Angelica Powder to Repair Injury

A 局方 powder with 川芎 as the largest share, 當歸 and the three warm acrids — 桂心, 川椒, 甘草 — behind it, and blast-fried 附子 with 澤蘭 in the smallest. Two don in warm wine. The indication is drawn from life: 疼痛呌號, pain that makes the patient cry out, which is what an unsplinted fracture does when it is moved. The promise is where the formula overreaches. 三日筋骨相連, sinew and bone knit in three days, is not something any drug does. Fracture healing runs on a timetable of weeks — haematoma and inflammation first, soft callus at two to three weeks, bony callus over the following month or two — and it is set by the blood supply and by how still the fragments are held, not by what is swallowed. What the powder can plausibly deliver is the first half of the claim, 不復大痛: a warm analgesic draught that makes the first days tolerable. That is worth something, but it is also the thing that lets a patient move a limb that should be immobilised. **Contains aconite, which is toxic. This must not be prepared.** — Eui Young (Justin) Chung, L.Ac., Dipl. O.M.