Sneeze Out the Fright Powder

An errhine — a sneezing powder, in the same family as the Wind chapter's 通關散 and 通頂散, and used here on the oldest theory in the book about rousing the unconscious: make them sneeze and the gate opens. Raw pinellia and soap-pod are both sharp nasal irritants and the sneeze is entirely real. 卽醒 — the child wakes at once — is the part that is not. **Contains raw pinellia, which is toxic unprocessed and is specified raw here, and soap-pod, blown into the nose of an unconscious child with no dose by weight stated. This must not be prepared.** Blowing powder into the airway of an obtunded child can cause laryngospasm and aspiration, and both drugs are mucosal irritants. The indication is where the clinical reading matters. A child who is drowsy and unresponsive straight after a convulsion is in the normal post-ictal state; it resolves over minutes to an hour, needs nothing, and no sneeze shortens it. A child who stays unresponsive beyond that, or who was unresponsive before the convulsion, is a different and urgent problem — meningitis, encephalitis, hypoglycaemia, poisoning or head injury — and the response to it is airway, glucose and a cause, not an errhine. See Igyeong-hwan on the febrile seizure itself. — Eui Young (Justin) Chung, L.Ac., Dipl. O.M.