Formulas · Text · Donguibogam 東醫寶鑑

Fishes

Eobu

한글 어부 · Pinyin Yu Bu

Thirty fishes and twenty-three of their parts — and the Korean name beside each is what tells you which fish it is

魚部

Food and medicine at once, and the chapter where the sixteenth-century Korean names do the decisive work. The Chinese materia medica and the Korean fishmonger did not always mean the same animal by the same character, and this chapter settles it by printing the vernacular name beside the headword: carp, crucian carp, cuttlefish, snakehead, eel, shark, mandarin fish, croaker, mullet, sea perch, catfish, swamp eel, flatfish, ray, pufferfish. Two of those sit next to each other and have been confused elsewhere in this very book — the snakehead and the swamp eel — and it is the Korean gloss, not the character, that tells them apart. Beneath the headwords hang the parts, most of them under the carp: gall, flesh, brain, teeth, eyes, bone, gut, scales and blood, each with its own nature and indications, and the ear-stone from the croaker's skull. Nothing in the chapter is marked as imported, which is what one would expect of a peninsula. The clinical notes carry what a modern reader needs that the book could not know: raw fish gall is nephrotoxic and carp bile poisoning is a described syndrome, raw freshwater fish carries liver fluke, and the pufferfish holds a toxin for which there is no antidote.

1.1 Carp Gall 鯉魚膽

Medicinal entry 니어ᄡᅳᆯ게 잉어 쓸개 carp's gall

1.1.1

Source원문

性寒, 味苦, 無毒. 主靑盲明目, 目熱赤痛, 療耳聾.

Translation영역

Its nature is cold, its flavour bitter, and it is without toxicity. It governs blue blindness and brightens the eyes, treats heat in the eyes with redness and pain, and treats deafness.

Clinical note임상 주석

The chapter opens not on the carp but on the carp's gallbladder, and that is how the Bogam arranges the whole 魚部: the headword is whichever part of the animal the materia medica valued most, and the rest of the animal hangs beneath it as leaves. Here the flesh, brain, teeth, eyes, bone, gut, scale-skin and blood are all subordinate to the gall. 靑盲, blue blindness, is loss of sight with the eye outwardly intact, which covers what would now be optic atrophy, glaucoma and retinal disease. Carp gall is in the materia medica of this site as 鯉魚膽 and the Bogam does use it, in five formulas, always in company with other animal galls — 黑狗膽, 熊膽, 靑羊膽, 雞膽, 烏雞膽 — and always for the eyes. **This is the one entry in the chapter where the modern warning has to come first, because fish bile is the one item here that has killed people in living memory.** Raw gallbladder of cyprinid fish — carp, grass carp, silver carp — taken as a folk remedy for failing eyesight, rheumatism or impotence causes an acute syndrome of vomiting and diarrhoea within hours, followed by acute kidney injury with oliguria or anuria and acute hepatitis, and it can require dialysis; deaths are reported. Case series come from China, Korea, Japan, Vietnam and India. The toxin is understood to be a bile alcohol sulfate, 5α-cyprinol sulfate, which is not destroyed by cooking, drying or alcohol. The dose in the reports is small — one or a few gallbladders. I state this as the published picture rather than as a settled mechanism, but the clinical association is not in doubt and the practical conclusion is simple: **fish gallbladder must not be swallowed, by anyone, in any preparation.** A patient who says they have taken one needs renal function checked, not reassurance.

Boncho 本草

1.1.2

Source원문

㸃眼, 主赤腫瞖痛, 去障瞖. 《本草》

Translation영역

Instilled in the eye, it governs redness, swelling, screens and pain, and removes obstructing screens.

Clinical note임상 주석

瞖 is the screen or film over the eye, so 障瞖 covers corneal opacity, pterygium and cataract. 㸃眼, dropping it into the eye, keeps the material out of the gut and therefore away from the toxicity described above — but it introduces its own hazard. Unsterile animal fluid instilled on an inflamed or ulcerated cornea is a route to bacterial and fungal keratitis, and a cornea that already carries an opacity is a cornea that has already been injured. Bile salts are also directly irritant to the ocular surface. **Not to be used.** Corneal opacity, pterygium and cataract are surgical problems, and acute red eye with pain has to be distinguished from keratitis, uveitis and angle-closure glaucoma before anything is put into the eye at all.

Boncho 本草

1.1.1 Carp Flesh 肉

Medicinal entry listed under Carp Gall鯉魚膽

1.1.1.1

Source원문

性寒一云平, 味甘, 無毒一云有毒. 主黄疸, 止消渴, 療水腫脚滿, 下氣, 破冷氣痃癖, 又治胎動及姙婦身腫, 能安胎.

Translation영역

Its nature is cold one says balanced, its flavour sweet, and it is without toxicity one says it has toxicity. It governs yellow jaundice, checks dispersion-thirst, treats water swelling with fullness of the legs, precipitates qi, breaks up string-like and aggregation lumps of cold qi, and also treats stirring of the fetus and swelling of the body in a pregnant woman, being able to quiet the fetus.

Clinical note임상 주석

This leaf, not the headword above it, is the carp of the formulary. 鯉魚 is used whole in the Bogam — 先取鯉魚一箇, 修事如食法, take one carp and prepare it as for eating — and the indication that keeps it there is 水腫, water swelling, in pregnancy and in general; 鯉魚湯 of the gynaecology chapter is the formula built on it. A high-protein food given to a hypoproteinaemic, oedematous patient is a rational intervention whether or not the reasoning behind it was, and that is the most that can be said for the mechanism. 痃癖 are palpable abdominal lumps, string-like alongside the navel and plate-like under the ribs. Two cautions. **Carp is a freshwater fish and must not be eaten raw.** In Korea, Japan and China the cyprinids are the second intermediate host of the liver fluke Clonorchis sinensis, which lodges in the bile ducts, causes cholangitis and is classified by the International Agency for Research on Cancer as carcinogenic to humans for cholangiocarcinoma; raw freshwater fish is the single most important route. Thorough cooking removes the risk entirely, and the passage does describe cooking. **Second, the book itself forbids this food in one specific combination.** 服藥食忌 in the Preface on Decoctions, at 1.22 of that section, reads 有天門冬, 勿食鯉魚 — while taking asparagus root do not eat carp — and adds 服天門冬誤食鯉魚中毒, 浮萍解之, that duckweed resolves the resulting toxicity. The incompatibility has no pharmacological basis I can point to, but it is the book's own rule and belongs with this entry.

Boncho 本草

1.1.1.2

Source원문

鯉魚最爲魚之主, 形旣可愛, 又能神變. 脊中鱗從頭數至尾皆三十六鱗, 亦其成數也.

Translation영역

The carp is the foremost of fishes. Its form is lovely, and it can also change in uncanny ways. The scales down the middle of its back, counted from head to tail, are thirty-six in all, and this too is its completed number.

Clinical note임상 주석

神變, uncanny change, is the carp of the legend that leaps the falls at Longmen and becomes a dragon. 三十六 is a numerological claim rather than a count: the lateral-line scale number of Cyprinus carpio is in the thirties, so the figure is not absurd, but 成數, the completed number, is what the passage is really asserting — thirty-six as six sixes, a number of completion. The sentence is included here because it is the reason the carp heads the chapter, and the reason is aesthetic and cosmological rather than therapeutic.

Boncho 本草

1.1.1.3

Source원문

生江湖池澤中, 處處有之. 今人食品中以爲上味.

Translation영역

It lives in rivers, lakes, ponds and marshes, and is found everywhere. Among the foods of people today it is held to be of the first savour.

Boncho 本草

1.1.1.4

Source원문

修事法, 可去脊上兩筋及黑血, 毒故也. 《本草》

Translation영역

As to the method of preparation, the two sinews along the back and the black blood may be removed, because they are toxic.

Clinical note임상 주석

This is a real preparation instruction and not a doctrinal one. The 兩筋 along the spine and the 黑血 are the dark lateral muscle and the blood line that runs with the kidney tissue against the backbone — the parts of a freshwater fish that spoil first, carry the strongest off-flavours, and in which fat-soluble contaminants concentrate. Trimming them is what a careful cook still does. The chapter will make the same kind of statement about the pufferfish at 1.16, where removing the wrong organ is fatal rather than merely unpleasant; it is worth noticing that the book uses one vocabulary, 毒, for both.

Boncho 本草

1.1.2 Carp Brain 腦髓

listed under Carp Gall鯉魚膽

1.1.2.1

Source원문

主暴聾, 煮粥食之. 《本草》

Translation영역

It governs sudden deafness; boil it into a gruel and eat it.

Clinical note임상 주석

暴聾, sudden deafness, is in modern terms sudden sensorineural hearing loss, and it is one of the few conditions in this chapter that is a genuine emergency: treatment with corticosteroids is time-dependent and the window is measured in days to a fortnight. A patient who loses hearing in one ear overnight needs audiometry and treatment now. **Not used.** Fish brain is also the tissue in which any neurotoxin present in a fish concentrates, and brain and spinal tissue of any animal is the wrong tissue to eat on general principle.

Boncho 本草

1.1.3 Carp Teeth 齒

listed under Carp Gall鯉魚膽

1.1.3.1

Source원문

主石淋, 燒灰酒下. 《本草》

Translation영역

It governs stone strangury; burn it to ash and send it down with wine.

Clinical note임상 주석

石淋 is urinary stone with painful, obstructed voiding. The reasoning is the resemblance of a hard mineral body in the animal to a hard mineral body in the patient, and the same reasoning will produce the croaker's ear-stone at 1.9.1 and the carp's teeth here. Calcined tooth is calcium phosphate and does nothing to a calculus. Urinary stones are managed by analgesia, hydration, imaging and, where needed, lithotripsy or ureteroscopy; an obstructed, infected kidney is a surgical emergency.

Boncho 本草

1.1.4 Carp Eyes 目

listed under Carp Gall鯉魚膽

1.1.4.1

Source원문

燒灰付瘡. 《本草》

Translation영역

Burnt to ash, it is applied to sores.

Boncho 本草

1.1.4.2

Source원문

眼睛睛主剌在肉中不出, 及諸瘡中風水毒腫痛, 燒灰納瘡中卽愈. 諸魚目並好. 《入門》

Translation영역

The eyeball governs a splinter lodged in the flesh that will not come out, and sores of every kind that have taken wind and water toxin with swelling and pain: burn it to ash, put it into the sore, and it heals at once. The eyes of all fishes are equally good.

Clinical note임상 주석

The transcription prints 睛 twice, 眼睛睛主剌在肉中不出, and carries no collation line against it. Either it is a dittography, or the sentence is to be read as 眼睛, 睛主… with the second character opening the clause. I print the transcription as it stands and do not choose between the two readings. 諸瘡中風水毒 is a sore that has been exposed to wind and water and become inflamed. Ash of fish eye put into an open wound is an inoculation, and the specific hazard named by 剌在肉中不出 — a retained splinter — is a puncture wound, which is the classic setting for tetanus and for deep soft-tissue infection. A retained foreign body is removed under direct vision and the wound irrigated; tetanus immunisation status is checked. 諸魚目並好, the eyes of all fishes are equally good, is the passage conceding that the material is not specific, which is usually the sign of a drug chosen for its form rather than its substance.

Immun 入門

1.1.5 Carp Bone 骨

listed under Carp Gall鯉魚膽

1.1.5.1

Source원문

主女子帶下赤白, 及隂蝕. 《本草》

Translation영역

It governs red and white vaginal discharge in a woman, and erosion of the genitals.

Clinical note임상 주석

隂蝕 is ulceration and erosion of the vulva and vagina. Red and white discharge with genital ulceration is a presentation that has to be worked up rather than treated empirically: it covers bacterial vaginosis and trichomoniasis, herpes simplex, syphilis, lymphogranuloma venereum and Behçet disease, and — in a woman past middle age with bloodstained discharge — cervical and vulval carcinoma. 隂 is the transcription's form of 陰.

Boncho 本草

1.1.6 Carp Intestine 腸

listed under Carp Gall鯉魚膽

1.1.6.1

Source원문

主小兒肌瘡及腹中瘡. 《本草》

Translation영역

It governs sores of the flesh in a small child, and sores within the abdomen.

Clinical note임상 주석

腹中瘡, sores within the abdomen, is an internal ulceration inferred from symptoms rather than seen. Fish gut is the part of a fish that carries its enteric flora and, in a freshwater cyprinid, its parasite load; applying or feeding it to a child with broken skin is the least defensible use in this group of leaves. The collation line on this page may belong either here or at 1.2.2 — see the textual note there.

Boncho 本草

1.1.7 Carp Scale-skin 鱗皮

Medicinal entry listed under Carp Gall鯉魚膽

1.1.7.1

Source원문

破産後滯血及癮疹, 燒灰酒服. 《本草》

Translation영역

It breaks up stagnant blood after childbirth, and hidden papules: burn it to ash and take it in wine.

Clinical note임상 주석

癮疹 is the weal-and-papule eruption of urticaria. The materia medica of this site carries this item as 鯉魚鱗, carp scales, and the indication here matches that entry exactly, so the link is made to it; the headword the Bogam gives is 鱗皮, scale-skin, that is the scaled hide rather than the scales alone, and 鯉魚鱗皮 should be added to the alias table against 鯉魚鱗 rather than a second record being created. Carp scale is collagen and calcium — the scales are now a commercial source of marine collagen and gelatin — and charring it yields nothing that acts on postpartum bleeding or on urticaria. Postpartum haemorrhage is an obstetric emergency; urticaria is treated with antihistamines and by finding the trigger.

Boncho 本草

1.1.8 Carp Blood 血

listed under Carp Gall鯉魚膽

1.1.8.1

Source원문

主小兒丹腫及瘡, 塗之卽差. 《本草》

Translation영역

It governs cinnabar swelling and sores in a small child; smear it on and they are cured at once.

Clinical note임상 주석

丹腫 and 丹毒 are the spreading scarlet swelling of erysipelas, and in a child that is a streptococcal infection of the dermis that can progress to necrotising fasciitis and sepsis. **This passage must not be followed.** Fresh fish blood applied to inflamed, broken skin introduces aquatic bacteria — Aeromonas, Vibrio vulnificus, Streptococcus iniae, Mycobacterium marinum — into exactly the tissue plane that is already infected; fish handling is a recognised route for all four in people with cuts. Erysipelas in a child needs prompt antibiotic treatment. The water from a rotted placenta at 1.10.1 of the 人部 was given for the same indication, and the objection is the same one.

Boncho 本草

1.2 Crucian Carp 鯽魚

Medicinal entry 붕어 붕어 crucian carp

1.2.1

Source원문

性温一云平, 味甘, 無毒. 平胃氣, 益五藏, 調中下氣, 止下痢. 合蓴作羹, 主胃弱不下食; 作膾, 主久赤白痢.

Translation영역

Its nature is warm one says balanced, its flavour sweet, and it is without toxicity. It calms stomach qi, boosts the five viscera, regulates the centre and precipitates qi, and checks diarrhoea with dysentery. Made into a soup with water-shield it governs a weak stomach that will not take food; made into a raw slice it governs long-standing red and white dysentery.

Clinical note임상 주석

The vernacular gloss The vernacular gloss bungeo is unchanged in modern Korean and settles the identification: this is the crucian carp, Carassius auratus in the broad sense, the commonest small cyprinid of Korean ponds and ditches. The materia medica of this site carries it as 鯽魚 and also, separately, as 鮒魚 with the same species name; the next passage says plainly that the two characters name one fish, so the two records should be reconciled rather than left as they stand. 作膾, made into a raw slice, is the instruction to flag. Raw crucian carp is the classic vehicle for Clonorchis sinensis in Korea — the cyprinids of the inland waters are its second intermediate host, and the endemic foci along the Nakdong, Yeongsan and Geum rivers were built on exactly this dish. The indication given, chronic bloody and mucoid dysentery, is also a presentation in which a stool examination is wanted. Cooked, this is an unremarkable and nourishing food; raw, it is the single most consequential food-safety item in the chapter after the pufferfish. 蓴 is water-shield, Brasenia schreberi.

Boncho 本草

1.2.2

Source원문

一名鮒魚. 諸魚中最可食, 色黑而體促, 肚大而脊隆, 池澤皆有之.

Translation영역

One name for it is 鮒魚. Of all the fishes it is the most fit to eat; its colour is dark and its body compact, its belly large and its back humped, and it is found in every pond and marsh.

Boncho 本草

1.2.3

Source원문

一種背高腹狹小者, 名䲙魚, 力差劣. 《本草》

Translation영역

There is one kind with a high back and a narrow, small belly, called 䲙魚, whose power is somewhat inferior.

Clinical note임상 주석

I cannot identify 䲙魚. The character is rare, the Bogam gives it no gloss and no pronunciation, and the description — high-backed and narrow-bellied — fits several small Korean cyprinids, among them the bitterlings and the Acheilognathus and Hemiculter species. The Bencao Gangmu's parallel passage names the inferior kind differently again. I record the uncertainty rather than assign a species.

Boncho 本草

1.2.4

Source원문

諸魚皆屬火, 惟鯽魚屬土, 故能入陽明而有調胃實腸之功. 又云, 魚在水中無一息之停, 故能動火. 《入門》

Translation영역

All fishes belong to fire, and only the crucian carp belongs to earth; therefore it is able to enter the yang brightness and has the merit of regulating the stomach and firming the bowel. It is also said that a fish in the water does not rest for a single breath, and therefore it can stir fire.

Clinical note임상 주석

This is the only passage in the 魚部 that gives the chapter a theory, and it is worth reading closely because it is doing two incompatible things at once. The first sentence assigns the crucian carp to earth against the fire of all other fishes, which is how a drug gets into the yang brightness, that is to say the stomach and large intestine, and how a food becomes a stomach-regulating medicine rather than a heating one. The second sentence then explains why fish as a class are heating: a fish never stops moving, and ceaseless movement is fire. The argument is from behaviour to phase, and it is the kind of reasoning that cannot be checked; its interest is that it tells us why the compilers thought a fish could be a drug at all, which the rest of the chapter simply assumes.

Immun 入門

1.2.1 Crucian Carp Head 頭

listed under Crucian Carp鯽魚

1.2.1.1

Source원문

性温. 主小兒頭瘡ㆍ口瘡ㆍ重舌ㆍ目瞖, 燒灰用. 《本草》

Translation영역

Its nature is warm. It governs sores on the head, sores in the mouth, double tongue and screens on the eye in a small child; burn it to ash and use it.

Clinical note임상 주석

重舌, double tongue, is swelling under the tongue read as a second tongue growing beneath the first — in modern terms a sublingual swelling, which in an infant may be a mucocele, a ranula, a lingual thyroglossal cyst or the floor-of-mouth swelling of Ludwig angina; the last is airway-threatening. 頭瘡 and 口瘡 in a child are impetigo and stomatitis. None of these is treated by charred fish head, and the first thing a swelling under an infant's tongue needs is an assessment of the airway and of feeding.

Boncho 本草

1.2.2 Crucian Carp Gall 膽

listed under Crucian Carp鯽魚

1.2.2.1

Source원문

主小兒腦瘡, 取汁滴入鼻中. 《本草》

Translation영역

It governs brain sores in a small child; take the juice and drip it into the nose.

Clinical note임상 주석

腦疳, on the first printing's reading, is one of the five gan disorders of children, a chronic wasting with a foul nasal discharge, head sores and itching of the nose; it was understood as something eating at the head from within, and the nasal route follows from that. What such a child most often had was chronic suppurative rhinosinusitis, adenoid disease or a nasal foreign body, often on a background of malnutrition. **Fish gall must not be instilled into the nose of a child, and this is the entry where the general warning given at 1.1 becomes sharpest.** Bile is a detergent and strips the nasal mucosa; the nose drains to the pharynx, so an instilled dose is also a swallowed dose, and the bile alcohol sulfate of cyprinid gall is nephrotoxic in gram quantities in an adult. A small child has neither the renal reserve nor the body weight. Chronic nasal discharge in a child is examined — including for a retained foreign body, which is the diagnosis a hurried practitioner misses.

Boncho 本草

1.2.3 Crucian Carp Roe 子

listed under Crucian Carp鯽魚

1.2.3.1

Source원문

調中, 益肝氣. 凡魚生子, 皆粘着草上及土中, 經冬月至六月三伏時雨中, 便化爲魚. 《本草》

Translation영역

It regulates the centre and boosts liver qi. Whenever a fish spawns, the eggs all stick to the grasses and into the earth; they pass the winter months, and at the time of the three fu periods in the sixth month, in the rain, they turn into fish.

Clinical note임상 주석

The natural history is wrong in an instructive way. Cyprinid eggs are adhesive and are indeed laid on submerged vegetation, which the passage has right; they hatch in days, not after a winter, and the fry that appear in the summer rains are the current year's. What the passage describes is spontaneous generation from mud and rain, and it is the same reasoning that makes the snakehead at 1.4 a transformed snake. 三伏 are the three ten-day fu periods of the hottest part of summer.

Boncho 本草

1.3 Cuttlefish Bone 烏賊魚骨

Medicinal entry 오증어ᄲᅧ이긔치 cuttlefish bone, with a final element I cannot read

1.3.1

Source원문

性微温, 味醎, 無毒一云小毒. 主婦人漏血, 治耳聾及眼中熱淚, 又療血崩, 殺䖝心痛.

Translation영역

Its nature is slightly warm, its flavour salty, and it is without toxicity one says it has slight toxicity. It governs spotting of blood in a woman, treats deafness and hot tearing in the eye, and also treats flooding of blood and kills the worms of heart pain.

Clinical note임상 주석

The gloss is only partly legible to me and I have left the modern Korean field empty rather than guess. The first element, ojeungeo, is plainly the modern ojingeo, cuttlefish or squid, and the second, written with the old cluster letter, is ppyeo, bone; those two are secure and give the identification. igeuichi — migeuichi on the first printing's reading — I cannot identify: the string occurs nowhere else in the Decoctions text, and although the chi ending is the common Korean fish-name suffix, that is a guess and I do not offer it as a reading. The substance is secure whatever the gloss says. 烏賊魚骨 is the internal shell of a cuttlefish, Sepia species, and it is one of the few items in this chapter that is still an official drug: 海螵蛸, Sepiae Endoconcha, is in the Chinese pharmacopoeia and is used as it is used here, to stanch bleeding and as an antacid and astringent. Chemically it is aragonitic calcium carbonate laminated with chitin, so the antacid action is real and the astringent, drying action on a weeping surface is plausible. The haemostatic claim for internal bleeding is not supported by anything in that composition. 漏血 is intermenstrual or continuous spotting and 血崩 is sudden heavy flooding; both need a cause found, and in a woman past forty or after the menopause that means excluding endometrial carcinoma. 䖝 is the transcription's form of 蟲.

Boncho 本草

1.3.2

Source원문

形如革囊, 口在腹下, 八足聚生口傍, 只一骨厚三四分, 似小舟, 輕虗而白. 又有兩鬚如帶, 可以自纜, 故一名纜魚. 生東海, 取無時. 《本草》

Translation영역

Its form is like a leather bag; the mouth is below the belly, and eight feet grow gathered about the mouth. It has only one bone, three or four fun thick, shaped like a little boat, light and hollow and white. It also has two whiskers like ribbons with which it can moor itself, and so one name for it is the mooring fish. It lives in the Eastern Sea and may be taken at any time.

Clinical note임상 주석

The description is accurate zoology and worth saying so. A cuttlefish does have eight arms around the mouth and, in addition, two much longer retractile tentacles — the 兩鬚 of the passage, which the Bencao reads as mooring lines — and a single internal calcareous shell shaped like a small boat. 三四分 is about 7 to 12 mm at the period's measures, which is the thickness of a cuttlebone from a mature animal. The one thing the passage gets wrong is the function of the two tentacles: they are feeding tentacles, shot out to seize prey, not an anchor.

Boncho 本草

1.3.3

Source원문

骨一名海螵蛸. 凡使, 水煮一時, 煮令黄, 去皮, 細硏水飛, 日乾用. 《入門》

Translation영역

The bone has one name, 海螵蛸. Whenever it is used, boil it in water for one period, boil it until it is yellow, remove the rind, grind it fine and levigate it in water, dry it in the sun, and use it.

Clinical note임상 주석

水飛, levigation, is grinding under water and decanting off the fine suspension, and it is the standard way of reducing a hard mineral to a fine powder without heat. On a calcium carbonate it works as intended. 一時 is one of the twelve double hours, so about two hours. This is the most technically sound preparation instruction in the chapter.

Immun 入門

1.3.4

Source원문

浮于水上, 烏見以爲死, 往啄之, 乃卷取入水而食之, 故謂之烏賊. 有無骨者, 謂之柔魚. 《本草》

Translation영역

It floats on the surface of the water, and a crow, seeing it and taking it for dead, comes to peck at it; whereupon it wraps the bird up, carries it into the water and eats it — and this is why it is called the crow-robber. There is a kind without a bone, called the soft fish.

Clinical note임상 주석

The etymology is folk etymology: 烏賊 is read as crow-robber, and the story is told to justify the reading. Cuttlefish do not take birds. What the passage does get right is the last sentence. 柔魚, the soft fish, is the kind with no bone, and that is a real distinction — the squids, Loligo and Todarodes, carry a thin horny pen instead of a calcareous cuttlebone, so a squid is useless for this drug while a cuttlefish is not. Anyone sourcing 海螵蛸 is sorting on exactly the character the Bencao names here.

Boncho 本草

1.3.1 Cuttlefish Flesh 肉

Medicinal entry listed under Cuttlefish Bone烏賊骨

1.3.1.1

Source원문

性平, 味酸. 主益氣強志, 通月經. 久食益精, 令人有子. 《本草》

Translation영역

Its nature is balanced and its flavour sour. It governs the boosting of qi and the strengthening of the will, and frees the menses. Eaten long it boosts essence and makes a person able to have children.

Clinical note임상 주석

Cuttlefish flesh is in the materia medica of this site as 烏賊魚肉, so the leaf is linked to it. As a food it is lean, high-protein and rich in taurine, zinc and selenium, and a diet adequate in zinc and protein does bear on spermatogenesis — which is the nearest thing to a mechanism for 令人有子, though it is a statement about nutrition and not about this animal in particular. Infertility is investigated as a couple, with semen analysis and assessment of ovulation and tubal patency, and 令人有子 is the kind of claim that costs patients years.

Boncho 本草

1.3.2 Cuttlefish Ink 腹中墨

listed under Cuttlefish Bone烏賊骨

1.3.2.1

Source원문

主血刺心痛, 醋摩服之.

Translation영역

It governs stabbing blood pain in the heart; grind it with vinegar and take it.

Boncho 本草

1.3.2.2

Source원문

腹中血及膽正如墨, 能吸波噀墨, 以溷水自衛, 免爲人獲. 《本草》

Translation영역

The blood and the gall within its belly are exactly like ink, and it can draw in the water and spurt the ink out, muddying the water to defend itself and escape being caught by people.

Clinical note임상 주석

The behaviour is described correctly — the ink sac is expelled through the funnel with a jet of water, and the cloud works as a decoy as much as a screen. The passage calls the ink both 血 and 膽, blood and gall, which is why it ends up with a blood-moving indication: 血刺心痛 is a stabbing praecordial pain attributed to static blood. Cuttlefish ink is a melanin suspension with protein and mucopolysaccharide and is eaten routinely as a food colouring and flavouring; it is not toxic and it is not a cardiac drug. **Stabbing chest pain is the presentation in this chapter that most needs saying plainly: it may be myocardial infarction, aortic dissection, pulmonary embolism or pericarditis, and it is assessed with an electrocardiogram now.**

Boncho 本草

1.4 Snakehead 蠡魚

가몰티 가물치 snakehead

1.4.1

Source원문

性寒, 味甘, 無毒. 主浮腫, 下水, 療五痔. 有瘡者不可食, 令人瘢白.

Translation영역

Its nature is cold, its flavour sweet, and it is without toxicity. It governs puffy swelling, precipitates water, and treats the five piles. One who has sores must not eat it, for it makes the scars white.

Clinical note임상 주석

**The identification of this fish is the one the house has had wrong before, and the vernacular gloss settles it.** The gloss gamolti is gamulchi, the northern snakehead Channa argus — a dark, scaleless, air-breathing predator of still water that will live for hours out of it. It is not the swamp eel, which is this chapter's own 鱔魚 at 1.13, four entries further on, under the gloss deureongheori. The two have been conflated in this project's data at least once, the two characters 鱧 and 鱓 being easy to run together; the Bogam itself keeps them apart as separate headwords with separate Korean names, and the names are not alike in the least. The last sentence is a food prohibition and belongs with the 服藥食忌 material of the Preface on Decoctions: 有瘡者不可食, 令人瘢白, one with sores must not eat it because it whitens the scar. What it describes is depigmentation of a healing wound, which does happen — post-inflammatory hypopigmentation and hypopigmented scarring are ordinary — but not because of anything eaten. It is worth keeping as an observation about scars misattributed to a food. A scaleless fish is also forbidden with 何首烏 at 1.8 of 服藥食忌, 有何首烏, 勿食無鱗魚, and the next passage calls this fish 無鱗. As a food: snakehead is eaten cooked throughout its range and in Korea has a long reputation as a postpartum and convalescent food. Raw or undercooked it is a host of Gnathostoma spinigerum and of Clonorchis, and in parts of Southeast Asia snakehead is the principal source of human gnathostomiasis.

Boncho 本草

1.4.2

Source원문

一名鱧魚. 生池澤中, 處處有之. 是蛇所變, 至難死, 猶有蛇性. 《本草》

Translation영역

One name for it is 鱧魚. It lives in ponds and marshes and is found everywhere. It is a transformed snake, is extremely hard to kill, and still has the nature of a snake.

Clinical note임상 주석

至難死, extremely hard to kill, is accurate and is the basis of the whole doctrine built on this fish. Channa argus has a suprabranchial air-breathing organ, survives out of water for long periods, and can cross wet ground between pools — which is what was seen and read as snake nature, and from there as literal transformation from a snake. The inference is false but the observation behind it is not, and that combination is characteristic of this chapter.

Boncho 本草

1.4.3

Source원문

治癩, 用此以代花蛇, 是亦去風. 《丹心》

Translation영역

In treating lai, this is used in place of 花蛇, for it too dispels wind.

Clinical note임상 주석

This is a substitution passage and it works in both directions. 癩 is leprosy, and 花蛇 — the patterned viper of the Bencao, Agkistrodon acutus — was its standard animal drug; Danxi offers the snakehead instead, on the reasoning that the fish is a transformed snake and so carries the same wind-dispelling power. Taken at face value the logic is sympathetic magic. Taken as practice it is an early instance of substituting an available animal for a scarce one, which is the argument now made for abandoning animal drugs altogether: Agkistrodon acutus is a protected species in China and the pit vipers of the group are under collection pressure, so the drug the passage replaces is one that should not be sought today either. **Leprosy is curable.** Multidrug therapy with rifampicin, dapsone and clofazimine is provided free through the World Health Organization programme, and treatment arrests transmission within days and prevents the nerve damage that causes the deformity. A patient with anaesthetic skin patches, thickened nerves or painless injury to the hands and feet needs referral, not a fish.

Dansim 丹心

1.4.4

Source원문

一名鮦魚, 黑色無鱗, 頭有星, 名水厭. 《日用》

Translation영역

One name for it is 鮦魚. It is black and scaleless, has stars on its head, and is called the water-loather.

Clinical note임상 주석

黑色無鱗 is not quite right as zoology — the snakehead has small cycloid scales — but it reads as scaleless, and what the eye registers is the dark mottling. 頭有星, stars on the head, is the pattern of pale spots and the sensory pores on the top of the head. 水厭 I cannot explain; read literally it is the water-loather, which would fit a fish that leaves the water, but I have not found the name elsewhere and do not press the reading. 《日用》 is the Riyong Bencao, the materia medica of daily use, and this is one of only three places in the chapter that draws on it.

Iryong Boncho 日用

1.4.1 Snakehead Intestine 腸

1.4.1.1

Source원문

主五痔, 灸熟納肛中, 䖝出. 《本草》

Translation영역

It governs the five piles: roast it done, put it into the anus, and the worms come out.

Clinical note임상 주석

The mother entry is not in the materia medica of this site, so the part_of field is left empty; the sub-number carries the relation. 五痔 is the five categories of pile, and the worms the passage expects to see are the ones held to gnaw at them. What actually presents as piles with discharge and itching is haemorrhoidal disease, fissure, fistula and pruritus ani, with threadworm a genuine cause of perianal itch in children — treated with mebendazole or albendazole and household hygiene, not with roast fish gut. **Introducing animal tissue into the rectum is a route for infection of an already broken anal mucosa, and the practice should not be reproduced.** Persistent rectal bleeding assumed to be piles is the commonest way a rectal carcinoma is missed. 灸 stands for 炙, to roast.

Boncho 本草

1.4.2 Snakehead Gall 膽

1.4.2.1

Source원문

主急喉痺, 取㸃卽差. 諸魚中惟此膽味甘可食. 《本草》

Translation영역

It governs acute throat blockage; take it and apply it as a dab, and the cure is immediate. Of all the fishes, only this gall is sweet in flavour and may be eaten.

Clinical note임상 주석

The second sentence is the Bencao doing exactly what a materia medica should: it singles this gall out from every other fish gall and gives the criterion, the taste. The ordinary fish gall is intensely bitter and, as set out at 1.1 above, the cyprinid galls are nephrotoxic; snakehead gall was held to be sweet and edible. **That this one was thought safe is not evidence that it is, and 可食 here should not be read as permission.** No fish gallbladder has a modern safety record, the toxic bile alcohols are not confined to a single family, and the amount needed to injure a kidney is small. The indication is the serious part. 急喉痺, acute throat blockage, covers the airway emergencies of the throat — peritonsillar abscess, supraglottitis and epiglottitis, retropharyngeal abscess, severe tonsillitis and angio-oedema. **A patient who cannot swallow their own saliva, or who is stridulous, sitting forward and drooling, needs the airway secured and intravenous antibiotics, in hospital, within the hour.** It is worth recording that the Bogam's own throat-blockage formulas call for a fish gall in exactly this situation and permit substitution between galls — 無靑魚則鱓魚膽代之, if there is no black carp then swamp-eel gall in its place — which puts this leaf and 1.8 and 1.13 in one group in the formulary. Which gall the received throat formulas intend is worth noticing: 鱧魚膽, that is this leaf, is the classical throat-blockage gall of the Bencao, while the 鱓魚膽 of the formula is a different animal — and the Bogam settles that one itself at 1.13#2, where 鱓 is glossed as 鱔, the swamp eel. So the formula means eel gall, and the snakehead gall of this leaf is a third option the formulary does not take up. 㸃 is to apply in a dab or drop.

Boncho 本草

1.5 Freshwater Eel 鰻鱺魚

Medicinal entry ᄇᆡ얌댱어 뱀장어 snake-eel, that is the freshwater eel

1.5.1

Source원문

性寒一云平, 味甘, 無毒一云微毒. 主五痔瘡瘻, 殺諸䖝, 治惡瘡及婦人隂戶䖝痒.

Translation영역

Its nature is cold one says balanced, its flavour sweet, and it is without toxicity one says slightly toxic. It governs the five piles with sores and fistula, kills worms of every kind, and treats malign sores and worm-itch in a woman's genitals.

Clinical note임상 주석

The gloss The gloss baeyamjangeo is baemjangeo in modern Korean, snake-eel, and the name is unchanged today: this is the Japanese eel Anguilla japonica, the catadromous freshwater eel of Korean rivers, and the materia medica of this site already carries it under that name. 隂戶䖝痒, worm-itch of the vulva, is vulval itching attributed to worms; the modern differential is candidiasis, trichomoniasis, lichen sclerosus, contact dermatitis and, in a child, threadworm — and in an older woman persistent vulval itch with a plaque is how vulval intraepithelial neoplasia and carcinoma present. Two things to carry forward. First, the eel is one of the scaleless fishes that 服藥食忌 forbids with 何首烏 (有何首烏, 勿食無鱗魚), and the next passage group calls it 無鱗 outright. Second, this is a species in trouble: Anguilla japonica is assessed as Endangered on the IUCN Red List, its recruitment of glass eels having fallen steeply, and the European eel is on CITES Appendix II. Eel is a food, and a clinician has no reason to prescribe it; if it is eaten, the provenance question is real.

Boncho 本草

1.5.2

Source원문

此魚雖有毒, 而能補五蔵虗損, 治勞瘵.

Translation영역

Although this fish has toxicity, it is able to supplement vacuity detriment of the five viscera and to treat taxation consumption.

Clinical note임상 주석

雖有毒 is the interesting admission, because eel does have a toxin and it is not folklore. Eel serum contains a heat-labile ichthyotoxin that is haemolytic and neurotoxic if it enters the blood — it was the material in which Charles Richet and Paul Portier were working when they described anaphylaxis — and raw eel blood causes mucosal and conjunctival irritation. It is destroyed by cooking, which is why eel is eaten safely everywhere it is eaten. The Bencao's 有毒 is therefore a correct observation given a doctrinal explanation. 勞瘵 is consumption, which in this period was largely tuberculosis; eel is a fatty, calorie-dense food and feeding a wasting patient is not nothing, but tuberculosis is a notifiable infection cured by six months of combination chemotherapy and a cough of more than two or three weeks with weight loss or night sweats needs sputum testing now.

Boncho 本草

1.5.3

Source원문

似蟮而腹大無鱗, 靑黄色, 蓋蛇之類也. 生江湖中, 處處有之. 五色者功尤勝. 《本草》

Translation영역

It resembles the swamp eel but with a large belly and no scales, blue-yellow in colour, and is indeed of the snake kind. It lives in rivers and lakes and is found everywhere. The five-coloured sort is especially superior in power.

Clinical note임상 주석

似蟮, resembling the swamp eel, is the comparison that matters for the whole chapter: the Bencao itself tells the reader that the freshwater eel and the swamp eel of 1.13 look alike and are not the same animal. 蟮 is a form of 鱔. The eel does have scales, but they are minute and embedded in the skin, so 無鱗 is what an observer sees. 蓋蛇之類也, of the snake kind, is wrong — the eel is a teleost fish — but it is the same inference that made the snakehead a snake at 1.4. 五色者, the five-coloured one, has no counterpart I can identify; it may be the colour change of a silvering eel approaching its spawning migration, when the flanks go metallic, and the silver eel is in fact the fattest and most prized stage. I offer that as a possibility only.

Boncho 本草

1.5.1 Sea Eel 海鰻

listed under Japanese Eel鰻鱺魚

1.5.1.1

Source원문

性平, 有毒. 治惡瘡疥瘻, 功同上. 生海中. 《本草》

Translation영역

Its nature is balanced and it has toxicity. It treats malign sores, scabies and fistula, its merits being the same as the above. It lives in the sea.

Clinical note임상 주석

I cannot fix the species. 海鰻 in the Chinese materia medica is generally taken to be the pike conger Muraenesox cinereus, which is gaetjangeo in Korean; the Korean seas also hold the whitespotted conger Conger myriaster, bungjangeo, which is the commoner food fish and would fit 生海中 equally well. The Bogam gives no gloss and no description beyond the habitat, so the headword stands for a marine eel without saying which. 有毒 is the same serum toxin as in the mother entry — the congers and the morays carry it too, and moray serum is the more potent — again destroyed by cooking. 疥 is scabies, a mite infestation cleared by permethrin or ivermectin with treatment of household contacts.

Boncho 本草

1.6 Shark Skin 鮫魚皮

사어피 상어 가죽 shark skin

1.6.1

Source원문

性平, 味甘醎, 無毒. 主鬼疰蠱毒吐血, 及食魚中毒.

Translation영역

Its nature is balanced, its flavour sweet and salty, and it is without toxicity. It governs ghost-infixion and gu toxin with blood ejection, and poisoning from eating fish.

Clinical note임상 주석

The gloss The gloss sa-eopi is the skin of the sa-eo, 沙魚, and 沙魚 is the ordinary Korean and Chinese word for shark; the next passage says so outright. The modern Korean form given here is sang-eo gajuk, shark hide: sang-eo, the current word for shark, is itself the descendant of this sa-eo, so the modernisation involves one well-attested sound change and one substitution of the native word for the Sino-Korean one. So this is shark skin, of the Selachimorpha, without a species — 真珠斑, pearl-spotted, would suit the starspotted smoothhound Mustelus manazo or a catshark, both common in Korean waters, but the material was a trade commodity and would have come from whatever was landed. 食魚中毒, poisoning from eating fish, is worth translating into modern categories because it is a real and common group of events: scombroid poisoning from histamine in spoiled dark-fleshed fish, which mimics an allergic reaction and responds to antihistamines; ciguatera from reef fish, which is neurological and prolonged; anisakiasis from raw marine fish; and in this chapter the pufferfish of 1.16, which is in a class of its own. None of them is treated by shark skin. There is also a conservation point that did not exist in 1613. Many sharks are now CITES-listed — the whale, basking, white, hammerhead, oceanic whitetip, thresher and mako sharks among them — and shark populations have fallen steeply under fishing pressure driven partly by the trade in their parts. Shark flesh and liver also concentrate methylmercury to among the highest levels in any food fish, which is why it is on the avoid list for pregnancy in several countries. 醎 is the transcription's form of 鹹.

Boncho 本草

1.6.2

Source원문

今之沙魚皮也. 皮上有真珠斑, 背皮麄錯, 堪揩木如木賊. 生海中, 卽餙鞍劒ㆍ裝刀靶䱜魚皮也. 《本草》

Translation영역

It is the sand-fish skin of today. The skin has pearl-like spots on it, and the hide of the back is coarse and rasping, fit for rubbing down wood like horsetail. It lives in the sea, and it is the 䱜 skin used for ornamenting saddles and swords and for mounting knife hilts.

Clinical note임상 주석

This is shagreen, and the description of it is exact. Shark and ray skin is covered in dermal denticles — tooth-like scales of dentine — which make it an abrasive, and it was used as an abrasive: 堪揩木如木賊, fit for rubbing down wood like horsetail, compares it with Equisetum, the silica-bearing stem used as a fine abrasive for exactly that purpose. The same property makes it a non-slip covering for a sword grip, and ray skin on a hilt is still called 鯊皮 in the sword trade. The passage is therefore good materials science and has nothing to do with the medical indications above it. 麄 is a variant of 粗.

Boncho 本草

1.6.1 Shark Flesh 肉

1.6.1.1

Source원문

性平, 無毒一云小毒. 補五蔵, 爲膾爲脯, 皆食品之美者, 食之益人. 《本草》

Translation영역

Its nature is balanced and it is without toxicity one says slightly toxic. It supplements the five viscera; made into raw slices or into dried strips it is among the finest of foods, and eating it benefits a person.

Clinical note임상 주석

The mother entry is not in the materia medica of this site, so part_of is left empty. 蔵 here is the second occurrence of that variant on leaf 002b and carries no collation line of its own; see the note at 1.5#2. On 爲膾, raw slices: shark flesh retains urea and trimethylamine oxide for osmoregulation, which breaks down after death to ammonia, so it needs prompt handling and is traditionally salted or dried — which is what 爲脯 does. The modern caution is the one given above: the shark species eaten are long-lived predators and carry the highest methylmercury burdens of any commonly eaten fish, so this is not a food to recommend in pregnancy or for young children, whatever its merits as 食品之美者.

Boncho 本草

1.7 Mandarin Fish 鱖魚

소가리 쏘가리 mandarin fish

1.7.1

Source원문

性平, 味甘, 無毒一云微毒. 補勞, 益脾胃, 治腸風瀉血, 去腹內小䖝, 益氣力, 令人肥健.

Translation영역

Its nature is balanced, its flavour sweet, and it is without toxicity one says slightly toxic. It supplements taxation, boosts the spleen and stomach, treats intestinal wind with bloody discharge, removes small worms within the abdomen, boosts qi and strength, and makes a person stout and sturdy.

Clinical note임상 주석

The gloss sogari is ssogari in modern Korean, and the identification is secure: the Korean mandarin fish Siniperca scherzeri, a spiny, blotched, ambush predator of clear rivers, prized as a food fish and now a protected-interest species whose river stocks are managed. The Chinese 鱖魚 of the Bencao is the closely related Siniperca chuatsi; either way the genus is certain and the next passage's description confirms it. 腸風瀉血, intestinal wind with bloody discharge, is bright rectal bleeding. In a patient over about forty-five, or with a change in bowel habit, iron deficiency or weight loss, that is a colonoscopy and not a food.

Boncho 本草

1.7.2

Source원문

生江溪間, 背有黑㸃, 巨口, 一名鱖豚, 卽今錦鱗魚也. 《本草》

Translation영역

It lives in rivers and mountain streams, has black spots on its back and a great mouth, and one name for it is 鱖豚; it is the 錦鱗魚 of today.

Clinical note임상 주석

Three characters of this description are diagnostic and all three fit: river and clear stream habitat, dark blotching on the back, and a large mouth — Siniperca has a very large oblique gape, as an ambush predator must. 錦鱗魚, brocade-scale fish, is a Korean name for the same fish and is still used; the Bogam's 卽今 … 也 formula is its standard way of giving the contemporary name for an older Chinese headword, and here it does so correctly. 㸃 is a variant of 點.

Boncho 本草

1.7.1 Mandarin Fish Gall 膽

1.7.1.1

Source원문

主骨鯁在喉中不下. 《本草》

Translation영역

It governs a bone or a fishbone stuck in the throat that will not go down.

Clinical note임상 주석

The mother entry is not in the materia medica of this site, so part_of is left empty. 骨鯁 is an impacted fishbone, and the traditional handling was to make the patient swallow something that would carry it down. **That is the one thing not to do.** An impacted oesophageal foreign body, and a fishbone in particular, is removed endoscopically; pushing it down risks perforation of the oesophagus, which carries mediastinitis and a high mortality, and a sharp bone adjacent to the aorta is the mechanism of the rare but lethal aorto-oesophageal fistula. Swallowing rice balls or bulky food to drive a bone down is still done and still causes these injuries. A patient with persistent pain on swallowing after a fish meal, drooling, or any neck crepitus or fever needs imaging and endoscopy, not a dose of anything. Fish gall, for all the reasons given at 1.1, is also the wrong thing to swallow on its own account.

Boncho 本草

1.8 Black Carp 青魚

1.8.1

Source원문

性平, 味甘, 無毒. 主濕痺脚弱.

Translation영역

Its nature is balanced, its flavour sweet, and it is without toxicity. It governs damp impediment with weakness of the legs.

Clinical note임상 주석

This entry has no Korean gloss, and in this chapter the absence of a gloss is itself information: it means the compilers were not naming a fish that Korean readers would recognise under the Korean word. The third passage then says so explicitly, which makes this the best-documented identification in the chapter precisely because the book does the work itself. See the note there. 濕痺脚弱, damp impediment with weak legs, is a lower-limb weakness with heaviness and aching. The period's category covers what would now be separated into peripheral neuropathy, thiamine deficiency with its wet and dry beriberi, lumbar radiculopathy and myelopathy — and in a rice-eating population a nutritional neuropathy was the most likely of them. A fish is a source of thiamine, so a fish given for 脚弱 is not an absurd prescription; but it is also true that the freshwater cyprinids carry thiaminase, which destroys thiamine and is itself a recognised cause of deficiency where raw fish is a staple, so if anything the connection runs the wrong way.

Boncho 本草

1.8.2

Source원문

生江湖間, 似鯉鯇而背正青色. 《本草》

Translation영역

It lives in rivers and lakes, resembles the carp and the grass carp, and its back is a true blue-green.

Clinical note임상 주석

似鯉鯇 is a cyprinid comparison — 鯇 is the grass carp, Ctenopharyngodon idella — and that, with the blue-black back, is the black carp Mylopharyngodon piceus, the dark-backed molluscivore of the Chinese rivers. The materia medica of this site already reads the Chinese 靑魚 that way, carrying 靑魚膽 with the species name of Mylopharyngodon.

Boncho 本草

1.8.3

Source원문

非我國之青魚也. 《俗方》

Translation영역

It is not our country's cheongeo.

Clinical note임상 주석

**This single line is the most valuable piece of identification in the chapter, and it is Heo Jun's own.** 俗方 marks a Korean addition rather than a quotation, and what it does is warn the Korean reader off the obvious reading: the 青魚 of the Chinese materia medica is not the fish a Korean calls cheongeo. The Korean cheongeo is the Pacific herring, Clupea pallasii, a marine clupeid; the Chinese 青魚 of this entry is a large freshwater cyprinid. They share nothing but a name and a colour, and a Korean practitioner reading the Bencao without this line would have substituted herring for black carp and wondered why nothing happened. It is also the reason the headword is left unlinked in the materia medica here. What the book's formulas actually use is the gall, 靑魚膽, which appears in seven places — for 喉痺 and for throat and eye complaints, with explicit substitutions (無靑魚膽則獺膽三枚代之, if there is no black carp gall then three otter galls instead) — and the gall and the fish are not the same drug, so the fish is not linked to the gall's record. 服藥食忌 adds a prohibition that belongs here: 有术, 勿食 … 靑魚鮓, while taking atractylodes do not eat pickled black carp, which also bears on 1.29. And the general warning of 1.1 applies to this gall as much as to the carp's: it must not be swallowed.

Sokbang 俗方

1.9 Croaker 石首魚

Medicinal entry 조긔 조기 croaker

1.9.1

Source원문

性平, 味甘, 無毒. 主食不消, 腹脹暴痢. 和蓴作羹, 開胃益氣.

Translation영역

Its nature is balanced, its flavour sweet, and it is without toxicity. It governs food that will not disperse, and abdominal distension with sudden dysentery. Made into a soup with water-shield it opens the stomach and boosts qi.

Clinical note임상 주석

The gloss jogeui is the modern jogi, and the fish is the small yellow croaker Larimichthys polyactis — the chamjogi of the Yellow Sea, the single most important commercial fish of the Korean west coast for centuries. The materia medica of this site carries it at genus level, which is right: the large yellow croaker L. crocea and the related sciaenids were not distinguished and the dried product was traded as one commodity. The name 石首魚, stone-head fish, is from the pair of large otoliths in the skull, which the next leaf makes a drug of. 暴痢, sudden dysentery, is acute bloody diarrhoea, which is Shigella, Campylobacter, invasive E. coli or amoebiasis until proved otherwise; the treatment is rehydration and, where indicated, an antibiotic, and the risk in a child is dehydration.

Boncho 本草

1.9.2

Source원문

乾食之, 名爲鯗音想. 生東海. 《本草》

Translation영역

Eaten dried it is called 鯗 pronounced 想. It lives in the Eastern Sea.

Clinical note임상 주석

鯗 is dried, lightly salted fish, and the dried croaker is gulbi in Korean — the Beopseongpo product, salted and wind-dried, which is what most of this catch became before refrigeration. 生東海, the Eastern Sea, is the Bencao's geography and not Korea's: the Korean croaker fishery is of the west and south coasts, and this is one of the places where a Chinese locality statement does not transfer. The 音想 gloss is a pronunciation note in the body of the text, not a source mark, and is carried as small type.

Boncho 本草

1.9.1 Croaker Otolith 頭中石

Medicinal entry listed under Yellow Croaker石首魚

1.9.1.1

Source원문

頭中有小石如碁子, 主下石淋, 磨服之. 《本草》

Translation영역

In its head there are small stones like go-stones; they govern the precipitating of stone strangury — grind them and take them.

Clinical note임상 주석

This is the otolith, the ear-stone, and it is a real anatomical structure described accurately: the sciaenids have exceptionally large sagittal otoliths, flat and white and about the size of a go-stone in a mature croaker, which is where the name 石首魚 comes from. The material is calcium carbonate in aragonite, laid down in daily and annual increments — which is why otoliths are now read like tree rings to age a fish. The indication is the resemblance argument at its plainest: a stone in the head will bring down a stone in the bladder. The drug is in the materia medica of this site as 石首魚頭中石 and the Bogam does use it, 石首魚頭中石十六箇 in a sand-and-stone strangury formula, alongside 紫貝; a related form, 石首魚頭中骨五對(火煆), appears in another. Taken internally the powder is an alkalinising calcium salt and nothing more, and if anything a calcium load is the wrong direction for a calcium oxalate stone former. **Urinary stone is managed by analgesia and fluids, with imaging to size and site the stone, and by lithotripsy or ureteroscopy when it will not pass.** A stone with fever is an infected obstructed kidney and needs drainage the same day. 碁 is a variant of 棋.

Boncho 本草

1.10 Grey Mullet 鯔魚

Medicinal entry 슝어 숭어 grey mullet

1.10.1

Source원문

性平, 味甘, 無毒. 開胃, 通利五蔵, 令人肥健.

Translation영역

Its nature is balanced, its flavour sweet, and it is without toxicity. It opens the stomach, frees and disinhibits the five viscera, and makes a person stout and sturdy.

Boncho 本草

1.10.2

Source원문

比魚食泥, 與百藥無忌. 似鯉而身圎, 頭扁骨軟, 生江海淺水中. 《本草》

Translation영역

This fish feeds on mud and is incompatible with none of the hundred medicinals. It resembles the carp but with a round body, a flattened head and soft bones, and it lives in the shallow waters of rivers and the sea.

Clinical note임상 주석

**與百藥無忌 is the sentence to keep from this entry.** Of the fifty-three items in the 魚部 this is the only one declared free of all incompatibility with medicinals, and it is the exact converse of the 服藥食忌 list in the Preface on Decoctions, where carp is forbidden with asparagus root, crucian carp with ophiopogon, the scaleless fishes with polygonum, pickled black carp with atractylodes and raw fish generally with everything. Against that background a fish that may be eaten with any prescription is a clinically useful fact in the system's own terms, and it is presumably why mullet was the convalescent fish of choice. Why mullet should be exempt is not said; 食泥, mud-feeding, is given as though it were the reason, the implication being that a detritus feeder is bland and partisan to nothing. The zoology is sound. Mugil cephalus is a detritivore that grazes bottom sediment, is euryhaline and runs between the sea and river mouths — 江海淺水中, the shallow waters of rivers and the sea, exactly — and has a broad flattened head. The one practical caution is the obverse of 食泥: a sediment-feeding estuarine fish accumulates what the sediment carries, and mullet from an industrialised or sewage-affected estuary is not a clean food. Mullet roe, eoran, is the prized part and is extremely salty.

Boncho 本草

1.11 Perch 鱸魚

로어 노어 no-eo, the Sino-Korean reading of the characters rather than a native name

1.11.1

Source원문

性平, 味甘, 有小毒. 補五蔵, 和腸胃, 益筋骨, 作膾尤佳. 多食宜人, 雖有小毒不至發病. 生江湖中. 《本草》

Translation영역

Its nature is balanced, its flavour sweet, and it has slight toxicity. It supplements the five viscera, harmonises the intestines and stomach, and boosts the sinews and bones; made into raw slices it is especially fine. Eaten in quantity it suits a person, and though it has slight toxicity it does not go so far as to cause illness. It lives in rivers and lakes.

Clinical note임상 주석

**The gloss here is not evidence and should not be read as if it were.** The gloss ro-eo is simply the Sino-Korean reading of 鱸魚 written out in Korean letters — no-eo in modern orthography — so unlike bungeo, sungeo or sogari it tells us nothing about which fish a sixteenth-century Korean had in mind. It is one of two glosses in the chapter of this kind. So the identification is open. The modern Korean nongeo is the Japanese sea bass Lateolabrax japonicus, a large euryhaline predator that enters river mouths, and that is the usual reading of 鱸魚 in Korean texts. But the 鱸 of the Chinese Bencao is often taken to be the four-gilled 松江鱸, the roughskin sculpin Trachidermus fasciatus, a small amphidromous fish of the Yangtze delta celebrated in Chinese literature — a different animal entirely. 生江湖中, rivers and lakes, fits the sculpin better than a sea bass. I do not choose between them, and I have left the headword unlinked in the materia medica rather than attach a record to an uncertain animal. 作膾尤佳, best as raw slices, carries the standing caution: a fish that runs into fresh water is a fish that may carry freshwater trematodes, and marine fish eaten raw carry Anisakis. 雖有小毒不至發病 is the Bencao weighing a traditional 有毒 label against universal experience of the fish as food and quietly setting it aside — the kind of judgement that is worth noticing when it happens.

Boncho 本草

1.12 Catfish 鮎魚

머여기 메기 catfish

1.12.1

Source원문

性煖, 味甘, 無毒. 主浮腫, 下水, 利小便.

Translation영역

Its nature is warming, its flavour sweet, and it is without toxicity. It governs puffy swelling, precipitates water, and disinhibits urine.

Clinical note임상 주석

The gloss meoyeogi is the modern megi, and the fish is the Far Eastern catfish Silurus asotus — scaleless, broad flat head, long barbels, a mud-bottom predator of ponds and slow rivers. The identification is secure and the third passage's description confirms it. 浮腫 with 下水 and 利小便 is the oedema triad, and it recurs through this chapter — carp at 1.1.1, snakehead at 1.4, catfish here. The common thread is a protein-rich food given to a swollen patient. Oedema, though, is a sign and not a disease: the causes that matter are heart failure, nephrotic syndrome, cirrhosis and, in one leg, deep vein thrombosis, and they are separated by examination and by urine and blood tests, not by diet. A patient in whom a fish soup is the whole treatment for new oedema is a patient not being investigated.

Boncho 本草

1.12.2

Source원문

生池澤, 處處有之. 大首方口, 背青黑無鱗, 多涎.

Translation영역

It lives in ponds and marshes and is found everywhere. It has a big head and a square mouth, a blue-black scaleless back, and much slime.

Clinical note임상 주석

All four characters of the description are right, and the last is the one the next leaf turns into a drug: catfish skin produces copious mucus, which is what 多涎 names. A scaleless fish is forbidden with 何首烏 by 服藥食忌 (有何首烏, 勿食無鱗魚), and this entry says 無鱗 outright.

Boncho 本草

1.12.3

Source원문

有三種, 口腹俱大者名鱯音戶, 背青口小者名鮎音廉, 口小背黄腹白者名鮠音危. 皆無鱗有毒, 非食品之佳味也. 一名鮧. 《本草》

Translation영역

There are three kinds: the one with both mouth and belly large is called 鱯 pronounced 戶; the one with a blue-green back and a small mouth is called 鮎 pronounced 廉; and the one with a small mouth, yellow back and white belly is called 鮠 pronounced 危. All are scaleless and have toxicity, and are not among the fine-flavoured foods. One name for it is 鮧.

Clinical note임상 주석

The three kinds are the catfishes of the Chinese rivers as the Bencao sorts them — a large-mouthed Hemibagrus or Silurus, a blue-backed small-mouthed one, and a yellow-backed one that is usually read as the longsnout catfish Leiocassis or Pelteobagrus. The yellow-backed kind is close to the 黄顙魚 of 1.24. The pronunciation gloss on the second kind is anomalous: the transcription gives 鮎音廉, reading the headword character itself as 廉, which is not its ordinary reading, and it is also odd that the general name should reappear as the name of one of three kinds. The Bencao Gangmu's parallel list names the blue-backed kind 鮧 rather than 鮎. I print the transcription as it stands, with the gloss, and do not emend. 有毒 on a catfish is not pure doctrine, either: the bagrid and ictalurid catfishes have venomous pectoral and dorsal spines, and a catfish sting is a painful envenomation with a high rate of secondary infection — which is also why a fisherman handling them would have come to think of them as toxic.

Boncho 本草

1.12.1 Catfish Slime 涎

1.12.1.1

Source원문

主三消渴疾. 《本草》

Translation영역

It governs the thirsting disease of the three dispersions.

Clinical note임상 주석

The mother entry is not in the materia medica of this site, so part_of is left empty. 三消 is the three dispersions — upper with thirst, middle with hunger, lower with copious urine — which together describe diabetes mellitus as the tradition recognised it, and 消渴 remains the Chinese and Korean term for it. The substance is fish skin mucus: water, glycoproteins, lysozyme and antimicrobial peptides. It has no hypoglycaemic action. **Diabetes is the condition in this chapter where delay is most reliably harmful, and the harm is slow and silent.** Type 1 presents with thirst, weight loss and polyuria in a young person and will proceed to ketoacidosis within days or weeks if insulin is withheld. Type 2 is managed with metformin and the newer agents and by attention to blood pressure and lipids, and what is being prevented is retinopathy, nephropathy, neuropathy and cardiovascular death. A patient with new polyuria and thirst needs a blood glucose measured that day.

Boncho 本草

1.13 Swamp Eel 鱔魚

Medicinal entry 드렁허리 드렁허리 swamp eel

1.13.1

Source원문

性大温, 味甘, 無毒. 主濕痺, 補虗損, 療瀋唇, 治婦人産後淋瀝ㆍ血氣不調ㆍ羸瘦.

Translation영역

Its nature is greatly warm, its flavour sweet, and it is without toxicity. It governs damp impediment, supplements vacuity detriment, treats seeping lips, and treats dribbling urine after childbirth in a woman, blood and qi out of regulation, and emaciation.

Clinical note임상 주석

**the gloss deureongheori is still the modern Korean name and it settles the identification beyond argument: this is the Asian swamp eel Monopterus albus, and it is not the snakehead of 1.4.** The two entries stand nine apart in the same chapter with different Korean names, and the Bogam is explicit about both. This matters because the two have been conflated in this project's data before — 蠡魚 recorded as 鱓魚 — and because the Bencao's own text at 1.5#3 warns that the swamp eel is confusable with the freshwater eel rather than with the snakehead. Three animals, three entries: Channa argus at 1.4, Anguilla japonica at 1.5, Monopterus albus here. **The modern caution on this one is specific and serious. The swamp eel is the principal second intermediate host of Gnathostoma spinigerum in East and Southeast Asia, and raw or undercooked swamp eel is the main route by which people acquire gnathostomiasis.** The larva migrates through the tissues, producing migratory swellings and creeping eruption, and when it enters the central nervous system it causes eosinophilic meningitis, radiculomyelitis and intracerebral haemorrhage, which can be fatal or permanently disabling. Swamp eel also carries Angiostrongylus cantonensis, the rat lungworm, another cause of eosinophilic meningitis. Thorough cooking destroys both. Dishes of raw swamp eel or raw swamp-eel blood — which is exactly what the formulary use at 1.13.1 below involves — must not be prepared or recommended. 瀋唇 is a seeping, cracked lip.

Boncho 本草

1.13.2

Source원문

一名鱓音善魚, 似鰻鱺魚而細長, 亦似蛇而無鱗, 有青黄二色. 生水岸泥窟中, 所在皆有, 亦蛇類也. 《本草》

Translation영역

One name for it is 鱓 pronounced 善魚. It resembles the freshwater eel but is slender and long; it also resembles a snake and has no scales, and comes in two colours, blue-green and yellow. It lives in mud holes at the water's edge, is found everywhere, and is likewise of the snake kind.

Clinical note임상 주석

This passage is the authority for 鱓 and 鱔 being one character in the Bogam, which is worth fixing in the mind of anyone working on the formulary: where a formula calls for 鱓魚膽 it means swamp-eel gall, not snakehead gall. The description is accurate — Monopterus albus is scaleless and eel-like, lives in burrows in the mud of paddy banks, and is yellow-brown to olive — and the comparison with the freshwater eel is the one that needed making. 亦蛇類也 is wrong in the same way as at 1.4 and 1.5: a swamp eel is a synbranchid fish. It is also a protogynous hermaphrodite, maturing as female and later changing to male, which the Bencao's two colours may be registering without knowing it; I offer that only as a possibility.

Boncho 本草

1.13.1 Swamp Eel Blood 血

listed under Swamp Eel鱔魚

1.13.1.1

Source원문

主癬及瘻瘡. 《本草》

Translation영역

It governs lichen and fistulous sores.

Clinical note임상 주석

**This leaf is one the formulary actually uses.** Two Bogam formulas call for it: 點法 of the smallpox chapter, 生鱔魚倒懸, 刺項下取血, 點瞖上 — hang a live swamp eel head down, prick it below the throat, take the blood and drop it on the corneal screen — and 天仙膏, 生鱔魚血調成膏, 付喎處, the blood mixed to a paste with arisaema, aconite, bletilla and silkworm and applied to the deviated side of the face. Both are recorded in this site's formulary against the mother drug 鱔魚 with the blood named in the preparation, which is the right way to carry it, so no separate record for 鱔魚血 is needed and the herb field here is deliberately left empty. It is also the item in this chapter that most clearly must not be reproduced. Fresh blood from a live Monopterus albus, applied to an eye or to broken skin, is the direct route for the Gnathostoma larvae and Angiostrongylus described at the mother entry, and for aquatic bacteria; eel serum additionally carries the heat-labile ichthyotoxin discussed at 1.5#2, which is not destroyed in a raw preparation. 癬 is tinea, a dermatophyte infection cleared by topical or oral antifungals; a 瘻瘡, a fistulating sore, needs its track defined and its cause found — tuberculosis, Crohn disease, actinomycosis and a retained foreign body are all on the list. Facial deviation of sudden onset is a Bell palsy or a stroke and the distinction is made by whether the forehead is spared; a corneal opacity after keratitis is a surgical problem.

Boncho 本草

1.13.2 Swamp Eel Head Bone 頭骨

listed under Swamp Eel鱔魚

1.13.2.1

Source원문

止痢, 治消渴. 端午日取燒灰用. 《本草》

Translation영역

It checks dysentery and treats dispersion-thirst. Take it on the fifth day of the fifth month, burn it to ash, and use it.

Clinical note임상 주석

端午日, the fifth of the fifth month, is the Dano festival, and a collection date given as a calendar date rather than a condition of the material is a ritual specification, not a pharmacognostic one — the same logic as the boy's urine of the 人部 or the 臘月 galls of the eye formulas. Calcined bone is calcium phosphate. On 消渴 see 1.12.1: this is diabetes and it needs measuring and treating.

Boncho 本草

1.13.3 Swamp Eel Skin 皮

listed under Swamp Eel鱔魚

1.13.3.1

Source원문

主婦人乳硬結痛, 燒灰酒下二錢. 《本草》

Translation영역

It governs a hard, knotted and painful breast in a woman; burn it to ash and send down 2 don in wine.

Clinical note임상 주석

Two don is about 7.5 g. 乳硬結痛, a hard painful lump in the breast, is the one indication in this chapter where a wrong call costs the most. In a lactating woman it is most often engorgement or mastitis, which needs continued drainage of the breast and, if there is fever or no improvement in a day, antibiotics, with ultrasound if an abscess is suspected. **In a woman who is not lactating, a hard painless or painful breast lump is a breast carcinoma until imaging and, where indicated, biopsy say otherwise, and it must be referred rather than treated.** Any delay here is measured in staging.

Boncho 本草

1.14 Flatfish 比目魚

가자미 가자미 flatfish

1.14.1

Source원문

性平, 味甘, 無毒. 補虗, 益氣力, 多食稍動氣.

Translation영역

Its nature is balanced, its flavour sweet, and it is without toxicity. It supplements vacuity and boosts qi and strength; eaten in quantity it stirs the qi somewhat.

Clinical note임상 주석

The gloss gajami is unchanged in modern Korean, and the last passage of this entry tells us the headword is a group and not a species. See the note there.

Boncho 本草

1.14.2

Source원문

東海有比目魚, 其名爲鰈. 《本草》

Translation영역

In the Eastern Sea there is the paired-eye fish, and its name is 鰈.

Boncho 本草

1.14.3

Source원문

形如箬葉, 一邉有兩目, 動則兩邉相比而行. 《日用》

Translation영역

Its form is like a bamboo leaf; it has two eyes on one side, and when it moves the two sides go along matched to each other.

Clinical note임상 주석

一邉有兩目 — two eyes on one side — is the correct observation and the hard one, because it is what makes a flatfish a flatfish: the larva is bilaterally symmetrical and swims upright, and during metamorphosis one eye migrates across the skull so that the adult lies on its blind side. The name 比目魚, paired-eye fish, and the explanation offered in the second half of the sentence come from the older and wrong idea that the fish is half a fish and swims in pairs, each supplying the other's missing side. The Bogam prints both the accurate description and the legend that contradicts it, from two different sources, without reconciling them. 箬葉 is the broad leaf of a bamboo.

Iryong Boncho 日用

1.14.4

Source원문

卽今廣魚ㆍ舌魚之類. 《俗方》

Translation영역

It is the sort of fish that today are the gwangeo and the seodae.

Clinical note임상 주석

**This is the second of Heo Jun's own identification notes and it settles the entry as a group, not a species.** 廣魚 is gwangeo, the olive flounder Paralichthys olivaceus; 舌魚 is the tonguefish or sole, Cynoglossus. Adding gajami itself, which is the right-eyed flounders of the Pleuronectidae, the headword covers three separate families of the Pleuronectiformes, and 之類, that sort of fish, is the book telling the reader so. So no species should be assigned to this entry, and it is left unlinked in the materia medica for that reason. The practical consequence for a reader is that any of the Korean flatfishes satisfies the entry — which is probably why the compilers wrote it this way. The flatfishes are, incidentally, among the most commonly eaten raw in Korea, gwangeo above all, and marine fish eaten raw carry Anisakis simplex: the larva causes acute gastric or intestinal anisakiasis, sometimes mistaken for appendicitis, and sensitisation to it causes allergic reactions. Freezing kills it; chilling does not.

Sokbang 俗方

1.15 Stingray 䱋魚

가오리 가오리 ray

1.15.1

Source원문

食之益人. 尾有大毒, 有肉翅, 尾長二尺, 剌在尾中. 人被刺, 煮海獺皮及魚簄竹解之.

Translation영역

Eating it benefits a person. Its tail has great toxicity. It has fleshy wings, and a tail two cheok long with a sting in it. If a person is stung, boil sea-otter hide or the bamboo of a fish weir and this resolves it.

Clinical note임상 주석

The gloss gaori is unchanged, and the description is unmistakable: 肉翅, fleshy wings, are the enlarged pectoral fins of a ray, and a long tail carrying a sting makes this a stingray, of the Dasyatidae — in Korean waters most likely Hemitrygon akajei, the red stingray. The skates of the Rajidae, also gaori in common speech, have no venomous sting, so the Bogam's description picks out the dangerous group correctly. The romanisation of 䱋 I give as Buneo on the Chinese reading of the character; the character is rare and I am not certain of the received Korean reading. **The envenomation is real and the first-aid given here is useless.** A stingray spine is a serrated, retrorse barb sheathed in venom-bearing tissue; it causes immediate severe pain out of proportion to the wound, and the sheath and spine fragments are commonly retained. Deaths occur from penetrating trunk injury rather than from the venom. The modern management is immersion of the limb in hot water — about 45 degrees, as hot as the patient will tolerate — because the venom is heat-labile and this genuinely relieves the pain; then thorough wound exploration and irrigation, imaging to look for retained spine, tetanus prophylaxis, and antibiotic cover with attention to Vibrio species. A chest or abdominal wound is a surgical emergency. Boiled otter hide does nothing. 魚簄 is a fish weir or trap; 二尺 is about 60 cm.

Sikmul 食物

1.15.2

Source원문

候人尿處以刺釘之, 令人隂腫痛, 拔去卽愈. 《食物》

Translation영역

Watch where a person has urinated and drive the sting into that spot, and it will make their genitals swell and hurt; pull it out and they are cured at once.

Clinical note임상 주석

This is sympathetic magic of the clearest kind in the whole chapter, and it is worth leaving unsoftened: the sting is driven not into the person but into the ground where their urine fell, and the injury appears in the corresponding part of their body. The thinking is that urine remains part of the person who passed it, which is the same premise that gives the 人部 its materials. Nothing here is a procedure; the entry is evidence about a system of belief, and the translation carries it as such. 隂 is the transcription's form of 陰.

Sikmul 食物

1.16 Pufferfish 河㹠

복 복 pufferfish

1.16.1

Source원문

性温一云凉, 味甘, 有毒一云大毒. 補虗, 去濕, 理腰脚, 去痔疾, 殺䖝.

Translation영역

Its nature is warm one says cool, its flavour sweet, and it has toxicity one says great toxicity. It supplements vacuity, dispels damp, puts the lower back and legs in order, removes piles, and kills worms.

Clinical note임상 주석

The gloss bok is the modern Korean word, unchanged, and the identification is certain: this is the pufferfish, 河豚 — in Korean waters the Takifugu species, jajibok, kkachibok, hwangbok and others — and the next four passages describe it so exactly that there is nothing left to infer. 㹠 is a variant of 豚, so 河㹠 is the river pig. **Everything in this entry has to be read under one fact: the pufferfish contains tetrodotoxin, there is no antidote, and it kills by paralysing the muscles of respiration while the patient remains conscious.** Tetrodotoxin blocks the voltage-gated sodium channel of nerve and skeletal muscle. Poisoning begins within minutes to a few hours with numbness and tingling of the lips and tongue, then of the face and limbs; then nausea and vomiting, ataxia, slurred speech, ascending flaccid paralysis, respiratory failure and, in severe cases, cardiovascular collapse. Awareness is often preserved throughout. Case fatality in reported series has been of the order of several per cent to much higher where ventilation was unavailable, and the lethal dose is in the range of a milligram or two in an adult — the toxin is some orders of magnitude more potent by weight than cyanide. **Treatment is entirely supportive: airway, mechanical ventilation, and time, because the toxin is cleared and survivors who are ventilated in time recover fully.** Anyone with perioral numbness after a fish meal must be taken to a hospital able to ventilate them, immediately, even if they feel well — the paralysis ascends.

Boncho 本草

1.16.2

Source원문

生江河中, 觸之則怒氣滿腹膨脹, 又名䲅魚ㆍ吹肚魚ㆍ胡夷魚.

Translation영역

It lives in rivers and streams, and when touched it fills with angry qi and swells up; other names for it are 䲅魚, the puff-belly fish, and 胡夷魚.

Clinical note임상 주석

The inflation response is correctly observed and correctly named — 吹肚魚, puff-belly fish, is exactly what the animal does, swallowing water or air into a distensible stomach to make itself too large to swallow. 生江河中 is right for part of the group: the river puffer Takifugu obscurus, hwangbok, runs up the Korean west-coast rivers to spawn, which is why a freshwater habitat heads the entry.

Boncho 本草

1.16.3

Source원문

此魚有大毒, 味雖珍, 然修治不如法, 食之殺人, 不可不慎也.

Translation영역

This fish has great toxicity. Its flavour is precious indeed, but if the dressing of it is not done according to the method, eating it kills a person — one cannot but be careful.

Clinical note임상 주석

**This sentence is the most accurate warning in the entire Decoctions chapter and it should be quoted rather than paraphrased: 修治不如法, 食之殺人, if the dressing is not done by the method, eating it kills.** Four hundred years later that is still the whole of the matter. In Japan the preparation of fugu requires a licence obtained by examination and apprenticeship, with the toxic viscera handled as controlled waste; Korea licenses pufferfish cooks in the same way, and the United States restricts import to certified product. Almost all poisonings are from fish prepared at home or by an unlicensed hand, and several Korean and Japanese deaths occur most years from exactly that. The Bencao's 不可不慎 is not rhetorical caution; it is an accurate statement of risk from a text that had watched it happen.

Boncho 本草

1.16.4

Source원문

此魚肉無毒, 肝與卵有大毒. 凡修事, 宜去肝與卵並脊內黑血, 浄洗去血爲好. 《本草》

Translation영역

The flesh of this fish is without toxicity; the liver and the roe have great toxicity. Whenever it is dressed, the liver and the roe should be removed along with the black blood within the spine, and it is best washed clean until the blood is gone.

Clinical note임상 주석

**This is the passage that shows the observation was genuine, because the organ ranking is right.** Tetrodotoxin in Takifugu is concentrated in the liver and the ovaries above all, with high levels also in the skin and intestine, while the skeletal muscle is comparatively low in toxin and in some species and seasons is effectively free of it — which is exactly 肉無毒, 肝與卵有大毒. The instruction to remove liver and roe, and to wash the fish free of blood, is the core of the licensed method still taught. 浄 is the transcription's form of 淨. Three qualifications a reader must have. First, the toxin is not confined to the viscera in every species or season; the toxicity of the skin and muscle varies with species, locality, sex and the spawning cycle, and the roe is at its most toxic before spawning. Second, **tetrodotoxin is heat-stable** — it survives boiling, frying and drying — so no cooking step makes a contaminated portion safe, and a knife that has cut liver contaminates the flesh. Third, the toxin is produced by bacteria and accumulated through the food chain, so farmed fish raised on controlled feed can be low in it while wild fish of the same species are not; that is a fact about supply chains and not a licence to dress one's own fish. **The passage is accurate, and it is still not a method a reader should attempt.**

Boncho 本草

1.16.5

Source원문

與水芹同煮則無毒云. 《俗方》

Translation영역

It is said that boiled together with water dropwort it is without toxicity.

Clinical note임상 주석

**This is false, and of everything in the 魚部 it is the single sentence that could get a reader killed, so it has to be contradicted directly rather than contextualised.** Tetrodotoxin is a heat-stable, low-molecular-weight guanidinium toxin; nothing cooked alongside the fish neutralises it, and 水芹, water dropwort Oenanthe javanica, has no such action. The belief is still current in Korea — pufferfish is conventionally cooked with minari — and the herb is there for flavour and for the look of the dish. A cook who believes the dropwort is doing the work has removed the only real safeguard, which is that the toxic organs were never in the pot. The 俗方 mark means this is the Bogam's own addition from Korean domestic practice, not a quotation, and 云, so it is said, is the compiler's own hedge on it — he reports the belief at one remove. It is worth noticing that the book's two statements about this fish sit three lines apart and point in opposite directions: 修治不如法, 食之殺人 from the Bencao, and 與水芹同煮則無毒云 from common talk. The first is right. There is a further hazard in the plant itself: Oenanthe javanica, the edible water dropwort, is easily confused with the hemlock water dropwort Oenanthe crocata and with other oenanthotoxin-bearing species, which are among the most poisonous plants in temperate flora.

Sokbang 俗方

1.17 Pacific Cod 夻魚

대구 대구 cod

1.17.1

Source원문

性平, 味醎, 無毒. 食之補氣, 腸與脂味尤佳. 生東北海, 俗名大口魚. 《俗方》

Translation영역

Its nature is balanced, its flavour salty, and it is without toxicity. Eating it supplements qi, and the gut and the fat are especially fine in flavour. It lives in the north-eastern sea, and its common name is the big-mouth fish.

Clinical note임상 주석

**This is a wholly Korean entry, down to the character it is written with.** 夻 is a Korean coinage — 大 over 口, big-mouth, assembled to write the native word — and it is read hwa; the whole entry carries the 俗方 mark, and the fish is daegu, the Pacific cod Gadus macrocephalus, of the cold waters off the east and north-east coasts. The gloss and the 俗名 agree, the character is a transparent rebus of the Korean name, and there is no Chinese Bencao headword behind any of it. Several of the chapter's later entries are of this kind and they are the most securely identified items in it, precisely because they were written down from Korean practice rather than inherited. 腸與脂, the gut and the fat, is a correct note on the fish: cod liver is the fatty, prized part, and daegu naejang and daegu al are still eaten in Korea. The one modern qualification is that cod liver is very rich in retinol, and large or repeated portions of a predatory fish's liver are the classic route to acute and chronic hypervitaminosis A — which is a real and occasionally severe poisoning, with headache, raised intracranial pressure and skin desquamation. The cod is also a stock that has been heavily fished; the Jinhae Bay spawning run is managed with closed seasons and release programmes.

Sokbang 俗方

1.18 Octopus 八梢魚

문어 문어 octopus

1.18.1

Source원문

性平, 味甘, 無毒. 食之無別功. 身有八條長脚, 無鱗無骨, 故又名八帶魚. 生東北海, 俗名文魚. 《俗方》

Translation영역

Its nature is balanced, its flavour sweet, and it is without toxicity. Eating it has no particular merit. Its body has eight long legs and it has neither scales nor bone, and so it is also called the eight-band fish. It lives in the north-eastern sea, and its common name is muneo.

Clinical note임상 주석

Another purely Korean entry — 八梢魚 and 八帶魚 are both descriptive coinages, eight-tip and eight-band, and 俗名文魚 gives the Korean name, muneo, which is still current. The animal is the octopus, in the cold north-eastern waters the giant Pacific octopus Enteroctopus dofleini, which is what muneo ordinarily denotes in Korea; the smaller nakji gets its own entry at 1.19. **食之無別功, eating it has no particular merit, is the most unusual sentence in the chapter and deserves to be noticed.** In a materia medica of fourteen hundred items, written in a genre whose whole convention is to find a virtue in everything, here is a compiler recording that a well-known food has no medicinal action at all. He enters it anyway, with its nature and flavour and its names, because the chapter is a description of what is eaten and sold as well as a list of drugs. That is a form of honesty worth more than most of the therapeutic claims around it. 無鱗無骨 puts the octopus among the scaleless things forbidden with 何首烏 by 服藥食忌, if the rule is read literally. As a food it is high in protein and low in fat, with a large amount of taurine and cholesterol. The one real hazard is mechanical: live or very large pieces of octopus are a choking risk, and the suckers adhere to the pharynx — deaths from asphyxiation on sannakji are reported in Korea most years.

Sokbang 俗方

1.19 Long-arm Octopus 小八梢魚

1.19.1

Source원문

性平, 味甘, 無毒. 形似八梢魚而小, 亦無鱗無骨. 生海邉, 俗名絡蹄. 《俗方》

Translation영역

Its nature is balanced, its flavour sweet, and it is without toxicity. Its form is like the octopus but smaller, and it too has neither scales nor bone. It lives along the seashore, and its common name is nakji.

Clinical note임상 주석

This entry has no Korean gloss in the margin, but it does not need one: 俗名絡蹄 is the Korean name written out in the body of the text, nakji, and it is still the word. So the identification is as secure as the glossed entries — the long-arm octopus Octopus minor, the small intertidal octopus of the Korean mud flats, dug out of its burrow at low tide. 生海邉, along the seashore, is exactly its habitat, and 形似八梢魚而小 distinguishes it from the muneo of 1.18 on the one character that matters, size. The chapter's four Korean cephalopod and cod entries, 1.17 to 1.19 and 1.3, are the part of it a Korean reader could have used without a dictionary.

Sokbang 俗方

1.19.2

Source원문

本經名章擧魚, 一名石距, 比烏賊魚差大, 味珎好, 卽此也. 《本草》

Translation영역

The Basic Canon calls it 章擧魚, and one name for it is 石距; it is somewhat larger than the cuttlefish and fine in flavour — this is the same creature.

Clinical note임상 주석

章擧 and 石距 are the Chinese Bencao names for the octopus, 石距 meaning stone-dweller, which suits an animal that lives wedged in rock and burrow. The Bogam's 卽此也 equates the Chinese headword with the Korean nakji of the passage above — an identification made by the compilers themselves, and the second half of what they were doing in this chapter: Korean names in one direction, Chinese headwords in the other, matched where they could match them. 比烏賊魚差大, somewhat larger than the cuttlefish, is a size comparison with 1.3 and is reasonable for an octopus against a Sepia. 珎 is a variant of 珍.

Boncho 本草

1.20 Pine Fish 松魚

1.20.1

Source원문

性平, 味甘, 無毒. 味極珎, 肉肥色赤而鮮明如松節, 故名爲松魚. 生東北江海中. 《俗方》

Translation영역

Its nature is balanced, its flavour sweet, and it is without toxicity. Its flavour is of the first excellence; its flesh is fat and red, bright and clear like the knot of a pine, and so it is named the pine fish. It lives in the rivers and the sea of the north-east.

Clinical note임상 주석

A Korean entry with no Chinese source behind it, and no vernacular gloss, because the headword is already the Korean name: songeo. The identification is probable rather than certain. The modern Korean songeo is the cherry salmon Oncorhynchus masou, which runs the rivers of the Korean east coast; 生東北江海中, in the rivers and sea of the north-east, is the right distribution for an anadromous salmonid, and 肉肥色赤, fat red flesh, is the carotenoid-pigmented flesh of a salmon. The etymology the entry offers — bright red like a cut pine knot, hence 松魚 — is the standard folk explanation and may well be the real one. Where I am not certain is how wide the sixteenth-century name was. songeo in later Korean usage has at times covered the chum salmon and the masu together, and the next entry, 1.21, appears to be the other salmonid under another name; it is possible the two entries divide the salmon and the trout differently from the modern division. I therefore give the genus with confidence and the species as the most likely reading only. **No species name should be entered in the materia medica for this item on the strength of this entry.** 珎 is a variant of 珍.

Sokbang 俗方

1.21 Salmon 鰱魚

1.21.1

Source원문

性平, 無毒. 味亦甘美, 卵如真珠而微紅色, 味尤美. 生東北江海中. 《俗方》

Translation영역

Its nature is balanced and it is without toxicity. Its flavour too is sweet and fine; its eggs are like pearls and faintly red in colour, and finer still in flavour. It lives in the rivers and the sea of the north-east.

Clinical note임상 주석

**This entry is a case where the Chinese and Korean readings of one character point at different animals, and the description decides it for the Korean one.** The Chinese 鰱魚 of the materia medica is the silver carp Hypophthalmichthys molitrix, a freshwater cyprinid. But the character is read ryeon, yeon initially, and yeoneo is the Korean word for salmon; the entry is marked 俗方, a Korean addition; the habitat given is 東北江海中, the rivers and sea of the north-east, that is an anadromous fish of the Hamgyong coast; and the detail the compiler chose to record is 卵如真珠而微紅色, 味尤美 — eggs like pearls, faintly red, finer in flavour than the flesh. **That is salmon roe and nothing else.** Silver carp roe is small, pale and not a delicacy; chum salmon eggs are large, translucent and orange-red, and the roe has been the prized product of the north-eastern Korean salmon runs for as long as there are records of them. So I read this as the chum salmon Oncorhynchus keta, yeoneo, with the usual qualification: the identification rests on the Korean reading of the character plus the description, not on any statement by the book, and the relation to 松魚 at 1.20 is not spelled out. I would not put a species name in the materia medica on this alone, but I would not read it as silver carp either, and anyone matching this chapter against Chinese sources should know the divergence is here.

Sokbang 俗方

1.22 White Fish 白魚

1.22.1

Source원문

性平, 無毒. 開胃下食. 生江湖中, 冬月鑿氷取之, 生漢江者尤好. 《俗方》

Translation영역

Its nature is balanced and it is without toxicity. It opens the stomach and brings food down. It lives in rivers and lakes; in the winter months it is taken by cutting the ice, and those from the Han River are the best.

Clinical note임상 주석

A Korean entry, 俗方, with no gloss, and the identification is uncertain — I give the reasoning rather than a verdict. The Chinese 白魚 of the Bencao is the predatory carp Culter or Chanodichthys, a large open-water cyprinid. The Korean baegeo, however, is baengeo, the icefish of the Salangidae — Salangichthys microdon and Neosalanx species — small, translucent, nearly scaleless fish that run into river mouths and are netted in the cold months. Two details here favour the Korean reading: 冬月鑿氷取之, taken in winter by cutting the ice, which is a winter fishery and not how one takes a large summer cyprinid, and 生漢江者尤好, those of the Han River being best, which is a statement about a named Korean fishery and matches the Han estuary icefish that was a tribute product. Against that, 生江湖中, rivers and lakes, is the Bencao's habitat formula and would suit the cyprinid. **The book does not say which fish it means and I do not assign one.** The entry is left unlinked in the materia medica.

Sokbang 俗方

1.23 Loach 鰍魚

믜ᄭᅮ리 미꾸리 loach

1.23.1

Source원문

性温, 味甘, 無毒. 補中, 止泄. 形短小, 常在泥中, 一名鰌魚. 《入門》

Translation영역

Its nature is warm, its flavour sweet, and it is without toxicity. It supplements the centre and checks diarrhoea. Its form is short and small, and it is always in the mud; one name for it is 鰌魚.

Clinical note임상 주석

The gloss meukkuri is mikkuri in modern Korean, and the identification is secure: the loach, Misgurnus anguillicaudatus or the closely related M. mizolepis, mikkuraji — a small, slender, mud-burrowing cobitid of paddy fields and ditches, the fish of chueotang, the loach soup whose name is this very character. 常在泥中, always in the mud, is exactly right: the loach burrows, and it is an air-breather that gulps surface air and respires through the gut, which is how it survives a drying paddy. As a food it is cooked to a soup, bones and all, and in that form it is one of the more nutritious freshwater fish — high in calcium and protein. **Raw loach must not be eaten or given.** The loach is a host of Gnathostoma and of the larval nematodes of the Eustrongylides group, and swallowing live loach was a folk remedy in several parts of East Asia; cases of gastrointestinal and migratory parasitic disease traced to it are on record. Cooking removes the risk.

Immun 入門

1.24 Yellow Catfish 黄顙魚

1.24.1

Source원문

性平, 味甘, 無毒. 主醒酒. 一名䱀䰲, 尾如鮎魚. 《日用》

Translation영역

Its nature is balanced, its flavour sweet, and it is without toxicity. It governs the sobering of drunkenness. One name for it is 䱀䰲, and its tail is like the catfish's.

Clinical note임상 주석

A Chinese entry with no Korean gloss. 黄顙魚 is the yellow catfish Tachysurus fulvidraco — long placed in Pelteobagrus — a small bagrid with a yellow-brown mottled body, which is dongjagae or ppagasari in Korean and is common in the same waters as the Silurus of 1.12. 尾如鮎魚, its tail like the catfish's, is the Bencao placing it against that entry, and the two are indeed related; the yellow-backed third kind of 1.12#3, 鮠, is close to this animal. 䱀䰲 is the Chinese doublet name for it. 主醒酒, sobering drunkenness, is a category this materia medica applies to a number of foods, and nothing sobers a drunk person but time: ethanol is cleared at a near-constant rate and no food, drink or drug accelerates it. What matters clinically is the opposite — recognising that an apparently drunk patient may be hypoglycaemic, head-injured, hypothermic or in hepatic encephalopathy. The bagrid catfishes also have venomous pectoral and dorsal spines, as noted at 1.12#3, and a sting from one is a painful and readily infected puncture wound.

Iryong Boncho 日用

1.25 Horseshoe Crab 鱟魚

1.25.1

Source원문

性平, 無毒. 治痔, 殺䖝, 及腸風瀉血ㆍ産後痢. 生南海. 大者如扇, 長六七尺, 似蟹. 皆牡牝相隨, 無目, 得牝始行, 牝去牡死. 生南海. 《本草》

Translation영역

Its nature is balanced and it is without toxicity. It treats piles, kills worms, and treats intestinal wind with bloody discharge and dysentery after childbirth. It lives in the Southern Sea. A large one is like a fan, six or seven cheok long, and resembles a crab. They always go about male and female together; the male is eyeless, and only when he has the female does he move — when she leaves him, he dies. It lives in the Southern Sea.

Clinical note임상 주석

**This is not a fish and not even a crustacean.** 鱟 is the horseshoe crab, Tachypleus tridentatus in the China seas, a chelicerate arthropod closer to the spiders and scorpions than to anything else in this chapter, and 生南海, the Southern Sea, is correct — it does not occur in Korean waters, which is why the entry has no vernacular gloss. 似蟹, like a crab, is how it looks to an eye that has no other category for it, and 大者如扇 catches the broad shield of the carapace. Six or seven cheok, about two metres, is a large exaggeration; the animal reaches about 60 cm including the tail spine. The natural history in the second half is partly observation and partly invention. The pairing is real and conspicuous: the smaller male clasps the female and is carried by her, often for long periods, which is what 牡牝相隨 and 得牝始行 describe. 無目, eyeless, is wrong — horseshoe crabs have two compound lateral eyes and several simple ones, and their lateral eye is one of the most studied visual systems in biology. Two modern points. **First, the roe and flesh of horseshoe crabs cause poisoning.** Carcinoscorpius rotundicauda, the mangrove horseshoe crab of South and Southeast Asia, carries tetrodotoxin and saxitoxins in its eggs, and fatal and near-fatal poisonings from eating horseshoe-crab roe are reported from Thailand, Cambodia and India; the presentation is the paralytic one described at 1.16. The species differ in this and the risk cannot be judged from the outside. Second, Tachypleus tridentatus is assessed as Endangered on the IUCN Red List. The animal is also, by an odd turn, indispensable to modern medicine: its amoebocyte lysate is the reagent used to test injectable drugs and implants for bacterial endotoxin, so every vaccine and intravenous fluid that reaches a patient has in some part been tested with horseshoe-crab blood. **It should not be eaten, and it should not be collected as a drug.**

Boncho 本草

1.25.2

Source원문

鱟音候.

Translation영역

鱟 is pronounced 候.

Clinical note임상 주석

A pronunciation gloss standing as its own segment after the ○, with no source mark of its own; it takes the 《本草》 of the passage before it, there being no later mark in the section to inherit. It is also the book telling us the Korean reading of the headword, hu, which is how this entry is romanised here.

Boncho 本草

1.26 Silver Fish 銀條魚

1.26.1

Source원문

性平, 無毒. 寬中徤胃, 合生薑作羹良. 《入門》

Translation영역

Its nature is balanced and it is without toxicity. It loosens the centre and strengthens the stomach, and is good made into a soup with fresh ginger.

Clinical note임상 주석

徤 is the transcription's form of 健.

Immun 入門

1.26.2

Source원문

疑今之銀口魚也.

Translation영역

It is probably the euneo of today.

Clinical note임상 주석

This passage carries no source mark of its own and takes the 《入門》 of the passage before it; in substance, though, it is a Korean editorial remark of the same kind as the 俗方 notes elsewhere in the chapter, and 疑 marks it as the compiler's conjecture rather than an identification. **疑 is the word to preserve in translation, because the book is telling the reader it does not know.** 銀口魚 is euneo, the ayu or sweetfish Plecoglossus altivelis, an amphidromous fish of clear Korean and Japanese rivers with a distinctive melon scent. The Chinese 銀條魚 is more likely one of the Salangidae, the icefishes, which would also make it a near relative of whatever 白魚 at 1.22 denotes. Three of this chapter's entries — 1.22, 1.26 and 1.28 — are of this shape: a Chinese headword that the compilers could not confidently match to a Korean fish, entered with a guess attached. They are better left unidentified than forced, and this one is left unlinked in the materia medica.

Immun 入門

1.27 Porpoise 海㹠

믈가치 물까치 the water magpie

1.27.1

Source원문

味醎, 無毒. 主蠱毒瘴瘧, 作脯食之.

Translation영역

Its flavour is salty and it is without toxicity. It governs gu toxin and miasmal malaria; make it into dried strips and eat it.

Clinical note임상 주석

**This is a cetacean, not a fish, and it must not be confused with the 河㹠 of 1.16 — the characters differ by one element and the animals could not be further apart.** 海㹠 is 海豚, the sea pig, that is a dolphin or porpoise; 河㹠 is 河豚, the river pig, that is the pufferfish. The next passage's description settles it. The vernacular gloss is the interesting part and it supports the reading. The gloss meulgachi is mulkkachi in modern spelling — meul is mul, water, and gachi is the Middle Korean form of kkachi, magpie — so the sixteenth-century Korean name is the water magpie, presumably for a black-and-white animal. That naming logic is still alive in Korean: kkachi dolgorae, magpie dolphin, is the current name for Dall's porpoise, Phocoenoides dalli, which is strikingly pied. Two cautions on the modern form. The word mulkkachi today is the name of a bird, the azure-winged magpie Cyanopica cyanus, and nobody now calls a porpoise by it; and the gloss identifies a colour pattern rather than a species. The finless porpoise Neophocaena asiaeorientalis, sanggwaengi, is the small cetacean of Korean coastal and estuarine waters and the one that fits 江中亦有 below, but it is plain grey, not pied. 作脯, dried strips, is how whale and porpoise meat was preserved. 瘴瘧 is the malaria of miasmal country.

Immun 入門

1.27.2

Source원문

皮中脂摩惡瘡疥癬痔瘻. 生大海, 候風潮卽出, 形如㹠, 江中亦有. 《入門》

Translation영역

The fat within its skin is rubbed on malign sores, scabies, lichen, piles and fistula. It lives in the great sea and comes out when it watches for wind and tide; its form is like a pig's, and it is found in rivers too.

Clinical note임상 주석

皮中脂 is blubber, the subcutaneous fat layer, and rendered blubber is an emollient and occlusive like any animal fat — which is the whole of its action on 疥癬, scabies and tinea, both of which are infestations and infections that an ointment base does not clear. 候風潮卽出, coming out to watch the wind and tide, is the surfacing and porpoising of a small cetacean, read as weather-watching; fishermen did and do read porpoise behaviour as a sign of weather. 江中亦有, found in rivers too, is a real observation: the finless porpoise and the Yangtze porpoise enter estuaries and rivers, and the river-dwelling cetaceans of East Asia are among the most threatened mammals anywhere. **No part of a cetacean may be taken, bought, prescribed or used.** The International Whaling Commission moratorium, CITES listings covering all cetaceans, and national marine-mammal protection laws make this a criminal matter in most jurisdictions, and the small porpoises are in a worse position than the great whales: the Yangtze finless porpoise is Critically Endangered and the Korean Neophocaena asiaeorientalis population has fallen steeply, chiefly through drowning in fishing gear. There is a toxicological reason too. Small cetaceans are long-lived apex predators and their flesh and blubber carry among the highest burdens of methylmercury, polychlorinated biphenyls and organochlorine pesticides measured in any food; the dolphin meat sold in Japan has repeatedly been found at mercury concentrations many times the regulatory limit, and the blubber is where the organochlorines sit. Blubber is therefore the worst part of the worst animal in this chapter to rub into broken skin or to eat.

Immun 入門

1.28 Isinglass Fish 鮰魚

1.28.1

Source원문

生南海, 味美, 無毒. 膘可作膠, 一名江鰾. 《入門》

Translation영역

It lives in the Southern Sea, is fine in flavour, and is without toxicity. Its swim bladder can be made into glue, and one name for that is river isinglass.

Clinical note임상 주석

膘 stands for 鰾, the swim bladder. Dried fish maw boiled down gives isinglass, a nearly pure collagen glue, and it was the standard adhesive for fine woodwork, bookbinding and painting as well as a food; it is still used to clarify beer and wine. So the entry is about a product rather than an animal, which is what makes the headword hard — see the note below.

Immun 入門

1.28.2

Source원문

一名魚鰾, 治破傷風. 《正傳》

Translation영역

One name for it is 魚鰾, and it treats lockjaw from a wound.

Clinical note임상 주석

**This is where the entry becomes load-bearing for the formulary, and where a decision had to be made about the materia medica.** 魚鰾, isinglass, is a drug the Bogam uses: it appears in two formulas of the wind chapter, 魚鰾(炒) and 魚鰾三錢(以脂麻同炒), both for the convulsive, arched-back presentation this passage names, and the materia medica of this site carries it as 魚鰾 with the alias 魚膠. But the headword of this section is 鮰魚, a fish, and 魚鰾 is its dried swim bladder; a fish and a product rendered from one organ of it are not the same drug, in the same way that 錫 and 錫灰 are not the same drug in the 金部. **So this section is left unlinked, and the note records that the form actually used in the book is 魚鰾.** The reading is not forced on anyone: the Bogam's own 一名 could be taken to equate the fish with the product, and a reader who takes it that way would link the section to 魚鰾. I think the distinction is the more useful one and I have made it that way. **破傷風 is tetanus, and it is the indication in this chapter where the modern gap is widest.** Tetanus follows contamination of a wound with Clostridium tetani spores; the toxin blocks inhibitory neurotransmission, producing trismus, risus sardonicus, opisthotonus and autonomic instability, and generalised tetanus is fatal in a substantial proportion of cases even with intensive care. **It is almost entirely preventable by vaccination**, and the management of a tetanus-prone wound is debridement, tetanus immunoglobulin and vaccine as indicated, and antibiotics; established tetanus needs an intensive care unit with ventilation, muscle relaxation and sedation. Fish glue has no action on any part of this. 正傳 is the Yixue Zhengzhuan.

Jeongjeon 正傳

1.28.3

Source원문

疑是今之民魚. 《俗方》

Translation영역

It is probably the mineo of today.

Clinical note임상 주석

Again 疑, the compiler's conjecture rather than an identification, and again marked 俗方 as a Korean addition. 民魚 is mineo, the brown croaker Miichthys miiuy, a large sciaenid of the Korean west and south coasts and a relative of the 石首魚 of 1.9 — and it is in fact the fish whose swim bladder gave the Korean isinglass, mineo bureppul, the glue used by furniture makers and in the mounting of paintings. So the guess is a good one and probably right, which is more than can be said for the guess at 1.26. I still read it as a conjecture, because the book marks it as one.

Sokbang 俗方

1.29 Pickled Fish 魚鮓

믈고기젓 물고기젓 salted and fermented fish

1.29.1

Source원문

性平, 味甘, 無毒. 乃諸魚所作之鮓也, 不益脾胃. 《入門》

Translation영역

Its nature is balanced, its flavour sweet, and it is without toxicity. It is the pickle made from fishes of every kind, and it does not benefit the spleen and stomach.

Clinical note임상 주석

The last two entries of the chapter are not animals at all but preparations — salted, fermented fish and raw sliced fish — and that is how the 魚部 chooses to end: with two ways of eating fish rather than two more fishes. meulgogi-jeot is mulgogi-jeot, that is jeotgal, the salted and fermented fish of Korean cooking, and 鮓 is its Chinese counterpart, fish salted and packed with cooked grain to ferment. 乃諸魚所作之鮓也, made from fishes of every kind, says plainly that the headword is a method and not a species. **不益脾胃, it does not benefit the spleen and stomach, is a negative verdict and should be given its weight**, since it is one of only two in the chapter — the other is 食之無別功 at 1.18 — and it is the right verdict for different reasons than the Yixue Rumen had. Salted fermented fish is very high in sodium; it carries biogenic amines, histamine above all, which is why fermented and spoiled fish cause the flushing, headache and palpitation of scombroid-type reactions and why it interacts badly with monoamine oxidase inhibitors; and salt-preserved fish is one of the better-established dietary carcinogens, Chinese-style salted fish having been classified by the International Agency for Research on Cancer as carcinogenic to humans on the evidence for nasopharyngeal carcinoma, with nitrosamines the suspected agents. Salted fish and pickles are also associated with gastric cancer risk in the East Asian epidemiology. None of that was available to the compilers; their conclusion happens to point the same way. The book adds a specific prohibition elsewhere: 服藥食忌 reads 有术, 勿食 … 靑魚鮓, while taking atractylodes do not eat pickled black carp, which is this preparation of the fish at 1.8. Fermented fish made from freshwater fish is also a vehicle for Clonorchis and Opisthorchis metacercariae, which survive light salting; the Southeast Asian fermented fish dishes are a principal route for Opisthorchis viverrini, and liver fluke infection from them is the main driver of cholangiocarcinoma in that region.

Immun 入門

1.30 Raw Sliced Fish 魚膾

Medicinal entry 믈고기회 물고기회 raw sliced fish

1.30.1

Source원문

性温, 味甘. 主喉中氣結ㆍ心下酸水, 和薑ㆍ芥ㆍ醋食之.

Translation영역

Its nature is warm and its flavour sweet. It governs knotted qi in the throat and sour water below the heart; eat it dressed with ginger, mustard and vinegar.

Clinical note임상 주석

The chapter closes on hoe, raw sliced fish, and the materia medica of this site carries it as a headword because the book treats it as one. 喉中氣結 is the sensation of a lump in the throat, the 梅核氣 of the later literature and the globus of modern practice; 心下酸水 is acid regurgitation. Both would now be worked up as gastro-oesophageal reflux, and persistent globus with any difficulty swallowing, weight loss or hoarseness needs endoscopy to exclude an oesophageal or pharyngeal tumour. The dressing — 薑, 芥, 醋, ginger, mustard and vinegar — is the standard accompaniment and is still the standard accompaniment, and it is worth being explicit about what it does and does not do. It makes the dish palatable and may reduce bacterial counts a little at the surface. **It does not kill parasites.** Neither vinegar, nor soy, nor mustard, nor wasabi, nor soju kills Clonorchis sinensis metacercariae in freshwater fish or Anisakis larvae in marine fish; this has been tested and the larvae survive the concentrations and times involved in eating. Only thorough cooking, or freezing to the temperatures and durations set in food law, destroys them. **So the one general warning this chapter needs, stated here because this is where the book puts raw fish: raw freshwater fish in Korea, China and Japan is the route by which Clonorchis sinensis is acquired, the fluke settles in the bile ducts for decades causing cholangitis and biliary obstruction, and it is classified by the International Agency for Research on Cancer as carcinogenic to humans for cholangiocarcinoma.** Korea has had among the highest prevalences anywhere, concentrated along the southern river basins, and the national control programme is built on exactly this dish. Praziquantel cures the infection. Raw marine fish carries Anisakis, and raw or lightly salted freshwater fish also carries the broad tapeworm Diphyllobothrium and, in the East Asian salmonids, D. nihonkaiense. The book's own rule should be read alongside this. 服藥食忌, at 1.1 of that section, lists 魚膾 among the things not to be eaten while taking medicine at all: 又不可多食肥猪ㆍ犬肉ㆍ油膩ㆍ肥羹ㆍ魚膾ㆍ腥臊等物. The reason given there is that rich and raw foods obstruct the action of the drug. The modern reason is better, and it points the same way.

Boncho 本草

1.30.2

Source원문

鮒魚膾, 開胃, 止腸澼.

Translation영역

Crucian carp eaten raw opens the stomach and checks intestinal flux.

Clinical note임상 주석

鮒魚 is the crucian carp of 1.2, where the same preparation is given for 久赤白痢. 腸澼 is intestinal flux, chronic dysenteric diarrhoea with mucus and blood. **This is the most hazardous single instruction in the chapter after the pufferfish, and it is worth saying why it is worse than it looks: raw crucian carp is the classic Korean vehicle for the liver fluke, and the indication is a chronic bloody diarrhoea, so a patient who in fact had a parasitic or invasive bowel infection would be given a second parasite for it.** Chronic diarrhoea with blood is investigated — stool microscopy and culture, and colonoscopy — because the list includes inflammatory bowel disease and colorectal carcinoma as well as infection.

Boncho 本草

1.30.3

Source원문

鯉魚膾, 主氣結. 《本草》

Translation영역

Carp eaten raw governs knotted qi.

Clinical note임상 주석

The carp of 1.1.1, raw. The same objection applies, with the added point that 服藥食忌 forbids carp outright while taking 天門冬. It is a fitting close to the chapter that its last word should be a dish the book elsewhere tells its readers not to eat.

Boncho 本草

About this translation 凡例

Base text: Donguibogam (東醫寶鑑, 1613 first edition), Decoctions and Medicinals, Volume 2, Fishes chapter. The Chinese text follows the Kyujanggak transcription; where the first printing (初刊本) reads differently the transcription's reading is printed and the variant recorded in a textual note. Original character forms are retained. The sixteenth-century Korean vernacular names (鄕名) are printed as the transcription gives them, in Unicode old Hangul converted from the Hanyang private-use encoding. Terminology follows Wiseman & Feng, A Practical Dictionary of Chinese Medicine. Translation and clinical notes are original to this site. — Eui Young (Justin) Chung, L.Ac., Dipl. O.M.