Schisandra Decoction for Abscess

Saengmaek-san — schisandra, ginseng and liriope — with astragalus raw and licorice added, which is to say the standard fluid-engendering trio pushed toward the qi side. The leaf gives its own reasoning in five characters, 此腎水竭也: the kidney water has run dry. That is the chapter reading a dry mouth in a suppurating patient as depletion rather than as heat, and it chooses accordingly — nothing here is cold. The dosing instruction is the useful part. 日服三五次, three or five times a day, is not how this chapter prescribes anything else; packets are normally taken once or twice. Sipped through the day is how one actually treats a dry mouth, and the leaf knows it. Read it beside Insamhwanggi-tang a few leaves above, which answers the same post-suppurative stage from the appetite side, and beside Hwanggiyugil-tang and Geumeunhwa-san, which answer the vexing thirst. The four together are the chapter's whole account of fluid loss in abscess, and the honest modern reading of all of them is that a febrile patient discharging pus is dehydrated and needs fluid — which is true, and is why the sipping instruction has aged better than the five drugs. — Eui Young (Justin) Chung, L.Ac., Dipl. O.M.