal, and it should be named as such.**
The herb list carries 活鼠, "live rat", as a separate drug for the same reason, marked historical. What this involves is opening the abdomen of a conscious animal, and it is worth stating three things about it plainly. It has no therapeutic effect. **It is prohibited** — the Animal Protection Act forbids killing animals by cruel methods and inflicting unnecessary suffering, and procedures of this kind on vertebrates are confined to licensed research under ethical review and anaesthesia. And it maximizes the handler's exposure to everything listed at 1.38: a live wild rodent bites, and its blood, urine and tissue are the infectious material.
The observation itself is explicable. The gall bladder does not vanish; after death, autolysis and bile leakage stain the surrounding tissue and the small structure becomes difficult to find and impossible to recover intact — particularly in an animal as small as a rat, where the organ is a few millimetres across. The text has turned a dissection difficulty into a property of the drug, and the property into a reason for vivisection.
Clinically, both indications are presentations that reward assessment. 目暗, dimness of vision: cataract, glaucoma, age-related macular degeneration and diabetic retinopathy are the four common causes, cataract is curable by surgery, glaucoma's damage is preventable but not reversible so that detection matters more than treatment, and the wet form of macular degeneration responds to anti-VEGF injection if caught early. Gradual visual loss should be examined, not supplemented. 耳聾, deafness: audiometry separates conductive from sensorineural, and **sudden sensorineural hearing loss is a medical emergency with a treatment window of days**, for which high-dose corticosteroid offers the only real chance of recovery; it is routinely mistaken for wax or a blocked ear and presented too late.
譯 1.38.1.2 Source원문
鼠膽隨人神所在. 一云每月初生有之, 初三日前則可得. 《入門》
Translation영역
The rat's gall follows wherever the body-spirit is. One says that it comes into being at the start of each month, and that it can be had before the third day.
Clinical note임상 주석
人神所在 — the location of the body-spirit — is the calendrical system in which a moving spirit occupies a different part of the body on each day of the lunar month, and in which acupuncture and cautery at that site are forbidden on that day. The Bogam carries the 人神禁忌 tables elsewhere. Here the system has been extended from the human body to the rat's, so that the organ exists only in the first days of the month.
It is a prohibition dressed as an observation, and it has the same structure as the twelve-lobed liver at 1.28 and the twelfth-month collection dates at 1.27.3 and 1.27.7: a calendar rule presented as a fact about the animal. The honest reading is that these rules governed practice and were justified afterwards.
1.38.2 Rat's Eye 目
譯 1.38.2.1 Translation영역
It governs brightening the eyes, so that one can read by night.
Clinical note임상 주석
**The clearest organ-for-function choice in my portion: the eye of a nocturnal animal, to see in the dark.** The rat is active at night, therefore its eye confers night vision. It is the same reasoning as the wolf's throat for the blocked throat at 1.34.1, the fish-eating otter's foot for the fish bone at 1.28.6, and the character-based argument at 1.37.1, and it is visible here without any pharmacological covering at all.
**Modern reading, and the one treatable cause is worth knowing.** Night blindness is **vitamin A deficiency** before it is anything else, and vitamin A deficiency remains among the leading causes of preventable childhood blindness worldwide: it progresses from impaired dark adaptation through conjunctival drying and Bitot's spots to corneal ulceration and irreversible blindness, and it is reversed by vitamin A — which is why supplementation programmes exist. It also increases childhood mortality from measles and diarrhoeal disease. The other causes of poor night vision — **retinitis pigmentosa**, which begins with night blindness and progressive peripheral field loss and is now the subject of gene-specific therapy in some forms; glaucoma; advanced cataract; and myopic undercorrection, which is much the commonest and is fixed with glasses — are identified by examination. A patient who cannot see to read at night needs refraction and a retinal examination.
1.38.3 Rat Fat 脂
譯 1.38.3.1 Translation영역
It governs scalds and burns.
Clinical note임상 주석
**Do not put fat, oil, grease, butter, soy sauce, toothpaste or ice on a burn. This is the most commonly repeated harmful folk measure in the whole chapter and it is still done.**
Fat applied to a fresh burn holds the heat in the tissue and so increases the depth of the injury; it contaminates the wound surface; and it has to be removed before the burn can be assessed or dressed, which is painful and delays care.
**What to do instead.** Stop the burning process and remove clothing and jewellery from the area. **Cool the burn under running tap water for twenty minutes**, and this remains worth doing for up to three hours after the injury — it reduces depth, reduces pain and improves outcome, and it is the single most effective first-aid measure there is. Do not use ice, which causes further injury. Then cover with cling film laid on (not wrapped circumferentially) or a clean non-adherent dressing, keep the patient warm, and give analgesia.
**Refer to a burns service**: any burn that is deep dermal or full thickness, any burn larger than the palm of the patient's hand, and any burn of the face, hands, feet, perineum or crossing a joint, as well as circumferential burns, electrical and chemical burns, inhalation injury, and burns in children, the elderly and the immunocompromised. Suspected inhalation injury — soot in the mouth, hoarseness, singed nasal hair, burns in an enclosed space — needs immediate airway assessment, because the airway swells over hours and intubation becomes impossible if it is left. A burn in a child that does not fit the history is a safeguarding question.
1.38.4 Rat's Four Feet and Tail 四足及尾
譯 1.38.4.1 Translation영역
It governs a woman's miscarriage, making it come away easily.
Clinical note임상 주석
An expulsive, and one of two in my portion — the other is the flying squirrel at 1.40, whose first line is also 墮胎.
**Modern reading.** Nothing in rodent tissue has uterotonic activity, and the management of miscarriage is now well defined and offers a choice. **Incomplete miscarriage** is managed expectantly, medically with misoprostol, or surgically by vacuum aspiration, with the decision made by the woman on the basis of bleeding, pain, and her own preference; **missed miscarriage** likewise. Anti-D immunoglobulin is given to rhesus-negative women where indicated. **The emergencies to recognize are heavy bleeding with haemodynamic compromise, which needs resuscitation and urgent evacuation; sepsis, with fever, offensive loss and uterine tenderness, which is life-threatening and needs antibiotics and evacuation; and ectopic pregnancy, which presents as pain and bleeding in early pregnancy and is the diagnosis that kills when it is assumed to be a miscarriage.** Any bleeding in early pregnancy therefore needs a pregnancy test, a pelvic ultrasound and, where the location is not established, serial hCG.
It should also be said that a drug that makes a miscarriage "come away easily" is a drug for ending a pregnancy as well as for completing one that has ended, and the text does not distinguish. Termination of pregnancy in Korea has been in a legal grey zone since the Constitutional Court struck down the criminal prohibition in 2019 without replacement legislation; medical termination with mifepristone and misoprostol is safe and effective under supervision, and self-administration of unregulated preparations is where the harm lies.
1.38.5 Rat Bone 骨
譯 1.38.5.1 Translation영역
It greatly emaciates a person; it must not be eaten.
Clinical note임상 주석
**Nine characters, of which the operative four are 不可食 — it must not be eaten.** This is the third leaf in my portion that exists only to forbid itself, with 1.37.3 (the hedgehog's bone, in almost identical terms) and 1.33 (the dhole's flesh). The parallel between the two bones is close enough to suggest a shared source for both lines.
**These prohibitions are the parts of the chapter that need no modern correction** (§9), and the right treatment of them is to print them prominently rather than to bury them. A materia medica that lists a part and then refuses it is doing something worth noticing.
The herb list holds seogol 鼠骨, "rat bone", for this leaf, and the pair is reported for the alias table — the identifier is left empty here because the leaf name is 骨 under a mother named 牡鼠肉, and the checker's candidate forms do not reach 鼠骨 from that combination.
1.38.6 Rat Droppings 糞
譯 1.38.6.1 Source원문
性微寒. 專主傷寒勞復, 又主小兒癎疾. 兩頭尖者, 是牡鼠糞也. 《本草》
Translation영역
Its nature is slightly cold. It governs specifically the relapse from overexertion in cold damage, and also governs epilepsy in small children. Those pointed at both ends are the male rat's droppings.
Clinical note임상 주석
**This is the one leaf in my portion that is an active drug in the prescription corpus, and the identification in its last line is repeated verbatim in the formulas.**
The herb list registers it as moseobun 牡鼠屎, with 雄鼠屎 and 牡鼠糞 already recorded as its variant names; the closely related 猳鼠糞 (gaseobun) is the chief ingredient of **猳鼠糞湯**, where the formula text repeats this very sentence — 猳鼠, 雄鼠也, 糞兩頭尖者是也, the 猳鼠 is the male rat, and the droppings pointed at both ends are the ones — and of the blood-gu formulas, where it stands with 桃奴 and 玄胡索 for amenorrhoea with blood stasis. 傷寒勞復 is relapse of a febrile illness after premature exertion during convalescence, and the related 陰易, which 猳鼠糞湯 treats, is relapse attributed to intercourse in convalescence. **The identification by shape is accurate**: rat droppings are spindle-shaped and tapered at both ends, and mouse droppings are smaller and blunter, which is a distinction pest controllers still use.
**The hazard is the whole of the modern note, and it is specific. Dried rodent droppings are the single most important vehicle for hantavirus transmission to humans**, because the virus is shed in urine and faeces and becomes infectious by inhalation when the dried material is disturbed — sweeping, grinding, shaking out bedding, cleaning a loft. Hantaan and Seoul viruses are named for this country (see 1.38) and HFRS is a notifiable disease here. Dried droppings are also a Salmonella, Leptospira and Yersinia source. **Rodent-contaminated areas are not swept or vacuumed dry.** They are wetted thoroughly with a bleach or disinfectant solution and left for ten minutes, then wiped up with the area ventilated, by someone wearing gloves and, in a confined or heavily contaminated space, a fitted respirator. Collecting, drying and powdering the material — which is what this drug requires — is the opposite of all of that.
小兒癎疾, epilepsy in children: a first seizure in a child needs the cause looked for — febrile seizure, which is benign and common; meningitis and encephalitis; hypoglycaemia; hyponatraemia; trauma; and the childhood epilepsy syndromes, which are diagnosed on history, EEG and imaging and treated with anticonvulsants chosen by syndrome. A febrile child with a seizure and any impairment of consciousness, rash or neck stiffness is a meningitis question first.
1.39 Mole 鼴鼠
두디쥐 두더지 mole
`두디쥐` 는 지금 말 `두더지` 로 그대로 이어진다 — `두디-`(두디다/뒤지다, 파 뒤집다) + `쥐` 가 `두더지` 로 굳은 꼴이다. 뜻까지 살아 있는 향명이고 (땅을 **뒤지는** 짐승), 본문의 `常穿耕地中行`(늘 갈아 놓은 땅을 뚫고 다닌다)이 그 뜻과 맞는다.
낱말과 종이 둘 다 풀리는 자리다 — 향명이 아니라도 본문의 묘사만으로 두더지가 가려진다(아래 주를 볼 것).
譯 1.39.1 Source원문
性寒, 味醎, 無毒. 主癕疽諸瘻, 蝕惡瘡瘡疥, 隂𧏾爛瘡, 及血脉不行結成癕疽, 食之可消. 小兒食, 殺蚘䖝.
Translation영역
Its nature is cold, its flavour salty, and it is without toxicity. It governs abscesses and the various fistulae, eats away malign sores and scab, erosive sores of the genitals and suppurating sores, and the abscess formed where the blood and vessels do not move; eaten, it can disperse them. Eaten by a small child, it kills roundworms.
Clinical note임상 주석
癕疽諸瘻 — abscesses and chronic sinuses — with the claim that eating the animal disperses them.
**Modern reading.** An abscess is a collection of pus and it resolves by drainage; antibiotics alone do not penetrate it reliably, and an undrained deep abscess spreads along fascial planes or seeds the bloodstream. Incision and drainage, with antibiotics where there is surrounding cellulitis or systemic upset, is the treatment. **A chronic discharging sinus that will not close is a different problem and the important one here: it means an underlying cause that has not been found**, and the list is a retained foreign body, osteomyelitis, tuberculosis, actinomycosis, Crohn's disease with a perianal or enterocutaneous fistula, hidradenitis suppurativa, pilonidal disease, and malignant change. Any of these needs imaging to trace the tract and tissue for histology and culture; a sinus treated for months with dressings and nothing else is a diagnosis being missed. 隂𧏾爛瘡, erosive genital sores, raises syphilis, herpes and, in the chronic case, malignancy, and genital ulceration should be swabbed and serologically tested rather than treated blind.
殺蚘䖝 for roundworm in children is at 1.30 and 1.38 — the parasite is real and albendazole treats it.
譯 1.39.2 Source원문
一名鼢鼠. 常穿耕地中行, 討掘卽得. 其形類鼠而肥多膏, 色黑, 口鼻尖, 強脚絶短, 但能行, 尾長寸餘, 目極小, 項尤短. 五月取令乾燔之.
Translation영역
It is also called the burrowing rat. It is always tunnelling through ploughed ground as it goes, and it is got by searching and digging. In form it is like a rat but fat and full of grease, black in colour, with a pointed muzzle, legs powerful but extremely short, able only to walk, a tail something over an inch long, eyes exceedingly small, and the neck shorter still. Take it in the fifth month, dry it, and roast it.
Clinical note임상 주석
**This is the best description of an animal in my portion, and it identifies the species without needing the name.** Tunnelling through ploughed ground; body rat-like but fat and greasy; black; muzzle pointed; **legs powerful but extremely short**; able only to walk, not to run or climb; tail just over an inch; **eyes exceedingly small**; neck shorter still. Every one of those is a mole, and 目極小 and 強脚絶短 are the two diagnostic characters — the vestigial eye and the shovel-forelimb. The Korean moles are Mogera species.
**And the name misleads where the description does not.** 鼴鼠 and 鼢鼠 both contain 鼠, rat, and the Korean 두디쥐 ends in 쥐, so the animal is filed with the rodents of 1.38 and 1.40 — but **a mole is not a rodent at all.** It is an insectivore, in the order Eulipotyphla, no more closely related to a rat than a hedgehog is; and the hedgehog of 1.37 is its actual relative, sitting two sections away under a quite different name. The chapter's taxonomy is by appearance and habit, and here it has grouped a mole with rats and separated it from its own order.
五月取令乾燔之 — taken in the fifth month, dried, roasted — and 討掘卽得, got by searching and digging, which is the exposure. **Digging in field soil is the route for leptospirosis**, from rodent urine in wet ground, and for **scrub typhus** (Orientia tsutsugamushi), transmitted by chigger mites in grass and field margins, which in Korea is a markedly autumn, markedly agricultural illness with thousands of cases a year — the eschar at the bite site is the diagnostic sign and doxycycline is the treatment. Moles themselves carry Leptospira, Toxoplasma, fleas and mites. Bare-handed digging for a mole in a ploughed field is a reasonable description of how both diseases are caught.
譯 1.39.3 Translation영역
Its grease will serve to rub on the various malign sores.
1.40 Flying Squirrel 鼺鼠
ᄂᆞᄂᆞᆫᄃᆞ라미 날다람쥐 flying squirrel
두 토막으로 갈라지고 둘 다 풀린다 — `ᄂᆞᄂᆞᆫ` 은 `나는`(날다의 매김꼴)이고 `ᄃᆞ라미` 는 `다람쥐` 의 옛 꼴(`ᄃᆞ라미`>`다라미`>`다람쥐`)이다. 곧 `나는 다라미` = 지금 말 **`날다람쥐`** 이고, 같은 짜임이 그대로 이어진 자리다.
이름이 아니라 **뜻풀이 꼴**의 향명이고(水部ㆍ土部 꼴), 본문의 `飛不能致遠人謂之飛生`(날되 멀리 가지 못하니 飛生이라 한다)과 맞물린다.
譯 1.40.1 Translation영역
Its nature is slightly warm. It governs miscarriage and makes delivery easy.
Clinical note임상 주석
**The drug the herb list actually holds for this animal is its dung, under another name and in another chapter, and the cross-reference is worth following.**
**五靈脂** (oryeongji, Trogopterori Faeces, "flying squirrel feces") is registered in the insect chapter and is a real and much-used drug — a blood-moving agent for stasis pain. The prescription corpus uses it, and in 溫臍法 the ingredient is written **鼯鼠糞**, flying-squirrel droppings, and linked to that identifier. This section, however, is about the animal and its pelt, not its dung, so the identifier is left empty here and the relation recorded instead (§3.2: where the form that is actually used differs from the headword, the headword is not linked to it).
The Korean flying squirrel is Pteromys volans — **Natural Monument No. 328 and Endangered Wildlife Class II**, so it may not be taken — while the 五靈脂 of the drug trade comes from the Chinese complex-toothed flying squirrel, Trogopterus xanthipes.
**墮胎 is the first indication and 令易産 the second, and they are opposite uses of one drug** — an expulsive in the first and a facilitator of labour in the second — which is normal in this literature, where both are 下, bringing down. For miscarriage see 1.38.4.
譯 1.40.2 Source원문
鼺鼠是鼯鼠, 卽飛生鳥也. 山中有之, 狀如蝙蝠, 大如鳩鵲, 暗夜行飛. 人取其皮毛, 與産婦臨蓐持之, 令易産.
Translation영역
The 鼺鼠 is the 鼯鼠, which is to say the flying-born bird. It is found in the mountains, shaped like a bat and the size of a dove or magpie, and it travels and flies in the dark of night. People take its skin and fur and give it to a woman in labour to hold as she comes to the mat, to make the delivery easy.
Clinical note임상 주석
**The use is not internal at all: the labouring woman holds the pelt. This is a birth amulet, and saying so is the right description of it.**
鼺鼠是鼯鼠 is the identification that links this section to 五靈脂 above. 卽飛生鳥也 — "the flying-born bird" — files it among the birds, which is where the gliding membrane put it; 狀如蝙蝠, shaped like a bat, is apt for a gliding mammal, and 暗夜行飛 is accurate, since Pteromys is strictly nocturnal.
**What the amulet displaces is the harm.** Obstructed and prolonged labour remains a leading cause of maternal and perinatal death where there is no access to assessment and operative delivery, and the complications are specific: obstructed labour leads to uterine rupture, to postpartum haemorrhage from an exhausted uterus, to sepsis, and to obstetric fistula in those who survive; the fetus suffers hypoxic injury or dies. What changes the outcome is monitoring of progress and of the fetal heart, recognition of malpresentation and of cephalopelvic disproportion, augmentation where appropriate, and timely instrumental or caesarean delivery — together with active management of the third stage with oxytocin, which is the single most effective measure against postpartum haemorrhage. An object held in the hand substitutes for none of that, and the reason to say so is that this is the kind of practice that persists alongside modern care rather than being replaced by it. Holding a charm is harmless; **delivering without assessment because the charm is thought sufficient is not.**
譯 1.40.3 Source원문
毛赤黑色, 長尾, 飛不能致遠, 人謂之飛生. 《本草》
Translation영역
Its fur is reddish-black and its tail long; it flies but cannot carry far, and people call it the flying-born.
Clinical note임상 주석
**飛不能致遠 — it flies but cannot carry far — is an exact description of gliding as distinct from flight**, and it is the sort of careful negative observation that the chapter produces now and then and that deserves noting: the author has seen the animal launch, travel on a descending path, and land, and has recorded that it is not the same thing as a bird's flight. Pteromys volans glides on a patagium stretched between the limbs, using the flattened tail as a rudder, and loses height throughout — it cannot gain altitude, which is precisely 不能致遠. The long tail of the description is the rudder.
1.41 Old Drum-Skin 敗鼓皮
Medicinal entry 붑메워오라ᄒᆞ여딘가족 북 메워 오래 해어진 가죽 hide long worn through from being stretched over a drum **뜻풀이 꼴의 향명**이고 낱말마다 풀린다 — `붑` 은 지금 말 `북`(鼓)의 옛 꼴이고(`붑`>`북`), `메워` 는 북에 가죽을 **메우다**(씌워 당기다)의 그 말로 지금도 쓰인다, `오라` 는 `오래`, `ᄒᆞ여딘` 은 `해어진`(ᄒᆞ여디다>해어지다), `가족` 은 `가죽` 이다. 1.33 豺皮의 `가족` 과 같은 낱말이다.
향명 자체가 이 절의 **정의**다 — 어떤 짐승이 아니라 「북에 메워 오래 써서 해어진 가죽」이라는 **물건**임을 우리말이 똑똑히 밝힌다.
譯 1.41.1 Source원문
性平. 主中蠱毒, 燒作屑和水服, 病人卽喚蠱主姓名, 令其呼取蠱, 便差.
Translation영역
Its nature is balanced. It governs being struck by gu toxin: burn it to a powder, mix it with water and give it, and the patient will at once call out the surname and given name of the owner of the gu; make him summon that person to take the gu back, and he recovers.
Clinical note임상 주석
**Not an animal — an object. The Bogam has put it in the beast chapter because the material is hide**, and the next two sections do the same: 1.44 is the ash of a writing brush, which was made of animal hair, and 1.45 is the flesh of an animal killed by lightning. Three of the last five sections of the chapter are things rather than creatures, and the organizing principle at the end of 獸部 is the material, not the beast.
The mechanism is openly magical and is the most explicit case of sympathy in my portion: **the drum calls, therefore the patient calls.** Burn the skin that was beaten to make a sound, give it in water, and the voice comes out of the patient — the name of whoever set the 蠱. 以黃牛皮者爲勝, ox hide is best, and 久用穿破者佳, the more worn through the better, which is to say the more it has been struck.
**With the wolf sinew at 1.34.3 these are the two accusation-producing procedures in my portion, and the note should say what they are.** What this produces is a name extracted from a frightened, sick and suggestible person in front of an audience that is waiting for one, and then an instruction to summon the person named. That is the structure of every witchcraft accusation and every coerced confession, and the sign it produces is not evidence. Accusations of 蠱 poisoning led to real violence against the people named, and the procedure is the instrument of it.
**Clinically**, 蠱毒 as a category covered deliberate poisoning, parasitic disease and unexplained wasting, and it recurs at 1.27, 1.27.2, 1.29.2 and here. Where there is a genuine poisoning the route is the poisons centre, identification of the agent, airway protection, activated charcoal where it is indicated, and specific antidotes where they exist — set out at 1.29.2, along with the two situations in which vomiting must never be induced. Where the category is covering an undiagnosed chronic illness, that illness needs finding. Burnt hide is collagen char with no pharmacological activity, and the combustion products of tanned leather, which include chromium compounds from modern tanning and a range of nitrogenous and sulphurous pyrolysis products, are not harmless to inhale or swallow.
譯 1.41.2 Source원문
以黃牛皮者爲勝, 久用穿破者佳. 《本草》
Translation영역
That made of yellow ox hide is the best, and one long used and worn through is good.
1.42 Sable 貂鼠
돈피 돈피 donpi — sable or marten pelt
**이 문의 향명 가운데 꼴이 다른 자리다** — 우리말 이름이 아니라 **한자말의 우리 음**이다. `돈피` 는 `貂皮`(담비 가죽)의 음이고, 지금 말에도 `돈피` 가 그 뜻으로 그대로 남아 있다. 그러므로 `hyangmyeong_mod` 는 바뀔 것이 없다.
적어 둘 것이 둘이다. ⑴ 향명이 **짐승이 아니라 가죽**(교역품)을 가리킨다 — 이 짐승이 살림에서 무엇이었는지를 향명이 말해 준다. ⑵ **1.31 貉肉의 `담뷔`(담비)와 겹친다** — 지금 말로는 둘이 같은 짐승인데 한자는 `貉` 과 `貂` 로 다르다. 그래서 **종을 정하지 않았다.**
譯 1.42.1 Source원문
四足燒灰, 和酒服, 治奔豚疝氣上衝欲死, 卽效.
Translation영역
Burn the four feet to ash, take it mixed with wine, and it treats running-piglet qi and shan qi surging upward so that one is about to die; the effect is immediate.
Clinical note임상 주석
**奔豚 and 疝氣上衝欲死 — and this is a presentation to take seriously and not to treat, because the phrase describes a set of surgical emergencies as well as a panic attack.**
Sudden, severe, rising pain in the groin and lower abdomen with collapse and a sense of impending death is: **incarcerated or strangulated inguinal hernia**, which needs urgent surgery before the bowel infarcts; **testicular torsion**, which has roughly six hours before the testis is lost and which classically presents with sudden severe pain, vomiting and a high-riding tender testis, often in an adolescent and often at night; **ruptured abdominal aortic aneurysm**, with back or flank pain, collapse and a pulsatile mass; **ureteric colic** from a stone, which is not an emergency in itself but is when it is obstructed and infected; and **aortic dissection**. Each is time-critical and each is excluded by examination and imaging, not by a remedy. A man or boy with sudden severe testicular pain goes straight to surgical assessment.
**奔豚 also covers panic attack, and in that reading the description is excellent.** Running-piglet qi is a sensation rising from the lower abdomen to the chest and throat, with palpitations, breathlessness and the conviction of imminent death, coming in discrete attacks and subsiding — which is the diagnostic description of panic disorder, including the fear of dying that is one of its criteria. That is treated effectively with cognitive behavioural therapy and with SSRIs, and the explanation of the mechanism is itself therapeutic. But the organic causes above, and thyrotoxicosis, arrhythmia, phaeochromocytoma and hypoglycaemia, are what a first episode needs excluded before it is called panic.
On the animal: 貂鼠 is conventionally the sable, Martes zibellina; the marten of Korea is Martes flavigula, Endangered Wildlife Class II. **The species is not fixed here**, for the reason given in the gloss note — the Korean name collides with 1.31's.
譯 1.42.2 Source원문
靑鼠셔피, 㹦鼠同功. 《俗方》
Translation영역
The 靑鼠 셔피 and the 㹦鼠 have the same effect.
Clinical note임상 주석
Two more fur-bearing small carnivores named only by their pelts and said to do the same thing. **㹦鼠 is not securely identifiable** — the character is rare and is used in the sources for various small mustelids — and it is left as the character rather than translated into a species. 靑鼠, the "blue rat", is in the fur trade the squirrel pelt, and the Korean 셔피 beside it is a trade name of the same kind.
The passage is evidence of how this group of sections was organized: not by zoology but by the fur market. Sable, marten, squirrel and weasel are interchangeable here because their pelts were traded alongside one another, and the same market logic lies behind the otter-skin collar at 1.28.7, the raccoon-dog garment at 1.30 and the weasel-hair brush at 1.44.
**A note on the chapter's arithmetic.** This section and 1.43 are the two in 獸部 that cite nothing but 俗方, and the chapter head's count of 236 includes them both — which is the evidence against the idea that the book's tally was made before the 俗方 material was added.
1.43 Weasel 黃鼠
죡져비 족제비 weasel
`죡져비` 는 지금 말 `족제비` 로 그대로 이어진다(`죡`>`족`, `져비`>`제비`). 또렷하게 풀리는 향명이고, **이 향명이 이 절을 구해 낸다** — 아래 주를 볼 것.
譯 1.43.1 Source원문
卽鼠狼也. 肉作末, 療瘡瘻久不合, 付之卽效.
Translation영역
It is the rat-wolf. Make the flesh into a powder; it treats sores and sinuses that have long failed to close, and applied it takes effect at once.
Clinical note임상 주석
**The vernacular name settles this section, and nothing else in it would.**
The characters 黃鼠 mean "yellow rat", and 鼠 would place the animal with the rat of 1.38, the mole of 1.39 and the flying squirrel of 1.40 — four consecutive 鼠 headwords, of which the first is a rodent, the second an insectivore, the third a rodent and this one a **carnivore**. The Korean gloss 죡져비 makes it 족제비, the Siberian weasel Mustela sibirica, a mustelid; and the book's own first words, 卽鼠狼也, "it is the rat-wolf", agree — 鼠狼 is a standard name for the weasel, and the compound says dog-like predator rather than rodent.
**This is the same work the bird chapter's glosses did when they separated the crow from the jackdaw, 가마괴 against ᄀᆞᆯ가마괴: the vernacular distinguishes what the characters confuse.** In this part of 獸部 it does it five times over — 1.29 badger, 1.30 raccoon dog, 1.31 marten, 1.42 sable, 1.43 weasel — and without the glosses the group would be unrecoverable.
There is also a thread back to the next section: **the weasel's tail hair is what the writing brush of 1.44 was made from** — 황모, the yellow hair, is the classic Korean brush material — so 1.43 and 1.44 are the animal and the object made from it, placed side by side.
**Clinically, 瘡瘻久不合 — a sore or sinus that has long failed to close — is the one indication in these two 俗方 sections that should prompt action, because a chronic non-healing wound always means an unidentified cause.** The list: **arterial insufficiency** (check pulses and ankle–brachial pressure index; a compression bandage on an ischaemic leg causes necrosis); **venous disease**, the commonest cause of leg ulceration, treated by compression once arterial supply is confirmed; **diabetes with neuropathy**, where a painless plantar ulcer needs offloading, debridement and assessment for underlying osteomyelitis by probe-to-bone and imaging; **pressure injury**; **osteomyelitis**; **tuberculosis** and other atypical infection; **pyoderma gangrenosum**, which worsens with debridement and needs immunosuppression, so that getting the diagnosis right changes the treatment completely; and **malignancy** — either a primary squamous or basal cell carcinoma presenting as an ulcer, or **Marjolin's ulcer**, malignant transformation in a long-standing scar or chronic wound. **Any wound that has not healed in three months, or that has an exuberant rolled edge or atypical appearance, is biopsied.**
譯 1.43.2 Source원문
四足主疝氣上衝, 燒灰服. 《俗方》
Translation영역
The four feet govern shan qi surging upward; burn them to ash and take it.
Clinical note임상 주석
The same claim as 1.42, for the same part — the four feet, burnt — in the neighbouring section, which suggests the two entries come from one local practice. The surgical emergencies that 疝氣上衝 covers are set out at 1.42, and they are the reason this indication should not be treated.
Weasels carry Leptospira, Toxoplasma, Trichinella, fleas and mites; mustelids are susceptible to rabies and to canine distemper, and in Korea rabies circulates in the raccoon dog of 1.30. A wild carnivore handled for its feet is handled for its teeth and claws as well.
1.44 Ash of a Brush-Tip 筆頭灰
오래ᄡᅳᆫ붇ᄉᆞ로니 오래 쓴 붓 사른 것 the burnt ash of a long-used writing brush
**뜻풀이 꼴**이고 낱말마다 풀린다 — `오래` 는 그대로, `ᄡᅳᆫ` 은 `쓴` (쓰다의 매김꼴, ᄡ>ㅆ), `붇` 은 `붓`(筆, `붇`>`붓`), `ᄉᆞ로니` 는 `사른 것` (ᄉᆞᆯ다 = 사르다, 태우다). 곧 「오래 쓴 붓을 사른 것」이고 한자 머리말 `筆頭灰`(붓끝 재)를 그대로 풀어 적은 것이다.
향명이 이 절이 **물건**임을 밝힌다 — 짐승이 아니라 짐승 털로 맨 붓이다.
譯 1.44.1 Source원문
性微寒. 主小便難不通及隂腫莖痿.
Translation영역
Its nature is slightly cold. It governs difficulty and blockage in passing urine, and swelling of the genitals with flaccidity of the penis.
Clinical note임상 주석
**小便難不通 — difficulty passing urine, and then inability — is the most urgent single indication in my portion, and it needs saying without hedging.**
**Acute urinary retention is an emergency.** The bladder distends, becomes exquisitely painful, and if the obstruction is not relieved the back-pressure causes obstructive acute kidney injury; a chronically retaining bladder can hold litres and present instead with overflow incontinence and a silently rising creatinine. **The treatment is catheterization**, which relieves it immediately, and then the cause is found: benign prostatic hyperplasia, which is much the commonest in older men; prostate cancer; urethral stricture; a stone or clot; constipation; a neurological cause; and **drugs** — anticholinergics, opioids, alpha agonists in decongestants, tricyclics — which is the reversible cause most often overlooked. After decompression of a large-volume retention, post-obstructive diuresis and electrolyte shifts need watching.
**And one presentation must not be missed inside this one: urinary retention with back pain, saddle anaesthesia, leg weakness or faecal incontinence is cauda equina syndrome, which is a surgical emergency needing MRI and decompression within hours to preserve continence and walking.** There is nothing a drug of this kind can do, and the harm of the entry is the delay it invites.
隂腫 and 莖痿 — scrotal swelling and penile flaccidity. **Painless scrotal swelling needs ultrasound**, for hydrocele, epididymal cyst, inguinal hernia and **testicular tumour**, which is the commonest solid cancer in young men, is usually a painless firm lump, and is highly curable when treated early — so any testicular lump is imaged, not observed. **Acutely painful scrotal swelling is torsion** until proven otherwise (1.42). Erectile dysfunction is at 1.32, where the cardiovascular significance of it is set out.
譯 1.44.2 Source원문
取年久使乏者, 燒灰用. 《本草》
Translation영역
Take one that has been used for years until it is worn out, burn it to ash, and use it.
Clinical note임상 주석
**The second of the three objects at the end of this chapter, and the reason it is in the beast chapter is the material: a Korean writing brush was made of animal hair.** 황모, yellow hair, is weasel tail — the animal of the section immediately before this one — and badger, goat, rabbit and horse hair were the other standard materials. So the drug is animal hair, carbonized, and the chapter's placement is consistent.
年久使乏者 — one used for years until worn out — is the same requirement as the worn-through drum skin at 1.41 and the long-used quality demanded there: **the virtue is in the wear.** An object that has done a great deal of its work is held to have accumulated the power of that work, and burning it releases it. A brush that has written for years, given for the blocked passage; a drum that has been struck for years, given to make a patient speak. It is a coherent idea and it is not pharmacology.
The ash itself is carbonized keratin — carbon, with the sulphur and nitrogen of the protein, and whatever was in the ink and the sizing. It has no activity on the urinary tract.
1.45 Flesh of a Lightning-Struck Beast 震肉
벼락마자주근즘승의고기 벼락 맞아 죽은 짐승의 고기 the flesh of a beast killed by a lightning strike
**뜻풀이 꼴**이고 낱말마다 다 풀린다 — `벼락` 그대로, `마자` 는 `맞아`, `주근` 은 `죽은`, `즘승` 은 `짐승`(즘승>짐승), `의` 그대로, `고기` 그대로. 한자 머리말 `震肉`(震 = 벼락)을 온전히 풀어 적은 것이고, 본문의 `此畜物爲天雷所霹靂者也` 와 글자째 맞는다.
문의 **마지막 향명**이고, 1.41ㆍ1.44 와 함께 뜻풀이 꼴 셋이 문 끝에 몰려 있다.
譯 1.45.1 Source원문
主小兒夜驚, 大人因驚失心, 作脯食之. 此畜物爲天雷所霹靂者也. 《本草》
Translation영역
It governs night terrors in small children and the loss of mind from fright in adults; make it into dried meat and eat it. This is a domestic animal that has been struck by the thunder of heaven.
Clinical note임상 주석
**震肉 is spoiled meat, and the entry has to be read as such.**
What it is: a domestic animal killed by lightning in the open. That means an animal that died unobserved, was not bled or dressed, and lay in the field through a storm and whatever time passed before it was found — then was dried into 脯, jerky, and eaten.
**The specific dangers are not hypothetical.** An animal found dead in a field is **the classic anthrax exposure**. Bacillus anthracis kills grazing livestock suddenly and without warning signs, which is exactly what a lightning strike is assumed to be; butchering or eating such a carcass causes cutaneous anthrax from skin contact and gastrointestinal anthrax from the meat, the latter with a high case fatality, and the spores then contaminate the ground for decades. **This is why the standing veterinary rule everywhere is that livestock found dead of unknown cause are not opened** — the carcass is reported and disposed of, because opening it is what releases and spreads the spores. Korea has had sporadic human anthrax from consumption of meat from animals that died unexpectedly.
Beyond anthrax: **clostridial disease**, including Clostridium perfringens and **botulism** in meat that has been dried without adequate salt, acid or temperature control; Salmonella; and the ordinary putrefaction of unbled muscle, in which the gut flora spread through the carcass within hours. Lightning-struck meat is condemned material by any food-safety standard.
Clinically, the two indications are worth separating. **小兒夜驚, night terrors**, are a parasomnia of early childhood — the child screams, sits up, appears terrified and inconsolable, is not actually awake, and has no memory of it afterwards — and they are benign, arise from deep non-REM sleep in the first part of the night, resolve with age, and need nothing but a safe bedroom, regular adequate sleep and the reassurance of the parents, who are far more distressed than the child. They are distinguished from nightmares, which happen later in the night, wake the child fully and are remembered, and from nocturnal seizures, which are stereotyped and repetitive and need an EEG. **大人因驚失心, an adult losing the mind from fright**, covers acute stress reaction, the dissociative states, and post-traumatic stress disorder, which are treated with trauma-focused psychological therapy; and it covers the organic causes of acute behavioural change set out at 1.27.2, where the autoimmune encephalitis that is mistaken for psychosis is the one to remember.
譯 1.45.2 Source원문
古人云, 肉雖多, 不使勝食氣. 盖人食以穀氣爲主, 一或過焉, 適足以傷人, 非養生之道也. 《食物》
Translation영역
The ancients said: though there be much meat, do not let it overcome the grain qi. For a person's eating is founded on the qi of grain, and to go to excess in any one thing is enough to injure, and is not the way of nourishing life.
Clinical note임상 주석
**The chapter does not end on the drug. It ends on this, and it is the best thing in the section.**
肉雖多不使勝食氣 is from the Analects — the passage on Confucius's eating — and it has been carried into a materia medica and placed at the very end of a chapter of two hundred and thirty-six animal drugs, where it functions as a caution against the whole of what has gone before. Meat is not to outweigh the grain; eating is founded on grain; excess in any single thing injures; that is not the way of nourishing life. After forty-five sections of flesh, fat, bone, gall and dung, the chapter closes by saying that meat should be the smaller part of a diet.
**It is also, as dietary advice, broadly right, and it is the one place in my portion where the text can be carried forward without correction.** The modern evidence converges on much the same conclusion from a quite different direction: diets in which the staple is whole grains, legumes, vegetables and fruit with modest amounts of meat are associated with lower cardiovascular mortality and lower colorectal cancer incidence, and processed and red meat intake is associated with increased risk of colorectal cancer — processed meat classified as carcinogenic to humans and red meat as probably carcinogenic by the IARC. The Korean traditional pattern of a grain staple with meat as a side dish is close to what is now recommended, and 一或過焉適足以傷人 — excess in any one thing is enough to injure — is the principle that modern dietary guidance states as balance and moderation.
The editorial placement is the significant act, as it was at 天靈蓋 in the human chapter where the text condemning the drug is printed beneath it. A compiler who wanted the chapter used would not have ended it here.
譯 1.45.3 Source원문
食諸肉過度, 還飮肉汁卽消. 食腦立消.
Translation영역
When any meat has been eaten to excess, drink the broth of that meat again and it is dissolved. Eating the brain dissolves it at once.
Clinical note임상 주석
A household remedy for having overeaten meat, and the reasoning is the chapter's familiar sympathy: the thing that undoes the surfeit is the same animal — its broth, or its brain.
**食腦立消 — eating the brain dissolves it at once — is wrong**, and it is worth saying why rather than only that. Brain tissue is largely lipid and cholesterol with no digestive enzyme activity; it is among the richest sources of dietary cholesterol there is, and eating it does not disperse a meal. Nor is it harmless: nervous tissue is the material of concern for the transmissible spongiform encephalopathies, which is the reason specified risk material including brain and spinal cord is excluded from the human food chain in cattle and sheep, and traditional dishes based on brain have been implicated in prion transmission elsewhere.
The broth is a different matter and is not a bad instinct — a hot, thin, salty liquid after a heavy meal relieves the discomfort of it, and the practice described in the next passage is a real Korean one.
譯 1.45.4 Source원문
萬物腦能消身, 所以食膾飡魚頭羹也. 《本草》
Translation영역
The brain of any creature is able to dissolve its own body, and this is why, when one eats raw fish, one takes fish-head soup with it.
Clinical note임상 주석
**The last passage of the chapter, and it describes a practice that is still followed: raw fish eaten with a soup made from the heads.** 膾 is 회, the raw fish, and 魚頭羹 is the head soup — the 매운탕 or 지리 that comes after a plate of 회 in a Korean restaurant is the direct descendant of it, and the reason given here is that the brain of a creature dissolves its own flesh.
The reason is wrong and the practice is sound, for reasons the text could not have had. A hot soup after cold raw fish is easier on digestion, and using the heads and frames for stock is efficient use of the fish.
**The hazards of the raw fish itself belong to the next chapter, 魚部, which begins immediately after this line — and the transcription's volume boundary falls here, with Volume 1 ending and Volume 2 opening on the fish.** For the record, since this passage recommends 膾: raw marine fish carries **Anisakis**, whose larvae cause acute gastric or intestinal penetration with severe pain hours after a meal and which also causes allergic reactions, prevented by freezing to the required time and temperature; **Vibrio parahaemolyticus** and, in those with liver disease or haemochromatosis, the often-fatal **Vibrio vulnificus**, which is a real seasonal risk on the Korean coast in warm months; and in freshwater fish the liver fluke **Clonorchis sinensis**, long endemic in the Korean river basins where raw freshwater fish is eaten, which colonizes the bile ducts for decades and is a recognized cause of **cholangiocarcinoma** — Korea has run control programmes against it for exactly that reason, and praziquantel treats the infection though it does not undo the cancer risk already accrued.
About this translation 凡例
Base text: Donguibogam (東醫寶鑑, 1613 first edition), Decoctions and Medicinals, Volume 1, Beasts 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; where a gloss resolves as a word but does not fix a species, the note says so instead of supplying a name. Terminology follows Wiseman & Feng, A Practical Dictionary of Chinese Medicine. Many entries name animals whose trade is a criminal offence under CITES and Korean law; the translation prints what the book says, the clinical notes state the legal position, and where a lawful substitute exists they name it. Several entries direct that a live animal be cut open or mutilated; the notes say plainly that this is ineffective, cruel and unlawful. Translation and clinical notes are original to this site. — Eui Young (Justin) Chung, L.Ac., Dipl. O.M.