Blood-Cooling Toxin-Resolving Pill

A cold, draining pill: 4 nyang of sophora root and 2 nyang of coptis as the bulk, forsythia and burdock seed to disperse the toxin, rhubarb to purge it downward, gypsum for the heat, dried rehmannia to cool the blood, and saposhnikovia and angelica root to carry the action to the surface. Nothing in it is a mineral poison, and that is deliberate — the chapter says so. 下疳 is the chancre, and 陰蝕瘡, the eroding genital sore, is where the chapter puts it. The section is unambiguous about where it leads: 遂成下疳瘡, 久不愈則必成楊梅瘡 — it becomes the chancre sore, and if it does not heal it will certainly become 楊梅瘡, which is syphilis. The 醫鑑 passage that prescribes this pill goes further and tells the physician to give 升麻葛根湯 first to bring the sore out and then this, 卽愈不必服輕粉毒藥 — it heals, and there is no need to take the mercury poison drugs. That is a direct refusal of the mercury therapy the chapter uses on syphilis a few sections earlier, and it is the most clear-headed sentence in the whole 諸瘡門. The modern reading is plain. A painless genital ulcer is primary syphilis until proved otherwise, it must be tested for serologically and with testing for HIV and other sexually transmitted infections, it is cured by benzathine penicillin, and partners must be traced and treated. No cooling pill resolves it; the ulcer heals on its own while the infection disseminates, which is exactly the course the chapter describes and misreads as failure to heal. — Eui Young (Justin) Chung, L.Ac., Dipl. O.M.