Formulas · Text · Donguibogam 東醫寶鑑

Metals

Geumbu

한글 금부 · Pinyin Jin Bu

Eight metals and twenty-five things made from them — including the mercury and lead preparations, and the book's own account of what they do to the body

金部

The last chapter of the materia medica, and the most dangerous. Eight metals — gold, silver, quicksilver, cinnabar-mercury, red lead, lead, copper filings, iron — with twenty-five preparations hanging beneath them: calomel and vermilion under quicksilver, lead frost and white lead and lead ash and tin under lead, verdigris and the knob of an old mirror and an old copper coin under copper filings. The old names of the five metals are given here, which is where the drug names elsewhere in the book come from: gold was yellow metal, silver white, copper red, lead blue-green, iron black. What raises the chapter above a list is that the Bogam states the harms. Quicksilver entering the ear eats the brain away entirely, it says, and entering the flesh makes every joint contract; taken to excess it leaves a man unable to walk. Calomel heals sores well but injures the stomach, so that the teeth loosen in the gums and may fall out — a sixteenth-century description of mercurial gingivitis, written down as a caution and not as a discovery. The clinical notes here do not soften the doses; they say plainly that none of this is used, and why.

1.1 Gold Filings 金屑

Medicinal entry 唐 imported

1.1.1

Source원문

性平一云寒, 味辛, 有毒生者有毒, 熟者無毒. 主鎭精神, 安魂定魄, 鎭心, 益五藏, 添精補髓. 治五藏風癎失志, 療小兒驚.

Translation영역

Balanced in nature one text says cold, acrid in flavour, toxic the raw is toxic, the cooked is not toxic. It governs the settling of the essence-spirit, quiets the ethereal soul and steadies the corporeal soul, settles the heart, benefits the five viscera, and adds to essence and supplements marrow. It treats wind epilepsy of the five viscera with loss of mind, and fright in small children.

Clinical note임상 주석

生者有毒, 熟者無毒 — the raw is toxic, the refined is not — is the whole safety doctrine of the section, and it is stated inside the 性味 as an interlinear gloss rather than as a sentence of its own. Metallic gold is chemically inert and is not absorbed from the gut, so the toxicity the Bencao reports cannot be gold's. The likeliest explanation is that unrefined native gold carried its ore companions: arsenic and mercury minerals are the usual associates of gold ores, arsenopyrite in particular, and repeated smelting and beating into leaf would drive them off. That is an inference from the mineralogy and is not something the text says; it should be read as the most probable account and not as established.

Boncho 本草

1.1.2

Source원문

百鍊者堪入藥, 生者有毒殺人.

Translation영역

What has been refined a hundred times will do to put into medicine; the raw is toxic and kills a person.

Clinical note임상 주석

殺人 — kills a person. The section is not hedging, and the grade of the article is the whole of the difference it claims.

Boncho 本草

1.1.3

Source원문

醫家所用, 皆鍊熟金箔, 及以水煎金器取汁用之, 固無毒矣.

Translation영역

What physicians use is in every case refined gold leaf, or the liquid got by boiling a gold vessel in water; these are certainly without toxicity.

Clinical note임상 주석

Two preparations, and the second is the safer for a reason the text does not give: water boiled in a gold vessel carries no gold out of it, so there is nothing in the dose. 金箔, gold leaf, is the form the Bogam's prescriptions actually carry.

Boncho 本草

1.1.4

Source원문

本經不曰金而更加屑字者, 盖須烹鍊鍛屑爲箔, 方可入藥. 《本草》

Translation영역

That the Canon does not say "gold" but adds the word "filings" is because it must be smelted, refined, forged and filed into leaf before it can enter medicine.

Clinical note임상 주석

The section explains its own heading, and in explaining it says that 金屑 is not a substance distinct from 金箔 but the 本草 heading under which gold leaf sits. That, together with 醫家所用皆鍊熟金箔 in the passage before, is the ground for linking this section to the corpus's geumbak.

Boncho 本草

1.1.5

Source원문

世間萬物不能壞者, 惟黃金一物耳. 金者五行之極, 五行相生, 至金而極. 天一生水, 水生木, 木生火, 火生土, 土生金. 金最後生, 備五行之氣, 造化之功用全矣. 金之爲寳, 熔之得水, 擊之得火, 其柔象木, 其色象土. 水火土木四性具備, 歷萬年而不朽, 經百煉而愈堅, 實剛健純陽之至寳也. 《正理》

Translation영역

Of all the things in the world, the one that cannot be destroyed is gold alone. Metal is the farthest point of the five phases: the five phases engender one another, and at metal they reach their limit. Heaven-one engenders water, water engenders wood, wood engenders fire, fire engenders earth, earth engenders metal. Metal is engendered last, is furnished with the qi of all five phases, and in it the work of creation and transformation is complete. As a treasure, gold yields water when it is melted and fire when it is struck; its softness is in the likeness of wood and its colour in the likeness of earth. The four natures of water, fire, earth and wood are all present in it; it passes ten thousand years without decaying and grows harder for a hundred smeltings. It is truly the utmost treasure of hard strength and pure yang.

Clinical note임상 주석

The longest passage in the 金部 and not a pharmacological one. 天一生水 is the opening of the engendering cycle that the 水部 quotes in its own lede, and the argument here runs the cycle to its end so as to put metal last and therefore most complete. The two observations the argument hangs on are real: molten gold flows like water (熔之得水) and gold struck on stone throws a spark (擊之得火), and from these gold is read as containing the other phases. 純陽, pure yang, is the term to hold on to, because the two sections that follow gold in this 部 are mercury and lead.

Jeongni 正理

1.1.6

Source원문

金畏水銀. 黃金得水銀而變白, 得火則回其本色. 《參同》

Translation영역

Gold fears quicksilver. Gold that meets quicksilver turns white, and on meeting fire returns to its own colour.

Clinical note임상 주석

An exact description of gold amalgam. Mercury wets and dissolves gold to a white pasty amalgam, and heating drives the mercury off as vapour and leaves the gold behind, which is the fire-gilding process. The same fact is put to use as a treatment in 水銀 below, where heated gold is pressed against flesh to draw mercury out of it. The chapter therefore records amalgamation twice, once as chemistry and once as an antidote. 畏, fear, is one of the seven relations of drug to drug set out in the Preface on Decoctions.

Chamdonggye 參同

1.2 Silver Filings 銀屑

Medicinal entry

1.2.1

Source원문

性平, 味辛, 有毒. 主安五藏, 定心神, 止驚悸, 除邪氣. 治小兒驚癎ㆍ癲疾ㆍ狂走之病.

Translation영역

Balanced in nature, acrid in flavour, toxic. It governs the quieting of the five viscera, steadies the heart spirit, stops fright palpitations and removes evil qi. It treats fright epilepsy in small children, withdrawal disease, and the disease of running mad.

Clinical note임상 주석

有毒 of metallic silver, where gold two lines above was 有毒 only in the raw. Silver is poorly absorbed and the chief harm from it is argyria, the slate-grey staining of skin and mucosa from long exposure; it is not the acute poison the grading suggests, and it is also not the harmless metal the 靈砂 and 黃丹 sections will claim their own articles to be.

Boncho 本草

1.2.2

Source원문

方家用銀屑, 當取見成銀箔用之.

Translation영역

Where prescriptions use silver filings, one should take ready-made silver leaf and use that.

Clinical note임상 주석

The plainest statement in either 部 that a 本草 heading and a prescription ingredient are the same article under two names: 銀屑 in the materia medica is 銀箔 in the pharmacy. It is the ground for linking this section to the corpus's eunbak.

Boncho 本草

1.2.3

Source원문

金銀屑並破冷除風.

Translation영역

Gold and silver filings both break cold and remove wind.

Clinical note임상 주석

金銀屑 is one written name for two drugs, 金屑 and 銀屑, and 並, both, is the word that gives it away. This is the Bogam's habit of writing a shared character once — the same habit that produces 金銀箔 for 金箔 plus 銀箔 in the prescriptions, 天麥門冬 for 天門冬 plus 麥門冬, and 生熟地黃 for 生地黃 plus 熟地黃. Read as a single name it would invent a drug that does not exist and lose two that do. It is worth noting that the habit shows up here, inside the 本草 chapter, and not only in the formula lists.

Boncho 本草

1.2.4

Source원문

銀惡錫. 《本草》

Translation영역

Silver is averse to tin.

Clinical note임상 주석

惡, aversion, is another of the seven relations of drug to drug from the Preface on Decoctions, and this is one of the few places in these two 部 where one is named. 錫, tin, stands four leaves below as a leaf under lead. The observation belongs to the smith's trade before the physician's: tin alloys readily with silver and spoils it, and the Bencao records a metallurgical incompatibility as a pharmacological one.

Boncho 本草

1.3 Quicksilver 水銀

Medicinal entry 唐 imported

1.3.1

Source원문

性寒, 味辛, 有毒. 安心鎭神, 除風. 主疥癬ㆍ瘑瘻ㆍ痂瘍ㆍ白禿ㆍ一切惡瘡, 墮胎, 下死胎.

Translation영역

Cold in nature, acrid in flavour, toxic. It quiets the heart and settles the spirit and removes wind. It governs scab and lichen, running sores and fistula, crusted sores, white bald patches and all malign sores; it drops the fetus and brings down a dead fetus.

Clinical note임상 주석

Every indication after the first two is external — skin disease — and the last two are abortifacient. Mercury is a cumulative neurotoxin and nephrotoxin. Elemental mercury gives off vapour at room temperature and the vapour is absorbed through the lungs and damages the central nervous system; inorganic mercury salts damage the proximal renal tubule; and mercury crosses the placenta, which is the mechanism behind 墮胎 — the pregnancy ends because mother and fetus are both poisoned. No mercury preparation has a place in practice today, and that includes the external ones, because mercury is absorbed through broken skin and the sores these indications name are broken skin. The section is translated in full and nothing is softened; the point of the note is that none of it is to be done.

Boncho 本草

1.3.2

Source원문

一名汞, 出於丹砂, 卽姹女也. 殺金ㆍ銀ㆍ銅ㆍ錫毒.

Translation영역

One name for it is 汞. It comes out of cinnabar, and it is the lovely maiden of the alchemists. It kills the toxicity of gold, silver, copper and tin.

Clinical note임상 주석

出於丹砂 is correct. Cinnabar is mercury(II) sulfide, and roasting it in air drives off sulfur dioxide and leaves the metal, which is what the 入門 furnace below describes. 姹女, the lovely maiden, is the alchemists' cover name for mercury. 殺…毒 inverts the relation recorded under 金屑, where it was gold that feared mercury.

Boncho 本草

1.3.3

Source원문

水銀得鈆則凝, 得硫黃則結, 倂棗肉硏之則散, 灌尸中則令尸後腐, 得紫河車則伏. 以金ㆍ銀ㆍ銅ㆍ鐵置其上則浮, 銅得之則明.

Translation영역

Quicksilver met with lead congeals; met with sulfur it binds; ground together with jujube flesh it scatters; poured into a corpse it keeps the corpse from rotting; met with placenta it is subdued. Gold, silver, copper and iron laid upon it float, and copper that meets it brightens.

Clinical note임상 주석

Five of these six are sound. Lead and mercury form an amalgam that is solid at room temperature (得鈆則凝). Sulfur and mercury combine to the sulfide (得硫黃則結), which is the whole method of the 靈砂 section below. Mercury arrests putrefaction because it is biocidal. Metals laid on mercury do float, because mercury at about 13.5 g/cm3 is denser than iron (7.9) or copper (8.9) — though gold and silver, which the list includes, in fact dissolve into it as amalgams rather than resting on it. 銅得之則明 is the amalgam-silvering of copper and is the basis of the mirror trade. 得紫河車則伏, subdued by placenta, has no chemistry behind it that can be identified here.

Boncho 本草

1.3.4

Source원문

入耳則能蝕腦至盡, 入肉則令百節攣縮. 以金物火炙熨之, 水銀當出蝕金, 候金色白者是也.

Translation영역

Entering the ear it can eat the brain away to nothing; entering the flesh it makes all the hundred joints draw up and contract. Heat a gold object in the fire and press it on, and the quicksilver will come out and eat into the gold — you know it by the gold turning white.

Clinical note임상 주석

This is the passage the whole section turns on. 入耳則能蝕腦至盡 and 入肉則令百節攣縮 are a sixteenth-century record of mercury poisoning: the brain eaten away to nothing is the central nervous system damage of mercury vapour, and the hundred joints drawing up and contracting is the limb involvement — tremor, spasm, contracture — that the trades which handled mercury were known for. The Bogam is describing erethism and the motor signs of mercurialism in the only vocabulary available to it, and it is describing them accurately. The remedy that follows rests on real chemistry: mercury amalgamates with gold, the amalgam is white, and heated gold pressed on the skin does draw surface mercury out and does announce it by changing colour. It will do nothing about what has already been absorbed, which is the part that matters.

Boncho 本草

1.3.5

Source원문

水銀過服, 令人痿躄. 中其毒則須飮酒, 并肥猪肉ㆍ鐵漿可解之. 《本草》

Translation영역

Quicksilver taken to excess makes a person wither and go lame. Where one is poisoned by it, one must drink wine; and fat pork and iron-steep water can resolve it.

Clinical note임상 주석

痿躄 — withering and lameness, the limbs losing their use. With the passage before it this is the second and plainer statement of mercury poisoning in the section, and it is the one that names a dose relation: 過服, taken to excess. The antidotes are of their time. Neither wine nor fat pork nor 鐵漿 — the iron-steep water that stands as a leaf under 生鐵 below — binds or clears mercury, and a reader should take from this passage that the exposure is the thing to stop rather than that a remedy exists on this list. Where real poisoning is suspected the management is removal from exposure and, on specialist advice, a chelating agent; nothing in this chapter substitutes for that.

Boncho 本草

1.3.6

Source원문

形如水, 色白如銀, 出於丹砂. 其法作爐, 置砂於中, 下承以水, 土覆以器, 外加火煆養, 則烟飛着上, 水銀流於下, 色微紅. 《入門》

Translation영역

Its shape is like water and its colour white like silver, and it comes out of cinnabar. The method: make a furnace, set the cinnabar inside it, support it below with water, cover it above with a vessel, apply fire outside to calcine and nurture it, and the fume flies and settles on the upper part while the quicksilver runs down below, slightly red in colour.

Clinical note임상 주석

A working description of cinnabar retorting. Mercury(II) sulfide roasted in air gives sulfur dioxide and mercury vapour, the vapour condenses on the cool cover above, and the liquid metal runs down to the water below. 色微紅, slightly red, is unreacted cinnabar carried over with it. The furnace is open to the room, so the operator stands in mercury vapour for the length of the operation — which is exactly the exposure the section's own 入耳則能蝕腦至盡 describes.

Immun 入門

1.3.7

Source원문

消水銀時, 飛着釜上灰, 名曰汞粉, 俗呼爲水銀灰. 《本草》

Translation영역

When quicksilver is consumed, the ash that flies up and settles on the cauldron is called 汞粉, and is commonly called quicksilver ash.

Clinical note임상 주석

汞粉 is the first alias the next leaf, 輕粉, gives for itself. The two entries therefore describe the same sublimate from two sides, and the alias chain that joins them is the Bogam's own rather than an editorial guess.

Boncho 本草

1.3.8

Source원문

水銀去虱最妙. 《俗方》

Translation영역

Quicksilver is most excellent for getting rid of lice.

Clinical note임상 주석

A 俗方, a domestic remedy, and the one place the section drops to household use. It works, in that mercury is insecticidal, and it is exactly the sort of use that produced chronic poisoning in people who were never being treated for anything.

Sokbang 俗方

1.3.1 Calomel 輕粉

Medicinal entry listed under Mercury (toxic)水銀

1.3.1.1

Source원문

性冷, 味辛, 有毒. 通大腸, 付小兒疳, 并瘰癧, 殺惡瘡疥癬虫, 療鼻上酒㾴ㆍ風瘡瘙痒.

Translation영역

Chilly in nature, acrid in flavour, toxic. It frees the large intestine; applied, it treats gan disease in small children and scrofula as well; it kills the worms of malign sores, scab and lichen; and it treats brandy-nose on the nose, and wind sores with itching.

Clinical note임상 주석

通大腸 is the only internal indication, and it is the one that is pharmacologically real: calomel is a purgative, and that is what it was used for in Western medicine into the twentieth century. Everything else here is external application to broken skin.

Boncho 本草

1.3.1.2

Source원문

一名汞粉, 一名水銀粉, 亦名膩粉, 或曰峭粉. 飛煉水銀而成製法見雜方. 醫家下膈最爲要藥.

Translation영역

One name for it is 汞粉, another 水銀粉; it is also called 膩粉, and some call it 峭粉. It is made by subliming and refining quicksilver the method of preparation is seen in Miscellaneous Formulas. Among physicians it is the most essential drug for draining below the diaphragm.

Clinical note임상 주석

Four aliases in one line, and the first of them, 汞粉, is the name the 水銀 section above gave to the sublimate that settles on the cauldron. 飛煉, subliming and refining, is the preparation: mercury heated with common salt and green vitriol gives mercurous chloride, Hg2Cl2, which is calomel. 製法見雜方 sends the reader to the Miscellaneous Formulas chapter of the 雜病篇 for the method, and is an interlinear cross-reference rather than a source attribution.

Boncho 本草

1.3.1.3

Source원문

輕粉下涎藥及小兒涎潮瘈瘲多用, 然不可過多, 多則傷人. 《本草》

Translation영역

Calomel is much used in drool-draining medicines and in children's drool flooding with tugging and slackening of the limbs; but it must not be used in excess, for in excess it injures a person.

Clinical note임상 주석

瘈瘲, tugging and slackening, is clonic convulsion. The warning is on quantity and on nothing else, which is how a cumulative poison comes to be mismanaged: there is no safe quantity of a mercury salt given repeatedly to a child. The sharper point is that the drooling and the convulsion this drug was given for are themselves among the signs of mercury poisoning in infants — the picture later named acrodynia, or pink disease, which followed calomel teething powders and which stopped when the powders were withdrawn. The indication and the adverse effect are the same clinical picture.

Boncho 本草

1.3.1.4

Source원문

雖善治瘡, 能傷胃, 故動揺齒齦, 或至墮落. 《醫鍳》

Translation영역

Though it treats sores well, it can injure the stomach, and so it loosens the teeth and gums, and they may even fall out.

Clinical note임상 주석

The most valuable single sentence in the 金部. Loosening of the teeth and gums to the point of losing them is mercurial stomatitis — the gingival and periodontal destruction that is one of the classical signs of chronic mercury poisoning, and the sign by which the hatters and the mirror-makers were known. The 醫鑑 records it in the sixteenth century, attributes it to a drug, and attributes it to the right drug. Its causal reading — 傷胃, the stomach is injured, and the teeth follow from that — is the medicine of its time; the observation is not, and it stands as a piece of occupational and iatrogenic toxicology three centuries early. It should be read as the book's own evidence against its own prescription.

Uigam 醫鑑

1.3.2 Artificial Vermilion 銀硃

Medicinal entry listed under Mercury (toxic)水銀

1.3.2.1

Source원문

亦水銀升者. 殺瘡虫, 去腦虱, 熏癩風瘡, 能收水去毒. 一名水花硃. 《入門》

Translation영역

This too is quicksilver sublimed. It kills the worms of sores, gets rid of head lice, is burned as a fumigant for leprous wind sores, and can draw off watery discharge and take away toxin. One name for it is 水花硃.

Clinical note임상 주석

水銀升者, quicksilver sublimed: mercury heated with sulfur gives mercury(II) sulfide, which is the same compound as natural cinnabar, and the artificial article is vermilion. It is a mercury compound and the cautions under 水銀 apply. 熏, burning it as a fumigant, is the worst of the uses given — heated mercuric sulfide decomposes and patient and practitioner both breathe mercury vapour. The alias in the last clause matters beyond this leaf. A 入門 leaf in the 諸瘡門 glosses its own ingredient 水花硃 as 卽輕粉也, that is as calomel, and the corpus follows that gloss. Here the 湯液篇 says 水花硃 is another name for 銀硃, which is not calomel at all but the sulfide. The two places contradict each other; the contradiction is the Bogam's own, and the identification made on the 諸瘡門 gloss should be read in the light of this line.

Immun 入門

1.4 Sublimed Mercuric Sulfide 靈砂

Medicinal entry 唐 imported

1.4.1

Source원문

性溫, 味甘, 無毒. 主一切痼冷ㆍ五藏百病, 墜痰涎, 益氣力, 通血脉, 明目, 止煩, 辟惡, 定心藏之怔忡. 久服令人心靈.

Translation영역

Warm in nature, sweet in flavour, without toxicity. It governs all entrenched cold and the hundred diseases of the five viscera; it drops phlegm and drool, benefits the strength of qi, frees the blood vessels, brightens the eyes, stops vexation, wards off the malign, and steadies fearful throbbing of the heart viscus. Taken long it makes a person's heart numinous.

Clinical note임상 주석

無毒 is wrong here, and the error is the most consequential one in these two 部. 靈砂 is mercury and sulfur sublimed together — the next passage gives the charge — and the product is mercuric sulfide with unconverted material in it. The 水銀 section a leaf earlier calls the same metal 有毒 and sets out what it does. Here the processed article is declared free of toxicity and 久服, long taking, is recommended on top of that. A mercury preparation with no toxicity recorded and a licence to take it for a long time is more dangerous than 水銀's own entry, because 水銀 at least warns. Mercuric sulfide is poorly absorbed from the gut, which is why it did not kill quickly and why its reputation survived; it remains a mercury compound, and 久服 of it is cumulative exposure. It is not used today.

Boncho 本草

1.4.2

Source원문

一名二氣砂. 煉法, 水銀三兩, 硫黃一兩, 細硏, 先炒作靑砂頭, 後入水火旣濟爐抽之, 如束鍼紋者成就也. 《本草》

Translation영역

One name for it is 二氣砂, the sand of the two qi. The method of refining: quicksilver three nyang, sulfur one nyang; grind them fine, first stir-fry them to make the blue sand head, then put this into the water-and-fire-completed furnace and draw it off; when it has the grain of a bundle of needles, it is done.

Clinical note임상 주석

The proportions are kept as the book gives them: three nyang of mercury to one of sulfur by weight. Mercury and sulfur combine as HgS in a ratio of about 6.3 to 1 by weight, so this charge carries roughly twice the sulfur the reaction needs; the excess burns off in the subliming, which is part of why the operation has to be driven as long as it is. 二氣, the two qi, are the mercury and the sulfur. 水火旣濟 is hexagram 63 of the Yijing, fire below and water above, and is the alchemists' name for a sublimation furnace. 如束鍼紋, the grain of a bundle of needles, is the acicular crystal habit of sublimed cinnabar and is a sound test of the product — the one genuinely diagnostic endpoint given for any preparation in this 部.

Boncho 本草

1.5 Red Lead 黃丹

Medicinal entry

1.5.1

Source원문

性微寒一云凉, 味辛, 無毒. 鎭心安神, 主驚癎癲疾, 除毒𤍠ㆍ驚悸ㆍ狂走, 療吐逆反胃, 止吐血及嗽, 治金瘡及湯火瘡, 染鬚. 可煎膏, 止痛生肌.

Translation영역

Slightly cold in nature one text says cool, acrid in flavour, without toxicity. It settles the heart and quiets the spirit, governs fright epilepsy and withdrawal disease, removes toxic heat and fright palpitations and running mad, treats retching and stomach reflux, stops spitting of blood and cough, treats metal wounds and scalds and burns, and dyes the beard. It can be decocted into a salve, which stops pain and engenders flesh.

Clinical note임상 주석

無毒 is wrong. 黃丹 is minium, lead tetroxide, Pb3O4. Lead is a cumulative neurotoxin for which no threshold of safe exposure is known; in children it damages the developing nervous system at blood concentrations far below those that produce symptoms, and in adults it causes peripheral neuropathy, anaemia, hypertension and nephropathy. The internal indications listed here — epilepsy, retching, spitting of blood, cough — are all routes to systemic lead poisoning. The last use is the one with the longest afterlife: 可煎膏, decocted into a salve, is the lead plaster that was the standard medicated plaster base in Korea and China into living memory, and lead from such a plaster is absorbed through skin. It is still a source of poisoning where it is in use. None of this is to be done.

Boncho 本草

1.5.2

Source원문

一名鈆丹, 卽黃丹也. 又名鈆華, 生於鈆. 《本草》

Translation영역

One name for it is 鈆丹, which is 黃丹. It is also called 鈆華, and it is produced from lead.

Clinical note임상 주석

生於鈆, produced from lead, is the section's own warning if a reader takes it as one: the drug is a lead compound, whatever the 無毒 above says. The Bogam puts this derived oxide before the metal it comes from, so the reader meets 黃丹 at 1.5 and 鈆 only at 1.6.

Boncho 本草

1.5.3

Source원문

炒鈆作丹, 其色黃, 故曰黃丹. 入藥, 炒令色變爲紫色, 細硏水飛二遍用之. 《入門》

Translation영역

Lead is stir-fried to make the dan, and its colour is yellow, and so it is called yellow dan. For use in medicine, stir-fry it until the colour changes to purple, grind it fine and levigate it twice in water.

Clinical note임상 주석

Roasting lead in air gives litharge, PbO, which is yellow, and further roasting gives minium, Pb3O4, which is orange-red to purple-red; the colour endpoint 紫色 is consistent with minium, so the recipe describes what it claims to make. 水飛二遍, levigated twice, is a finer preparation than any other mineral in these two 部 is given, and a finer powder of a lead oxide is more readily absorbed rather than less. The care taken over the preparation increases the dose.

Immun 入門

1.6 Lead 鈆

Medicinal entry

1.6.1

Source원문

鈆性凉, 味甘, 無毒. 鎭心安神, 主反胃嘔噦及蛇蝎咬毒. 《本草》

Translation영역

Cool in nature, sweet in flavour, without toxicity. It settles the heart and quiets the spirit, and governs stomach reflux with retching and belching, and the toxin of snake and scorpion bite.

Clinical note임상 주석

無毒 of metallic lead. The next passage contradicts it in the Bogam's own words, two lines later and on the same page.

Boncho 本草

1.6.2

Source원문

鈆錫俱禀北方壬癸陰極之精, 性濡滑而多陰毒, 過服傷人心胃. 入藥, 以鐵銚熔化㵼新瓦上, 濾去渣脚二三次, 取淨用. 《入門》

Translation영역

Lead and tin both receive the essence of the north, of ren and gui, of yin at its extreme; their nature is moist and slippery and they carry much yin toxin, and taken to excess they injure a person's heart and stomach. For use in medicine, melt it down in an iron ladle and pour it onto a new tile, strain off the dross two or three times, and take the clean metal.

Clinical note임상 주석

多陰毒 — they carry much yin toxin — is the Bogam contradicting its own 無毒 of two lines before, and it is this 部's own record that lead is poisonous. 過服傷人心胃 adds the dose relation. The processing is a real refining step: lead melted, poured out and skimmed two or three times sheds the ore companions that lead carries — antimony, arsenic, copper and silver — and leaves purer lead. It makes the article purer, which means it makes the lead exposure more exact rather than smaller. 壬癸 are the two water stems of the ten, north and water being the direction and the phase that lead is assigned to.

Immun 入門

1.6.3

Source원문

古人名金爲黃金, 銀爲白金, 銅爲赤金, 鈆爲靑金, 鐵爲黑金. 《本草》

Translation영역

The ancients named gold the yellow metal, silver the white metal, copper the red metal, lead the blue-green metal and iron the black metal.

Clinical note임상 주석

The five metals under five-phase colour names, and the key to several drug names in this 部. 赤銅屑 at 1.7, the red-copper filings, is 赤金 in this scheme, and reading the list first is what stops 赤銅 from looking like a kind of copper rather than copper itself. The colours are the ordinary five-phase colours — yellow for earth, white for metal, red for fire, blue-green for wood, black for water — mapped onto five metals in the order in which the metals were known. One caution: the name the Bogam's own prescriptions use for the drug this section heads is not 靑金 but 黑鉛, black lead, which belongs to a different and later naming contrast and not to this list. The two systems sit side by side in the corpus, and the section heading itself is the bare 鈆.

Boncho 本草

1.6.1 Lead Frost 鈆霜

listed under Lead (toxic)黑鉛

1.6.1.1

Source원문

性冷, 無毒. 消痰, 止驚悸, 解酒毒, 治𤍠涎塞𦚾膈煩悶ㆍ中風痰實及小兒驚風.

Translation영역

Chilly in nature, without toxicity. It disperses phlegm, stops fright palpitations, resolves the toxin of wine, and treats heat-drool blocking the chest and diaphragm with vexation and oppression, wind stroke with phlegm repletion, and fright wind in small children.

Clinical note임상 주석

無毒 of a lead salt, prescribed for 小兒驚風 — fright wind in small children. No flavour is recorded, only 性冷.

Boncho 本草

1.6.1.2

Source원문

一名鈆白霜. 其法, 取鈆雜水銀十五之一, 合煉作片, 置醋瓮中密封, 經久成霜, 刮取用之. 《本草》

Translation영역

One name for it is 鈆白霜, lead white frost. The method: take lead with quicksilver at one part in fifteen, refine them together into sheets, set them in a vinegar jar sealed tight, and after a long time a frost forms; scrape it off and use it.

Clinical note임상 주석

The proportion and the method are kept as the book gives them: one part mercury to fifteen of lead, sealed with vinegar for a long time. Lead exposed to acetic acid vapour in a closed vessel grows a white efflorescence of lead acetate, the sugar of lead, which is sweet, water-soluble, and far more readily taken up than the metal or its oxides; and the mercury at one part in fifteen makes the sheet an amalgam, which corrodes more freely than lead alone. The product is therefore the most bioavailable lead preparation in the 金部 and carries mercury as well. Of every article in these two 部, this is the one whose stated preparation is most likely to poison quickly, and the Bogam records it as 無毒 and gives it to children. The identification as lead acetate is an inference from the method and not a statement of the text, but the method leaves little else it could be.

Boncho 本草

1.6.2 White Lead 鈆粉

Medicinal entry listed under Lead (toxic)黑鉛

1.6.2.1

Source원문

性寒一云凉, 味辛, 無毒. 主伏口毒螫, 殺三虫, 去鼈瘕, 療惡瘡, 墮胎, 療癥瘕積聚, 止久痢成疳及癕腫瘻爛.

Translation영역

Cold in nature one text says cool, acrid in flavour, without toxicity. It governs the subduing of mouth toxin and stings, kills the three worms, removes turtle conglomeration, treats malign sores, drops the fetus, treats concretions and conglomerations and accumulations and gatherings, and stops long-standing dysentery that has become gan disease, and welling abscess with swelling, fistula and ulceration.

Clinical note임상 주석

無毒 of white lead, with 墮胎 standing among the indications. 癕 is folded to 癰 by the project's variant table.

Boncho 本草

1.6.2.2

Source원문

卽今化鈆所作胡粉也. 一名定粉, 一名光粉, 一名瓦粉. 《本草》《湯液》

Translation영역

It is the 胡粉 made nowadays by transforming lead. One name for it is 定粉, another 光粉, another 瓦粉.

Clinical note임상 주석

鈆粉卽胡粉 is the Bogam's own identification and is what links this leaf to the corpus's hobun, under which the alias table already carries 鉛粉, 定粉 and 官粉. 胡粉 is basic lead carbonate, made by exposing lead to vinegar and to the carbon dioxide of fermenting dung or tan — the stack process — and it is the white lead of European painting. The two source marks stand together in the transcription and are both recorded.

Boncho 本草 · Tangaek 湯液

1.6.2.3

Source원문

胡粉卽真鈆粉也. 出韶州者名韶粉, 出定州者名定粉, 総名光粉. 性滯故可澁腸止痢. 《省翁》

Translation영역

胡粉 is true lead powder. What comes from Shaozhou is called 韶粉, what comes from Dingzhou is called 定粉, and the general name is 光粉. Its nature is sluggish, and so it can astringe the intestine and stop dysentery.

Clinical note임상 주석

性滯故可澁腸 — sluggish by nature and so astringent to the bowel — is how a lead salt was understood to stop diarrhoea, and lead salts do bind in the gut and do slow it. That is also the route by which a course of white lead for dysentery delivers an absorbed dose, repeatedly, to a patient who is already losing fluid. 韶州 and 定州 are Chinese sources and the place-names are the trade geography of the drug, not a distinction of substance; 光粉 is said to be the general name, which is the one of the three the corpus does not yet carry.

Seongong 省翁

1.6.3 Lead Ash 鈆灰

listed under Lead (toxic)黑鉛

1.6.3.1

Source원문

治瘰癧. 其法, 取鈆三兩, 鐵器熬之, 久當有脚如黑灰, 取此灰猪脂調付. 《本草》

Translation영역

It treats scrofula. The method: take three nyang of lead, dry-roast it in an iron vessel, and after a long time there will be a sediment like black ash; take this ash, mix it with pork fat and apply it.

Clinical note임상 주석

The quantity and the method are kept as the book gives them: three nyang of lead roasted down to a black residue. The leaf has no 性味 at all — neither nature nor flavour nor toxicity — and consists of one indication and one method, which is a shape the 湯液篇 uses often and which is the reason no 性味 field exists in this project. What the roasting leaves in an iron pan is lead oxide with carbon and iron scale in it, and mixed with fat and spread on the broken skin of scrofulous nodes it is an absorbed dose of lead through a wound. Not used.

Boncho 本草

1.6.4 Tin 錫

Medicinal entry listed under Lead (toxic)黑鉛 납 납 nap — the sixteenth-century vernacular name for tin

1.6.4.1

Source원문

性寒, 有小毒. 主癭瘤ㆍ鬼氣疰忤.

Translation영역

Cold in nature, slightly toxic. It governs goitre and tumour, and ghost qi with fixed and offending disorders.

Clinical note임상 주석

有小毒, slightly toxic, is the only intermediate toxicity grading in the whole lead group, which is otherwise all 無毒 or 有毒 — and it happens to be in the right direction. Inorganic tin is poorly absorbed and is much the least harmful of the metals in this section; beside lead and mercury it is nearly inert. The grading is correct here where it is wrong on either side of it. The vernacular name is the point of interest in this leaf: the book glosses 錫, tin, as nap, and in modern Korean nap is the word for lead, tin being juseok. Whether sixteenth-century nap covered both metals or named tin alone cannot be settled from this line, and the name is recorded as the book gives it.

Boncho 本草

1.6.4.2

Source원문

卽白蠟也. 錯爲末, 和靑木香, 付瘡腫惡毒. 《本草》

Translation영역

It is 白蠟. File it to powder, mix it with costus root, and apply it to sores, swellings and malign toxin.

Clinical note임상 주석

A collation note matters more here than in most places. Read as transcribed, 錫卽白蠟也 says that tin is white wax, which is false and which collides head-on with the 木部 section 白蠟 — the wax of the scale insect on 冬靑樹 — that stands only ten leaves earlier as the last item before the 玉部. The first printing's 白鑞 is the standard word for tin and pewter and removes the collision entirely. 錯, to file: tin is soft enough to be rasped to powder, which is why this is the one metal in the 金部 prepared that way instead of by calcining or levigation. The corpus carries 錫灰, tin ash, as an ingredient in the worm-expelling formulas of the 蟲門, and this leaf is its 本草 heading.

Boncho 本草

1.7 Red Copper Filings 赤銅屑

1.7.1

Source원문

性平, 味苦, 微毒. 治風眼, 明目, 接骨, 銲齒, 療女人血氣心痛, 又主腋臭, 黑鬚髮. 《本草》

Translation영역

Balanced in nature, bitter in flavour, slightly toxic. It treats wind eye, brightens the eyes, joins bone, solders teeth, treats heart pain from blood and qi in women, and also governs armpit odour and blackens the beard and hair.

Clinical note임상 주석

銲齒, to solder teeth, is dentistry: filings packed to fix a loose tooth. 微毒 is a fair grading — soluble copper salts irritate the gut and are emetic in quantity, chronic copper overload injures the liver, and metallic filings are much less available than the salts. The eye indication and the bone-joining one are the two that run through the whole copper group below.

Boncho 本草

1.7.2

Source원문

赤銅爲佳. 其法, 取打銅器上起薄皮, 硏爲末, 水飛取淨用. 《局方》

Translation영역

Red copper is the good kind. The method: take the thin skin that rises on copper vessels when they are beaten, grind it to powder, levigate it in water and take the clean part.

Clinical note임상 주석

The 薄皮 that rises on beaten copper is the oxide scale that flakes off under the hammer, so the article is less filings of the metal than hammer scale — cuprous and cupric oxide. That is also why 銅靑, the next leaf, has to be a separate article: the green of weathered copper is a different compound again. 赤銅 is 赤金 in the colour scheme the 鈆 section set out three leaves above, and means copper itself rather than a kind of copper.

Gukbang 局方

1.7.1 Verdigris 銅靑

Medicinal entry listed under Red Copper Filings赤銅屑

1.7.1.1

Source원문

性平, 微毒. 明目, 去膚赤息肉, 治婦人血氣心痛.

Translation영역

Balanced in nature, slightly toxic. It brightens the eyes, removes redness of the skin of the eye and fleshy outgrowths, and treats heart pain from blood and qi in women.

Clinical note임상 주석

No flavour recorded. 息肉 is a fleshy outgrowth, here of the eye — pterygium or a granulation.

Boncho 本草

1.7.1.2

Source원문

一名銅綠. 生熟銅皆有靑, 靑卽銅之精華. 銅器上綠色者是也. 能吐痰涎. 《本草》

Translation영역

One name for it is 銅綠. Both raw and refined copper have the green upon them, and the green is the floriate essence of copper. It is what is green on copper vessels. It can make one vomit phlegm and drool.

Clinical note임상 주석

一名銅綠 is the Bogam's own alias and is what links this leaf to the corpus's dongnok, where the alias table already carries 銅靑. Verdigris is basic copper acetate or basic copper carbonate, formed where copper weathers, and it is soluble enough to be taken up. 能吐痰涎 records the truth about it: soluble copper salts are powerful emetics, and copper sulfate was used as an emetic into the twentieth century. It is also how copper kills — a copper salt given to make a patient vomit can cause haemolysis and acute liver and kidney injury, and deaths from emetic copper are on record. Not used.

Boncho 本草

1.7.1.3

Source원문

水洗淨, 細硏水飛, 慢火熬乾用. 《入門》

Translation영역

Wash it clean in water, grind it fine and levigate it, then dry it down over a slow fire.

Clinical note임상 주석

Washing first is sensible for a weathered scraping, which carries dirt and copper chloride as well as the carbonate.

Immun 入門

1.7.2 The Boss of a Bronze Mirror 銅鏡鼻

1.7.2.1

Source원문

性冷, 味酸, 微毒. 主女子血閉ㆍ癥瘕ㆍ絶孕及産後餘疹刺痛.

Translation영역

Chilly in nature, sour in flavour, slightly toxic. It governs blocked menses in women, concretion and conglomeration, inability to conceive, and the stabbing pain of residual rash after childbirth.

Clinical note임상 주석

銅鏡鼻 is the pierced knob on the back of a bronze mirror, through which the carrying cord passes — a named part of a particular made object. It is the first of the seven such articles that fill the lower half of the 金部: mirror boss, old coin, horse bit, cartwheel linchpin, key, saw tooth and axe. From here to the end of the 部 the materia medica is a materia medica of household ironmongery.

Boncho 本草

1.7.2.2

Source원문

古鍳亦主一切邪魅ㆍ女人鬼交及蠱毒ㆍ小兒驚癎, 又催生, 治暴心痛, 並燒赤淬酒中, 溫飮之.

Translation영역

An old mirror likewise governs all bewitchment by evil, intercourse with ghosts in women, gu poisoning and fright epilepsy in small children; it also hastens birth and treats sudden heart pain. In every case heat it red, quench it in wine, and drink the wine warm.

Clinical note임상 주석

燒赤淬酒, heated red and quenched in wine, is the preparation that governs almost every bronze and iron object in this 部. What it transfers to the wine is a little copper or iron and a great deal of heat. The indications are apotropaic, and the article is chosen because a mirror is what one looks into and what reflects an evil back.

Boncho 本草

1.7.2.3

Source원문

百虫入人耳中, 取鏡當耳敲之, 自出. 《本草》

Translation영역

Where any insect has got into a person's ear, take a mirror, strike it beside the ear, and the insect comes out of itself.

Clinical note임상 주석

The one remedy in the 金部 that uses a drug without administering it: the mirror is struck, not given. It is also not unreasonable, since an insect in the ear canal will move in response to vibration, and striking bronze beside the ear is a loud and local vibration. The modern handling of an insect in the ear is to kill it with oil or lidocaine and remove it under direct vision.

Boncho 本草

1.7.3 Old Cash Coin 古文錢

Medicinal entry listed under Red Copper Filings赤銅屑

1.7.3.1

Source원문

性平. 明目, 去瞖障, 療風赤眼及婦人橫逆産ㆍ心腹痛ㆍ五淋ㆍ月隔.

Translation영역

Balanced in nature. It brightens the eyes, removes screens and obstructions, and treats wind red eye, crosswise and breech birth in women, pain of the heart and abdomen, the five stranguries, and blocked menses.

Clinical note임상 주석

性平 alone — no flavour and no toxicity recorded. 月隔 is the menses cut off; 橫逆産 is transverse and breech presentation, for which the 金部 offers several metal objects and for which nothing on this list is of any use.

Boncho 本草

1.7.3.2

Source원문

卽靑銅錢也. 火燒通紅, 醋淬用之. 《本草》

Translation영역

It is the blue-bronze cash coin. Heat it in the fire until it glows red through, quench it in vinegar, and use it.

Clinical note임상 주석

靑銅 is bronze, copper alloyed with tin, and is not the 靑金 of the 鈆 section's colour list, which is lead; the two words look alike and mean different metals. Quenching red-hot bronze in vinegar leaves copper acetate in the vinegar, and that is the active part of the preparation — the same compound as 銅靑 two leaves above, reached by a shorter road. The corpus carries 古文錢 as an ingredient, three coins calcined and vinegar-quenched seven times, in the 回春 bone-setting plaster 接骨丹, and records there that it has no herb id; this leaf is its 本草 heading.

Boncho 本草

1.7.4 Pyrite 自然銅

Medicinal entry listed under Red Copper Filings赤銅屑 산골 산골 sangol — usually read as 山骨, mountain bone, though the text gives no gloss

1.7.4.1

Source원문

性平一云凉, 味辛, 無毒. 安心, 止驚悸, 療折傷, 散血止痛, 排膿, 消瘀血, 續筋骨.

Translation영역

Balanced in nature one text says cool, acrid in flavour, without toxicity. It quiets the heart, stops fright palpitations, treats fracture and injury, scatters blood and stops pain, expels pus, disperses static blood and joins sinew and bone.

Clinical note임상 주석

The fracture indications are what this mineral has always been used for and what it is still used for. 無毒 here is contradicted by the 丹心 passage at the end of the same leaf, which is unusual: the Bogam more often leaves the contradiction standing between sections than inside one.

Boncho 本草

1.7.4.2

Source원문

在處有之. 不從礦煉, 故號自然銅. 接骨續筋最佳. 《本草》

Translation영역

It is found everywhere. It is not refined from ore, and so it is called natural copper. For joining bone and knitting sinew it is the best.

Clinical note임상 주석

不從礦煉, not smelted from ore, is the whole of the name — the mineral is used as it is found, where every other article in this 部 has been through a furnace. 自然銅 is not copper: it is pyrite, iron disulfide, whose brass colour and metallic lustre earned it the name, and the same lustre that earned it fool's gold in English. The corpus assigns it to the 石部 by its part field; the Bogam puts it here in the 金部, as a leaf under red copper filings, which is where the name rather than the mineralogy put it.

Boncho 本草

1.7.4.3

Source원문

採得之, 方圓不定, 其色靑黃如銅. 燒之起靑焰, 如硫黃臭. 凢使, 火煆醋淬九次, 水飛用. 《入門》

Translation영역

When it is gathered it is of no fixed shape, square or round, and its colour is blue-yellow like copper. Burned, it throws up a blue flame with a smell like sulfur. Whenever it is used, calcine it in fire and quench it in vinegar nine times, then levigate it.

Clinical note임상 주석

燒之起靑焰, 如硫黃臭 is both accurate and diagnostic: roasted pyrite gives off sulfur dioxide, which smells of burning sulfur, and sulfur burns with a blue flame. The Bogam is identifying an iron sulfide by its roast, which is how a mineralogist would do it. 火煆醋淬九次, nine calcinations and vinegar quenches, is the most laborious preparation in the 金部; it converts the sulfide towards iron oxide and leaves iron acetate behind, and it is what makes the mineral usable at all.

Immun 入門

1.7.4.4

Source원문

自然銅, 世以爲接骨之藥, 然火煉有毒, 不可多用, 戒之. 《丹心》

Translation영역

Pyrite is held by the world to be a bone-joining drug, but calcined in fire it is toxic; it must not be used in quantity. Be warned.

Clinical note임상 주석

戒之 — be warned. A compiler's caution against a popular drug, set three passages after the same leaf called the drug 無毒, and one of the very few places in these two 部 where a toxicity warning is attached to an article the book has just cleared. 火煉有毒 is right in substance: roasting pyrite liberates sulfur dioxide, and where the pyrite carries arsenopyrite — as pyrites commonly do — it liberates arsenic trioxide as well, which would also be deposited in the vessel. 自然銅 is still in the pharmacopoeias as a mineral for fractures, so of all the warnings in the 金部 this is the one most likely to be useful to a reader, and it should travel with the drug.

Dansim 丹心

1.8 Cast Iron 生鐵

Medicinal entry 무쇠 무쇠 musoe — cast iron

1.8.1

Source원문

性微寒. 治癎疾, 鎭心, 療癬及惡瘡疥ㆍ蜘蛛咬及脫肛, 能黑鬚髮.

Translation영역

Slightly cold in nature. It treats epilepsy, settles the heart, treats lichen and malign sores and scab, spider bite and prolapse of the rectum, and can blacken the beard and hair.

Clinical note임상 주석

Nature only — no flavour and no toxicity recorded. musoe is still the ordinary Korean word for cast iron, so this is one of the vernacular names in the 湯液篇 that has come down unchanged, and the next passage's 鑄成器物, cast into vessels, is exactly what the word means.

Boncho 本草

1.8.2

Source원문

初鍊去礦, 用以鑄成器物者爲生鐵, 是鐺釜之類. 皆煮汁或燒淬取汁用. 《本草》

Translation영역

What is first smelted and freed of its ore and then used to cast vessels is 生鐵 — the kind of thing pans and cauldrons are. In every case it is boiled for its liquor, or heated and quenched and the liquor taken.

Clinical note임상 주석

This section and its first two leaves define the three grades of iron across themselves: 生鐵 cast iron here, 柔鐵 — also called 熟鐵 — wrought iron at 1.8.1, and 鋼鐵 steel at 1.8.2, made by mixing the two. That is a correct account of pre-modern ironmaking, written as three materia medica entries. The pharmacy, as the last clause says, is the water: iron boiled in water or quenched in it leaves iron behind, and every one of the fifteen leaves below is a way of getting iron into a liquid or a powder. For iron-deficiency anaemia that is not an unreasonable thing to be doing, and the iron from a cooking pot is a real dietary source; none of the indications in this section, however, is anaemia.

Boncho 本草

1.8.1 Wrought Iron 柔鐵

1.8.1.1

Source원문

性平, 味辛, 無毒. 主堅肌耐痛.

Translation영역

Balanced in nature, acrid in flavour, without toxicity. It governs the firming of the flesh and the enduring of pain.

Boncho 本草

1.8.1.2

Source원문

一名熟鐵. 再三銷拍, 可以作鐷者. 凢單言鐵者, 皆柔鐵也. 《本草》

Translation영역

One name for it is 熟鐵. It is what can be made into plate by being melted and beaten two or three times. Wherever 鐵 is said by itself, it is always 柔鐵.

Clinical note임상 주석

凢單言鐵者, 皆柔鐵也 — wherever the books say simply iron, wrought iron is meant. This is the lexical rule for reading every bare 鐵 in the Bogam's prescriptions, and it is stated exactly once, here, inside a leaf that the table of contents does not count. 鐷 is iron beaten into plate.

Boncho 本草

1.8.2 Steel 鋼鐵

listed under Cast Iron生鐵 시우쇠 시우쇠 siusoe — forged iron

1.8.2.1

Source원문

味甘, 無毒. 主金瘡ㆍ煩滿ㆍ𦚾膈氣寒ㆍ食不下.

Translation영역

Sweet in flavour, without toxicity. It governs metal wounds, vexing fullness, cold qi in the chest and diaphragm, and food that will not go down.

Clinical note임상 주석

Flavour only — no nature recorded, where the leaf above gave 性平 and the section above gave 性微寒.

Boncho 本草

1.8.2.2

Source원문

以生熟相雜和用, 以作刀劒鋒刃者爲鋼鐵. 《本草》

Translation영역

What is made by mixing the raw and the cooked together and using them, to make the edges of knives and swords, is 鋼鐵.

Clinical note임상 주석

Steel as cast iron and wrought iron mixed — carburizing and decarburizing brought to meet in the middle — which is how steel was in fact made before the modern processes, said in one clause. The vernacular name attached here needs care: in modern Korean siusoe is the word for wrought iron, which this chapter calls 柔鐵 and places in the leaf above, so the sixteenth-century gloss and the modern word do not point at the same grade of iron. The book's usage is what is recorded, and the modern sense is noted rather than substituted.

Boncho 本草

1.8.3 Iron Hammer Scale 鐵屑

listed under Cast Iron生鐵 쇠ᄯᅩᆼ 쇠똥 soettong — iron dung, the scale that falls from hot iron under the hammer

1.8.3.1

Source원문

性平, 味辛, 無毒. 主驚邪ㆍ癲癎ㆍ小兒客忤, 又主鬼打ㆍ鬼疰ㆍ邪氣及風痙, 並煮澄淸飮之. 又腋氣, 炒熨之. 《本草》

Translation영역

Balanced in nature, acrid in flavour, without toxicity. It governs fright evil, withdrawal and epilepsy, and the visiting offence of small children; it also governs the ghost blow, the ghost fixation, evil qi and wind tetany — in every case boil it, let it settle clear, and drink that. For armpit odour, stir-fry it and press it on hot.

Clinical note임상 주석

煮澄淸飮之, boiled and let settle clear and the clear part drunk, is the pharmacy of the whole iron group: what is drunk is the water, and the scale stays in the pot.

Boncho 本草

1.8.3.2

Source원문

鍜鑕下打落細皮屑也. 《本草》

Translation영역

It is the fine skin filings struck down beneath the smith's anvil.

Clinical note임상 주석

soettong, iron dung, is the vernacular name, and it names the thing exactly: the scale that flakes off hot iron under the hammer and lies in the dirt around the anvil. It is iron oxide, mostly magnetite and wustite, and it is the same article the next leaf steeps in water. 鍜 stands for 鍛, to forge, and 鑕 is the anvil block.

Boncho 本草

1.8.4 Iron Steep Liquor 鐵液

1.8.4.1

Source원문

性平, 味辛甘, 無毒. 治心驚邪ㆍ一切毒蛇虫及蚕漆咬瘡ㆍ腸風ㆍ痔漏ㆍ脫肛ㆍ諸惡瘡痂疥, 并染鬚髮令黑.

Translation영역

Balanced in nature, acrid and sweet in flavour, without toxicity. It treats heart fright and evil, the bites and sores of all venomous snakes and insects and of silkworm and lacquer, intestinal wind, haemorrhoidal fistula, prolapse of the rectum, and all malign sores with crust and scab; and it dyes the beard and hair black.

Clinical note임상 주석

蚕漆咬 covers two different injuries under one verb — the silkworm's bite and the lacquer rash, which is a contact dermatitis from urushiol and not a bite at all.

Boncho 本草

1.8.4.2

Source원문

取鍜家砧上打落細皮屑, 水漬日久, 取汁用. 堪染皂. 一名鐵落. 《本草》

Translation영역

Take the fine skin filings struck down on the smith's block, steep them in water for a long time, and take the liquid. It will serve to dye black. One name for it is 鐵落.

Clinical note임상 주석

一名鐵落 matters for the corpus. 鐵落 is the drug the Suwen names for angry mania, in the sentence the 得效 quotes as 陽厥怒狂, 治以生鐵洛是也, and the corpus carries that passage with a first-edition collation at 生鐵洛 against 生鐵落. Here the 湯液篇 makes 鐵落 the alias not of the scale but of 鐵液, the water the scale has stood in, which is the finer distinction of the two: 鐵屑 is the scale, 鐵液 is what the scale leaves behind in water. Iron steeped long gives iron(II) in solution, which oxidizes to iron(III) and settles out; 堪染皂, that it will serve to dye black, is the practical test that the iron is there.

Boncho 本草

1.8.5 Iron Flower Powder 鐵華粉

Medicinal entry listed under Cast Iron生鐵

1.8.5.1

Source원문

性平, 味醎, 無毒. 安心神, 堅骨髓, 强志力, 除風邪, 延年變白.

Translation영역

Balanced in nature, salty in flavour, without toxicity. It quiets the heart spirit, firms the bone marrow, strengthens the will and the strength, removes wind evil, extends the years and changes white hair.

Boncho 本草

1.8.5.2

Source원문

以鐵拍作片段, 𥂁水洒之, 置醋瓮中, 百日後鐵上生衣, 刮取細硏, 合和諸藥爲丸散.

Translation영역

Beat iron into sheets and pieces, sprinkle them with salt water, set them in a vinegar jar, and after a hundred days a coat grows on the iron; scrape it off, grind it fine, and compound it with the other drugs into pills and powders.

Clinical note임상 주석

The method is the same hundred-day vinegar-jar corrosion as 鈆霜 under lead, run on iron instead of lead, and the product is iron acetate with some oxide and chloride in it from the salt water. The identification is an inference from the method rather than a statement of the text. The quantities are given only as a time — 百日, a hundred days — which the book means literally.

Boncho 本草

1.8.5.3

Source원문

諸鐵無正入丸散, 惟煮汁用. 華粉則入藥. 一名鐵胤粉. 《本草》

Translation영역

None of the irons properly goes into pills and powders — they are used only as a boiled liquor. Iron flower powder, though, does enter medicine. One name for it is 鐵胤粉.

Clinical note임상 주석

諸鐵無正入丸散, 惟煮汁用 is the rule for the whole iron group and the pharmaceutical reason this article exists: metallic iron and its scale cannot be made into a pill, and this one can, because it is a soluble salt rather than a metal or an oxide. A point for the corpus follows from 一名鐵胤粉. The alias table carries 鐵胤粉 under cheolbun, that is under 鐵粉, on the strength of a formula in the 外形篇前陰門; but the 湯液篇 puts 鐵胤粉 here under 鐵華粉, and the next leaf keeps the two articles apart by defining 鐵粉 as 鐵華粉 calcined. The alias wants review against this line.

Boncho 本草

1.8.6 Iron Powder 鐵粉

Medicinal entry listed under Cast Iron生鐵

1.8.6.1

Source원문

性平, 味醎, 無毒. 安心神, 堅骨髓, 除百病, 變白, 令體健能食.

Translation영역

Balanced in nature, salty in flavour, without toxicity. It quiets the heart spirit, firms the bone marrow, removes the hundred diseases, changes white hair, and makes the body sound and able to eat.

Clinical note임상 주석

The indications are copied almost word for word from the leaf above, which is how the Bogam marks two articles as near kin.

Boncho 本草

1.8.6.2

Source원문

以鐵華粉入火飛煉者爲鐵粉. 《本草》

Translation영역

What is made by putting iron flower powder into the fire and subliming and refining it is 鐵粉.

Clinical note임상 주석

The definition keeps 鐵粉 and 鐵華粉 apart, and the chemistry keeps them apart too: calcining iron acetate drives off the acetate and leaves iron oxide, so the two articles differ exactly in the solubility that the leaf above said was the point of having 鐵華粉 at all. The Bogam has made a distinction it then almost erases by giving both the same indications.

Boncho 本草

1.8.7 Blade Soot 鐵𤑔

1.8.7.1

Source원문

主惡瘡蝕𧏾ㆍ金瘡ㆍ手足皸折ㆍ瘰癧毒腫, 殺虫, 染鬚髮令黑.

Translation영역

It governs malign sores with eating ulceration, metal wounds, chaps and cracks of the hands and feet, and scrofula with toxic swelling; it kills worms and dyes the beard and hair black.

Clinical note임상 주석

No 性味 at all — neither nature nor flavour nor toxicity, only indications.

Boncho 本草

1.8.7.2

Source원문

以竹木𤑔火於刀斧刃上燒之, 津出如漆者是也. 一名刀烟. 及𤍠未凝時塗之.

Translation영역

Take bamboo or wood, set it alight, and burn it against the edge of a knife or axe; what exudes like lacquer is this. One name for it is 刀烟, blade smoke. Apply it while it is still hot and has not congealed.

Clinical note임상 주석

刀烟, blade smoke: wood burned against a cold blade deposits a tarry condensate of wood tar, creosote and soot, and 津出如漆, exuding like lacquer, is exactly what that looks like. This is the one entry in the 金部 whose stated material is not a heavy metal and whose action is pharmacologically sound — the knife contributes only a cold surface to condense on. Wood tar is antiseptic and keratolytic, and wood-tar and coal-tar preparations were the mainstay of dermatology into the twentieth century and are still in use for psoriasis and chronic eczema.

Boncho 本草

1.8.7.3

Source원문

又塗諸瘡, 令入水不爛. 《本草》

Translation영역

Applied to any sore, it keeps it from macerating when it meets water.

Clinical note임상 주석

令入水不爛 is the water-repellent tar film, and for a worker whose hands are wet all day it is a real benefit. Of everything in these two 部 this is the claim that stands up best.

Boncho 本草

1.8.8 Needle Filings 鍼砂

Medicinal entry listed under Cast Iron生鐵 바ᄂᆞᆯᄆᆡᆼᄀᆞ노라슬흔ᄀᆞᄅᆞ 바늘 만드느라 쓿은 가루 the powder rasped off in making needles

1.8.8.1

Source원문

性平, 無毒. 療積聚, 染鬚髮令黑, 堪染白爲皂.

Translation영역

Balanced in nature, without toxicity. It treats accumulations and gatherings, dyes the beard and hair black, and will serve to dye white things black.

Clinical note임상 주석

No flavour recorded.

Boncho 本草

1.8.8.2

Source원문

作鍼家磨鑢細末, 謂之鍼砂. 火煆醋淬, 硏飛爲粉, 功同鐵粉. 《本草》

Translation영역

The fine powder from the filing and rasping of the needle-makers is called 鍼砂. Calcine it in fire and quench it in vinegar, grind and levigate it to a powder, and its powers are the same as iron powder's.

Clinical note임상 주석

The vernacular name is a definition rather than a name — the powder rasped off in making needles — and the hanja sentence says the same thing in other words, so this is a place where the name-form and the gloss-form of a vernacular name coincide and confirm each other. 功同鐵粉 places the article with the iron group, and the chemistry agrees: iron filings calcined and vinegar-quenched give iron oxide and iron acetate, which is what 鐵粉 and 鐵華粉 are between them.

Boncho 本草

1.8.8.3

Source원문

入藥用潔淨者, 醋浸撈起晒乾, 再用醋慢火炒二三遍, 紫色爲度. 《入門》

Translation영역

For use in medicine take the clean kind: steep it in vinegar, lift it out and dry it in the sun, then with vinegar again stir-fry it over a slow fire two or three times, until it is purple.

Clinical note임상 주석

紫色爲度 — purple is the measure — is the same colour endpoint 黃丹 gave for roasted lead. Repeated vinegar roasting of iron does give a purple-brown oxide, so the endpoint is real and not merely formulaic.

Immun 入門

1.8.9 Forge Flue Dust 鐵精

Medicinal entry listed under Cast Iron生鐵

1.8.9.1

Source원문

性平微溫. 明目, 療驚悸, 定心氣, 治小兒風癎ㆍ陰㿉ㆍ脫肛.

Translation영역

Balanced in nature and slightly warm. It brightens the eyes, treats fright palpitations, steadies the heart qi, and treats wind epilepsy in small children, yin bulge, and prolapse of the rectum.

Clinical note임상 주석

陰㿉 is the bulging swelling of the scrotum that the 外形篇 treats under 㿉, and the two indications beside it — epilepsy in children and rectal prolapse — recur right through the iron leaves. No flavour recorded.

Boncho 本草

1.8.9.2

Source원문

鍜竈中飛出如塵, 紫色而輕虛者爲鐵精. 能化銅, 可以磨瑩銅器. 《本草》

Translation영역

What flies out of the forge hearth like dust, purple in colour and light and hollow, is 鐵精. It can transform copper, and will serve to polish copper vessels bright.

Clinical note임상 주석

The flue dust of a forge — the finest oxide, carried up out of the hearth — and 輕虛, light and hollow, is a good description of it. 能化銅 and the polishing use are the abrasive and not a chemistry: a fine hard oxide powder is a polish, and jeweller's rouge, which is precisely this material, is still used for the purpose. The 紫色 of the dust is the same purple-red iron oxide that 鍼砂 and 黃丹 take as their colour endpoint.

Boncho 本草

1.8.10 Iron Steep Water 鐵漿

listed under Cast Iron生鐵 무쇠ᄃᆞᆷ가우린믈 무쇠 담가 우린 물 water in which cast iron has been steeped and drawn off

1.8.10.1

Source원문

性平, 味辛, 無毒. 鎭心, 主癲癎發𤍠狂走ㆍ六畜癲狂, 又療蛇大虎狼毒刺ㆍ惡虫毒.

Translation영역

Balanced in nature, acrid in flavour, without toxicity. It settles the heart, governs withdrawal and epilepsy with heat effusion and running mad and the mad withdrawal of the six domestic animals, and treats the toxin of snake, dog, tiger and wolf, of thorn wounds, and of malign insects.

Clinical note임상 주석

六畜癲狂, the mad withdrawal of the six domestic animals, is veterinary: the same water is given to a maddened ox or dog. It is one of the few veterinary indications in the 湯液篇.

Boncho 本草

1.8.10.2

Source원문

取鐵浸水經久, 色靑沫出, 卽堪染皂者爲鐵漿. 能解諸毒入腹. 《本草》

Translation영역

Take iron, steep it in water for a long time, and when the colour turns blue-green and a scum rises, so that it will serve to dye black, that is 鐵漿. It can resolve all toxins that have got into the belly.

Clinical note임상 주석

色靑沫出 is iron(II) in solution, the blue-green stage, going over to iron(III); and 堪染皂, that it will dye black, is again the test that the iron is there. 能解諸毒入腹 is the claim that made this the antidote named in the 水銀 section above, where wine, fat pork and 鐵漿 are offered against mercury poisoning. It does not bind mercury, and that recommendation should not be carried forward.

Boncho 本草

1.8.10.3

Source원문

以生鐵漬水, 日取飮之, 日久生黃膏, 尤勝, 令人輕健. 《入門》

Translation영역

Steep cast iron in water and drink of it daily; after long days a yellow cream forms, which is better still, and it makes a person light and sound.

Clinical note임상 주석

The 黃膏, yellow cream, is hydrated ferric oxide settling out of the water — rust. Drinking it daily is a dilute iron tonic, and of every practice described in the 金部 this is the one that comes nearest to something a modern reader would recognize, since iron leached into water or food from an iron vessel is a real and measurable dietary iron source and has been used deliberately against iron-deficiency anaemia in the present day. The 本草 gives it for mania and for bites rather than for anaemia, so the match is accidental; but the preparation is sound and 日取飮之, drunk daily, is the right way to take iron. The vernacular name here is a definition and not a name, which is the pattern the 水部 and the 土部 use throughout.

Immun 入門

1.8.11 Horse-Bit Iron 馬㗸鐵

listed under Cast Iron生鐵 ᄆᆞᆯ마함쇠 말 마함쇠 the iron of a horse's bit

1.8.11.1

Source원문

性平, 無毒. 主難産ㆍ小兒癎.

Translation영역

Balanced in nature, without toxicity. It governs difficult birth and epilepsy in small children.

Clinical note임상 주석

No flavour recorded. 難産 is the indication several of the iron objects share, and the thinking behind it is that a bit is what guides and draws a horse.

Boncho 本草

1.8.11.2

Source원문

此馬勒口鐵也. 作醫工鍼甚妙. 《本草》

Translation영역

This is the iron of the bit in a horse's mouth. Made into needles for the physician's craft it is excellent.

Clinical note임상 주석

作醫工鍼甚妙 — made into needles for the physician's craft it is excellent. This is the 湯液篇 naming the material for acupuncture needles, and it is the only place in these two 部 where a metal is recommended for an instrument rather than for a dose, which makes it the one line in the 金部 that bears directly on practice. The reason is metallurgical and sound: a bit is wrought iron or steel worked thin, and it has spent its working life being polished smooth and kept free of rust inside a wet mouth, so it is tough, fine-grained and clean — the properties a needle wants. Where the rest of this 部 asks what a household object can be dissolved into, this line asks what it can be made into.

Boncho 本草

1.8.12 Cartwheel Linchpin Iron 車轄鐵

listed under Cast Iron生鐵 술윗바회간못쇠 수레바퀴 간못쇠 the pin-nail iron of a cartwheel

1.8.12.1

Source원문

主喉痺及喉中𤍠塞, 燒淬飮汁. 《本草》

Translation영역

It governs throat impediment and heat blockage in the throat. Heat it, quench it, and drink the liquid.

Clinical note임상 주석

車轄 is the linchpin that holds a wheel on its axle, and the vernacular name spells the object out part by part — sulwit of the cart, bahoe wheel, gannot the pin-nail, soe iron. No 性味 at all, one indication, one method, one source. The whole leaf is ten characters of text and a name three times as long.

Boncho 本草

1.8.13 Key Iron 鑰匙鐵

1.8.13.1

Source원문

治婦人血噤失音衝惡, 又治弱房人, 煎湯飮. 《本草》

Translation영역

It treats blood lockjaw with loss of voice and surging malignity in women, and also treats a person weak in the bedchamber. Decoct it and drink the liquor.

Clinical note임상 주석

血噤 is the jaw clamped shut from blood, the postpartum presentation, and 衝惡 is the malign qi surging upward after childbirth. The logic of the article is sympathetic and the section makes no attempt to hide it: what is locked is treated with a key. 弱房人, a person weak in the bedchamber, is the only sexual indication in the 金部, and the drug offered for it is a door key boiled in water. No 性味.

Boncho 本草

1.8.14 The Teeth of an Old Saw 故鋸鐵齒

1.8.14.1

Source원문

主誤呑竹木入咽喉不出者, 火燒淬酒飮之. 《本草》

Translation영역

It governs the case where bamboo or wood has been swallowed by mistake, has gone into the throat and will not come out. Heat it in the fire, quench it in wine, and drink that.

Clinical note임상 주석

Sympathetic again, and more plainly than anywhere else in the 部: wood lodged in the throat, treated with the teeth of the saw that cuts wood. The indication is a foreign body in the pharynx, which was a surgical problem then and is one now; nothing dissolved out of a saw tooth into wine will free a splinter, and the modern answer is direct visualization and removal. The leaf is worth keeping for what it shows about how the lower 金部 chose its articles.

Boncho 本草

1.8.15 Iron Axe 鐵斧

1.8.15.1

Source원문

性溫, 味辛, 無毒. 主喉痺及産後血瘕腹痛. 燒赤投酒中飮之. 無斧用鐵秤錘. 《本草》

Translation영역

Warm in nature, acrid in flavour, without toxicity. It governs throat impediment and abdominal pain from blood conglomeration after childbirth. Heat it red, drop it into wine, and drink that. Where there is no axe, use a steelyard weight.

Clinical note임상 주석

無斧用鐵秤錘 — where there is no axe, use a steelyard weight — ends the 金部 and ends the third volume of the 湯液篇, and the substitution says what the last fifteen leaves have been doing. The article wanted is a piece of iron of a convenient size to be heated and dropped into wine, and which piece of iron it is hardly matters; the sympathetic reasons given for each object are reasons after the fact. The 玉部 opened four sections earlier with jade boiled in a copper vessel for immortality, and the 金部 closes with a scale weight dropped hot into a cup of wine. The colophon 東醫寳鑑湯液篇卷之三 follows immediately in the transcription.

Boncho 本草

About this translation 凡例

Base text: Donguibogam (東醫寶鑑, 1613 first edition), Decoctions and Medicinals, Volume 3, Metals 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.