Secure the True Qi Decoction

The four gentlemen with astragalus and stir-fried peony over them, costus root and tangerine peel to move, and chebula rind with nutmeg to bind — ten drugs at 3 fun each, and fifty grains of glutinous rice cooked in the same water. The indication is the swelling stage of the pox, when a diarrhoea was read as the interior qi escaping and the sores sinking in consequence. The rice is the part worth reading. The leaf stops to say that glutinous rice is the best thing there is for stopping a diarrhoea and nourishing stomach qi, and that remark has something in it: a thin, warm, starchy rice water does deliver water and a little glucose to a child who will take nothing else, and rice water was the folk antecedent of oral rehydration solution in several traditions. What it has no trace of is salt, and sodium is the component that makes the solution work — glucose is in it to carry sodium across the gut wall, not for its own sake. Fifty grains of rice in one cup of decoction is in any case closer to a flavouring than to a gruel. The fluid statement is on the 異功散 leaf of this section and in full on the 玉露散 leaf of 1.43 吐瀉; this formula does not replace fluid either. **Contains nutmeg and chebula, both astringent antidiarrhoeals, which are contraindicated in young children for the reasons set out on the 肉豆蔲丸 leaf of this section. The patient is an infant and the leaf gives no dose scaled to age or weight.** — Eui Young (Justin) Chung, L.Ac., Dipl. O.M.