Coptis Drink

Ginseng in front and coptis behind — a supplementing drug and a cold bitter one in nearly equal weight, with bamboo leaf and a slice of ginger. The pairing is deliberate: the chapter reads the night crying of the first half of the night as heart heat in a child who is nonetheless weak, so the heat is drained without emptying the middle. It is the only one of the six night-crying formulas that is a decoction rather than a mineral powder, and apart from Yuksin-san the only one with no toxic ingredient. The honest reading is that two don of coptis is a great deal of bitterness to pour into a newborn and will be refused, vomited, or will loosen the stools — which in a small infant is itself a risk — but nothing in it is poisonous. Crying at night in an otherwise well, growing baby is infantile colic: it begins in the first weeks, peaks at about six weeks, is worst in the evening, and resolves by three or four months whatever is done. Nothing treats it reliably, and that is why this section holds six remedies rather than one. — Eui Young (Justin) Chung, L.Ac., Dipl. O.M.