Formulas · Text · Donguibogam 東醫寶鑑
The chapter that opens the materia medica, because heaven's first act was to engender water. Its items are not substances with names but waters distinguished by source and moment: well water drawn first at dawn, rain caught in the first month, autumn dew, the frost of winter, hail, summer ice, water standing in a tree-hollow or a bamboo stump, runoff from a tiled roof and runoff from a thatched one, water from a jade mine, sea water, river water from a thousand li upstream, water beaten until it froths, water flowing against the current and water flowing with it, a hot spring and a cold one, the yellow water of stirred earth, water condensed on the lid of a rice steamer and on the outside of a bronze vessel, the water a silk-reeler's cocoons were boiled in. Thirty-three of the thirty-five carry a Korean gloss from 1613, and every gloss is a procedure rather than a name — which makes this the chapter that shows most plainly how a sixteenth-century reader was told to find a drug rather than buy it. Much of the pharmacology is analogy from the water's behaviour: water that runs backward is taken to send things up, water that runs straight down to treat the lower body, water beaten to a froth to carry a formula into the bladder. The clinical notes say where that analogy cannot hold and where something real is in fact at work — the adsorbent clay of 地漿, the dissolved air of 甘爛水, the mineral load of a hot spring, the lactic ferment of millet-gruel water. Two of the thirty-five are not drugs at all: the chapter's opening essay on the grades of water, and a Daoist practice of swallowing the qi of the six seasons.
1.1 On the Grades of Water 論水品
譯 1.1.1 Source원문
水者日常所用, 人多忽之, 殊不知天之生人, 水穀以養之. 水之於人, 不亦重乎. 故人之形體有厚薄, 年壽有長短, 多由於水土之不同, 驗之南北可見矣. 《食物》
Translation영역
Water is what is used every day, and most people make light of it, quite failing to understand that when Heaven engendered humankind it nourished them with water and grain. Is water not then a weighty thing for a person? And so the thickness or thinness of a person's bodily frame, and the length or shortness of the years of life, arise for the most part from differences of water and soil; test it between north and south and it can be seen.
Clinical note임상 주석
The opening sentence of the 湯液篇's first materia-medica chapter, and an argument rather than a drug entry: water is the first item because it is the medium of everything else, and the differences between one water and another are held to show in the bodies of the people who drink it. Read as geography this is not wrong — water hardness, iodine and fluoride content and faecal contamination all differ by locality and all leave marks on health — though the mechanism the Bogam has in mind is 水土, the qi of a place, not its chemistry.
譯 1.1.2 Source원문
凡井水有遠從地脉來者爲上, 有從近處江河中滲來者欠佳. 又城市人家稠密, 溝渠汚水雜入井中成醶, 用須煎滚, 停頓一時, 候醶下墜, 取上面淸水用之. 否則氣味俱惡, 而煎茶ㆍ釀酒ㆍ作豆腐三事尤不堪也. 雨後井水渾濁, 須擂桃杏仁連汁投水中, 攪留少時, 則渾濁墜底矣. 《食物》
Translation영역
Of well water, that which comes from far off along the earth's channels is best, while that which seeps in from a river or stream close by is less good. Further, where the houses of a town stand close together, the foul water of the ditches and drains gets mixed into the well and it turns brackish; to use it one must boil it hard and let it stand an hour, and when the brackish part has settled take the clear water from the top and use it. Otherwise the smell and the taste are both bad, and for the three businesses of brewing tea, fermenting liquor and making bean curd it is especially unfit. After rain, well water is turbid; one must grind peach and apricot kernels, cast them in with their juice, stir, and leave it a short while, and then the turbidity will sink to the bottom.
Clinical note임상 주석
The most practical passage in the chapter, and the one piece of 水部 that is sound public-health advice: a well sited among close-packed houses takes in sewage from the drains, the water must be boiled, and it must then be allowed to settle and decanted. 醶 is a rare graph and is read here as brackish or briny; the project's variant table does not fold it. The peach-and-apricot-kernel clarification works — ground oily kernels release amygdalin-bearing emulsion and fine solids that flocculate suspended clay — but both kernels are cyanogenic, and this is a method of clarification recorded, not a method to copy.
譯 1.1.3 Source원문
凡諸飮水療疾, 皆取新汲淸泉, 不用停汚濁煖. 非直無效, 固亦損人, 宜愼之. 《本草》
Translation영역
In every case where water is drunk to treat an illness, take a clear spring newly drawn; do not use water that is standing, foul, turbid or tepid. Not only is it without effect, it does indeed harm a person, and one should be careful of it.
Clinical note임상 주석
The rule that governs the whole chapter: the thirty-three waters that follow are to be taken fresh. 停汚濁煖 — standing, foul, turbid, tepid — is a fair description of the conditions under which drinking water becomes dangerous, and the sentence is the Bogam's own warning against several of the waters it goes on to list, 屋霤水 at 1.14 above all.
1.2 Dawn-Drawn Well Water 井華水
Medicinal entry 새배처엄기른우믈믈 새벽에 처음 기른 우물물 the first well water drawn at daybreak 譯 1.2.1 Source원문
性平, 味甘, 無毒. 主人大驚九竅出血, 亦主口臭, 好顔色, 洗目膚瞖及酒後熱痢. 此井中平朝第一汲者. 《本草》
Translation영역
Its nature is balanced, its flavour sweet, and it is without toxicity. It governs bleeding from the nine orifices after a great fright; it also governs foul breath, gives a good complexion, and is used to wash a film over the eye, and for heat dysentery after drink. This is the first drawing from the well at daybreak.
Clinical note임상 주석
One of only five waters in this chapter that the project's herb table carries, and it is there because formulas call for it by name as a vehicle. The whole of the pharmacology is the hour: the same well gives 寒泉水 at 1.3 at any other time of day. 膚瞖 is a film or screen over the eye, the nebula of the older ophthalmology.
譯 1.2.2 Source원문
井華水者, 天一眞精之氣浮結于水面, 故可取以烹煎補隂之劑及修煉還丹之用. 今好淸之士每日取以烹春茗, 而謂淸利頭目最佳, 其性味同於雪水也. 《正傳》
Translation영역
As for dawn-drawn well water, the qi of the true essence of Heaven's One floats and gathers on the surface of the water, and so it may be taken to decoct medicines that supplement yin, and for the work of refining the Reverted Elixir. Nowadays gentlemen who are fond of purity take it each day to brew the spring tea, saying that for clearing and disinhibiting the head and eyes it is the very best; its nature and flavour are the same as those of snow water.
Clinical note임상 주석
天一眞精之氣 answers the chapter head — 天一生水, Heaven's One engenders water — and this is the sentence that makes dawn water a yin-supplementing vehicle: what has gathered on the surface overnight is taken to be the purest portion. 還丹 is the Reverted Elixir of the alchemists, and the passage puts this water into two quite different practices, medicine and internal alchemy. The comparison with 臘雪水 at 1.5 is the Jeongjeon's, not the Bencao's.
譯 1.2.3 Source원문
井華水服藥ㆍ煉藥並用之, 投酒醋令不腐. 《本草》
Translation영역
Dawn-drawn well water is used both for taking medicines and for refining them; cast into wine or vinegar it keeps them from spoiling.
1.3 Cold Spring Water 寒泉水
ᄎᆞᆫᄉᆡᆷ믈 찬 샘물 cold spring water
譯 1.3.1 Source원문
卽好井水也. 性平, 味甘, 無毒. 主消渴ㆍ反胃ㆍ熱痢ㆍ熱淋, 兼洗漆瘡, 利大小便. 《本草》
Translation영역
It is simply good well water. Its nature is balanced, its flavour sweet, and it is without toxicity. It governs dispersion-thirst, stomach reflux, heat dysentery and heat strangury; it also washes lacquer sores, and it disinhibits stool and urine.
Clinical note임상 주석
The definition comes first and the nature and flavour after it, which is the usual order in this chapter and the reason the project keeps no separate nature-and-flavour field. 漆瘡 is the contact dermatitis raised by lacquer, for which cold water is still what one reaches for.
譯 1.3.2 Source원문
其井水新汲未入缸瓮者爲新汲水, 取其淸潔無混雜之氣, 故用以煎煮藥劑也. 《正傳》
Translation영역
Of such well water, that newly drawn and not yet put into a jar or crock is newly drawn water; it is taken for being clean and pure and free of any mingled qi, and so it is used for decocting medicines.
Clinical note임상 주석
This is where 新汲水, newly drawn water, is defined, and the project's herb table carries 新汲水 as a drug of its own because formulas call for it by name in some thirty-odd places. This section is not linked to that entry: 寒泉水 is the headword and 新汲水 is a grade of it defined within, and the two are not the same thing — the criterion for 新汲水 is that it has not yet stood in a vessel, not that it is cold.
譯 1.3.3 Source원문
能解合口椒毒, 下魚鯁. 《本草》
Translation영역
It can resolve the toxin of closed-mouth pepper, and bring down a fish bone lodged in the throat.
Clinical note임상 주석
合口椒 is zanthoxylum fruit whose husk has not split open, held to be poisonous; the same poisoning is treated with 好黃土 in 土部. Water for a lodged fish bone is still the first thing tried, and still the thing that most often fails — a bone that does not clear needs looking at.
1.4 Chrysanthemum Water 菊花水
구화퍼기밋ᄒᆡ셔나ᄂᆞᆫ믈 국화 포기 밑에서 나는 물 the water that rises from under a clump of chrysanthemum
譯 1.4.1 Source원문
一名菊英水. 性温, 味甘, 無毒. 療風痺及眩冒, 除風補衰, 令人好顔色, 久服延年不老. 《本草》
Translation영역
One name for it is chrysanthemum-blossom water. Its nature is warm, its flavour sweet, and it is without toxicity. It treats wind impediment and dizziness with clouding, dispels wind and supplements decline, gives a person a good complexion, and taken long prolongs the years without ageing.
Clinical note임상 주석
The indications are those of 菊花 itself — the water is credited with the drug that grows beside it. 眩冒 is dizziness with a clouding of the head, and 除風 is the standard action of chrysanthemum, so the section is really an argument that a spring takes on the virtue of what grows on its bank.
譯 1.4.2 Source원문
南陽酈縣北潭水, 其源悉芳菊生被崖, 水爲菊味, 故居民飮此水者無不壽考. 《本草》
Translation영역
The water of the north pool in Li County in Nanyang — at its source fragrant chrysanthemums grow all over and cover the cliff, and the water takes on the flavour of chrysanthemum; therefore of the people living there who drink this water, not one fails to reach a great age.
譯 1.4.3 Source원문
蜀中有長壽源, 其源多菊花而流水四季皆菊花香, 居人飮其水者壽皆二三百歲. 故陶靖節之流好植菊花, 浸水烹茶, 期延壽也. 《正傳》
Translation영역
In Shu there is a Longevity Spring; at its source chrysanthemums are many, and the running water in all four seasons has the fragrance of chrysanthemum, and the people living there who drink that water all live to two or three hundred years. Therefore men of the sort of Tao Jingjie were fond of planting chrysanthemums, steeping them in water and brewing tea, in the hope of prolonging life.
Clinical note임상 주석
陶靖節 is Tao Yuanming, Jingjie being his posthumous style, and the chrysanthemum-and-wine of his poems is what the Jeongjeon is reaching for. Two or three hundred years is hagiography and the passage is kept as a literary notice, not as a claim. The transferable part of the section is narrow but real: a spring rising through a bank of vegetation carries the plant's soluble constituents, which is why a chrysanthemum infusion is suggested in the same breath as the spring.
1.5 Twelfth-Month Snow Water 臘雪水
Medicinal entry 섯ᄃᆞᆯ납향ᄞᅴ온눈녹은믈 섣달 납향 때에 내린 눈이 녹은 물 water from the melting of snow that fell at the time of the twelfth-month La sacrifice 譯 1.5.1 Source원문
性冷, 味甘, 無毒. 治天行時氣ㆍ瘟疫ㆍ酒後暴熱ㆍ黃疸, 解一切毒. 又洗眼去熱赤. 《本草》
Translation영역
Its nature is cold, its flavour sweet, and it is without toxicity. It treats seasonal qi going about, epidemic pestilence, sudden heat after drink, and jaundice, and it resolves every toxin. It is also used to wash the eyes, removing heat and redness.
Clinical note임상 주석
The date is the whole of the specification and must not be loosened: 臘 is the twelfth lunar month and 臘享 is the La sacrifice held in it, so this is snow gathered in midwinter and kept as water. It is one of the five waters of this chapter that the herb table carries, and formulas call for it by name. Melted snow is close to distilled water, low in solutes, which is a real difference from well water and the one thing in the entry that distinguishes it.
譯 1.5.2 Source원문
臘雪水大寒水也. 雨下遇寒氣凝而爲雪, 其花六出, 稟六一之正氣也. 《入門》
Translation영역
Twelfth-month snow water is a greatly cold water. Rain coming down meets cold qi, congeals, and becomes snow; its blossom comes out in sixes, for it has received the correct qi of six-and-one.
Clinical note임상 주석
其花六出 — the blossom comes out in sixes — is an accurate observation of snow-crystal symmetry, and 六一 ties it back to the chapter head: 天一生水, Heaven's One engenders water, and six is the number of water in the Luo River diagram. The six-fold habit of ice crystals is real and follows from the hexagonal lattice; the number mysticism built on it is not an explanation.
譯 1.5.3 Translation영역
For storing and pickling fruit of every kind it is good.
譯 1.5.4 Translation영역
Spring snow has worms in it and is not fit to be gathered.
Clinical note임상 주석
The negative criterion, and it marks the boundary of the drug: only midwinter snow. The reasoning is seasonal rather than microbiological, but the observation that late snow lying on thawing ground is fouled is sound. 虫 stands for 蟲, as throughout the transcription.
1.6 Spring Rain Water 春雨水
졍월처엄온빋믈 정월에 처음 내린 빗물 the rainwater of the first rain to fall in the first month
譯 1.6.1 Source원문
卽正月雨水也. 以器盛接, 煎藥服之, 令人陽氣上升. 《入門》
Translation영역
It is simply the rainwater of the first month. Catch it in a vessel, decoct medicines with it and take them, and it makes a person's yang qi rise upward.
Clinical note임상 주석
The definition comes before the action, as in 1.3, and the action follows from the date and nothing else: the first rain of the first month is the rain of the season in which yang rises, so the water is given to raise yang. The date is the specification and is not to be moved.
譯 1.6.2 Source원문
正月雨水, 夫妻各飮一盃, 還房當卽有子, 神效. 《本草》
Translation영역
Of the rainwater of the first month let husband and wife each drink a cup, then return to the bedchamber, and a child will be got at once; the effect is marvellous.
Clinical note임상 주석
A fertility rite rather than a treatment, and it belongs to the same order of practice as the first-of-the-fifth-month gathering of 百草灰 in 土部. It should not be offered as a fertility measure; subfertility has investigable causes and this passage addresses none of them. It is kept because it is what the Bencao says and because the chapter's pharmacology of dates cannot be read without it.
譯 1.6.3 Source원문
其性始得春升生發之氣, 故可以煮中氣不足ㆍ淸氣不升之藥也. 《正傳》
Translation영역
Its nature has just received the qi of the spring rising and of engendering and effusion, and so it may be used to boil medicines for insufficiency of the centre qi and for clear qi failing to rise.
Clinical note임상 주석
The clinical use the section is actually put to, and it is as a vehicle: this is the water for 補中益氣湯 and its kin. The logic is wholly seasonal — the water carries the upward movement of the season into the decoction — and it is the clearest statement in the chapter of what the 湯液篇 means by choosing a water for a formula.
譯 1.6.4 Source원문
淸明水及穀雨水味甘, 以之造酒, 色紺味烈, 可儲久. 《食物》
Translation영역
The water of Pure Brightness and the water of Grain Rain are sweet in flavour; make liquor with it and the colour is deep violet and the flavour fierce, and it will keep long.
Clinical note임상 주석
淸明 and 穀雨 are the fifth and sixth of the twenty-four solar terms, in the third lunar month, so this is rainwater a little later in the spring than the headword's and it is treated as a brewing water rather than a drug. The chapter keeps the brewing notices because the quality of water was judged by what it would make — tea, liquor and bean curd are the three tests named at 1.1.
1.7 Autumn Dew Water 秋露水
ᄀᆞᄋᆞᆯ이슬믈 가을 이슬 물 autumn dew water
譯 1.7.1 Source원문
性平, 味甘, 無毒. 止消渴, 令人身輕不飢, 肌肉悅澤. 朝露未晞時拂取用之.
Translation영역
Its nature is balanced, its flavour sweet, and it is without toxicity. It checks dispersion-thirst, makes the body light and free of hunger, and makes the flesh glad and glossy. At the hour when the morning dew has not yet dried, brush it off, gather it and use it.
譯 1.7.2 Translation영역
Dew standing on the heads of a hundred herbs cures a hundred ailments.
譯 1.7.3 Translation영역
Dew on arborvitae leaves governs the brightening of the eyes.
譯 1.7.4 Translation영역
Dew on a hundred flowers gives a person a good complexion.
Clinical note임상 주석
Three one-line passages that sort dew by what it has lain on, and they are the clearest case in the chapter of a water taking its indication from its surroundings: dew off arborvitae brightens the eyes because 側栢葉 does. 栢 stands for 柏.
譯 1.7.5 Source원문
繁露水者, 是秋露繁濃時露也. 作盤以收之, 食之延年不飢. 《本草》
Translation영역
As for abundant-dew water, it is the dew of the time when the autumn dew is heavy and thick. Make a shallow pan to collect it; eating it prolongs the years and takes away hunger.
譯 1.7.6 Source원문
秋露水者稟收歛肅殺之氣, 故可以烹煎殺祟之藥及調付殺癩䖝ㆍ疥癬諸䖝之劑也. 《正傳》
Translation영역
As for autumn dew water, it has received the qi of gathering in and of stern killing, and so it may be used to decoct medicines that kill spectral agents, and to mix for application preparations that kill the worms of leprosy and the various worms of scabies and lichen.
Clinical note임상 주석
The seasonal argument again, and here it runs in the other direction from 春雨水 at 1.6: autumn is the season of contraction and of the stern killing of things, so autumn water is chosen for preparations that are meant to kill. 殺祟 is the killing of spectral agents; 癩䖝 and the worms of 疥癬 are the agents the older literature supposed behind leprosy and the itch, and in the case of scabies a mite is in fact the agent, though no dew will kill it. 䖝 stands for 蟲 and 歛 for 斂.
1.8 Winter Frost 冬霜
겨ᄋᆞᆯ에온서리 겨울에 내린 서리 the frost that has come down in winter
譯 1.8.1 Source원문
性寒, 無毒. 團食之, 主解酒熱ㆍ酒後諸熱面赤及傷寒鼻塞. 《本草》
Translation영역
Its nature is cold and it is without toxicity. Roll it into a ball and eat it; it governs the resolving of the heat of drink, the various heats and the red face after drink, and the stuffed nose of cold damage.
Clinical note임상 주석
No 味 is given — only 性 and 無毒 — and the book gives what it has. 團食之, roll it into a ball and eat it, is the dosage form: frost scraped together and swallowed, which is to say a mouthful of ice. For a flushed, overheated drinker that is not nothing, but it is cooling and not treatment.
譯 1.8.2 Source원문
暑月疿瘡赤爛, 和蚌粉付之, 立差.
Translation영역
For prickly-heat sores in the summer months, red and ulcerated, mix it with clam-shell powder and apply it, and it is cured at once.
譯 1.8.3 Source원문
日未出時, 以雞羽掃取, 收磁甁中, 時久不壞. 《本草》
Translation영역
Before the sun is up, sweep it together with a chicken feather, store it in a porcelain bottle, and it will not spoil for a long time.
Clinical note임상 주석
The gathering method is the substance of the entry: a feather because frost cannot be lifted any other way, and before sunrise because it is gone after. 磁 stands for 瓷. Keeping melted frost in a stoppered bottle for months is of course keeping standing water, which 1.1 forbids.
1.9 Hail 雹
무뤼 우박 hail
譯 1.9.1 Source원문
主醬味不正. 取一二升納瓮中, 卽如本味. 《食物》
Translation영역
It governs the case where the flavour of fermented soybean paste has gone wrong. Take a quart or two and put it into the crock, and the flavour returns at once to what it should be.
Clinical note임상 주석
No 性味 at all, and no medical indication either — the one item in 水部 whose only use is in the kitchen. Hail is put into the jang crock to correct a soured or off batch, which is dilution with near-distilled water and a drop in salt concentration and temperature. It is a drug by position in the chapter only, and the project leaves its herb link empty because no formula calls for it.
1.10 Summer Ice 夏氷
어름 얼음 ice
譯 1.10.1 Source원문
性大寒, 味甘, 無毒. 去煩熱. 食譜云, 凡夏用氷, 只可隱映飮食, 令氣冷, 不可打碎食之. 當時暫快, 久皆成疾. 《本草》
Translation영역
Its nature is greatly cold, its flavour sweet, and it is without toxicity. It removes vexing heat. The Shipu says: in summer, in all use of ice, one may only let it glimmer about the food and drink so as to make their qi cold; one may not break it up and eat it. At the time it is briefly pleasant, but in the long run it all turns into illness.
Clinical note임상 주석
隱映 is the hard phrase and the whole of the instruction: the ice is to be set beside the food so that it shows through and cools it, not chewed. The Shipu's warning is a dietetic one about cold injuring the spleen and stomach, and it is also, read plainly, a warning about summer ice as a vehicle of infection — ice cut from ponds in winter and stored in an icehouse is not clean, and iced drinks were a known route for enteric disease long before the mechanism was known.
1.11 Water Caught in a Clam Shell 方諸水
ᄇᆞᆯ근ᄃᆞᆯ애죠개예바ᄃᆞᆫ물 밝은 달에 조개에 받은 물 water caught in a clam shell under a bright moon
譯 1.11.1 Source원문
性寒, 味甘, 無毒. 主明目定心, 去小兒熱煩渴.
Translation영역
Its nature is cold, its flavour sweet, and it is without toxicity. It governs brightening the eyes and settling the heart, and it removes heat, vexation and thirst in a small child.
譯 1.11.2 Source원문
方諸, 大蚌也. 向月承取, 得二三合水, 亦如朝露也. 《本草》
Translation영역
The fangzhu is a large freshwater mussel. Hold it up towards the moon and catch what comes; one gets two or three gills of water, and it is just like morning dew.
Clinical note임상 주석
方諸 is the crux of the section and the identification is not settled. The passage itself glosses it as 大蚌, a large mussel, and the reading followed here is that a big shell is held out under the moon and the dew that condenses in it is collected — which agrees with 亦如朝露, it is just like morning dew, and with the vernacular gloss, water caught in a clam under a bright moon. But 方諸 elsewhere in the Chinese literature is a bronze or metal mirror-dish used to draw down moon-water in ritual, and some commentators read it that way here. The project does not decide between them; the shell reading is given because the Bencao's own gloss says 大蚌, and the uncertainty is recorded rather than resolved. Whatever the vessel, the product is condensate — distilled water, with the moon supplying the yin rationale rather than any mechanism.
1.12 Plum-Rain Water 梅雨水
ᄆᆡ실누를제온빋믈 매실 누를 제 내린 빗물 the rainwater that falls when the plums are turning yellow
譯 1.12.1 Source원문
性寒, 味甘, 無毒. 主洗瘡疥, 滅瘢㾗. 澣衣去垢如灰汁. 是五月雨水也. 《本草》
Translation영역
Its nature is cold, its flavour sweet, and it is without toxicity. It governs the washing of sores and scabies, and it effaces scars. For washing clothes it takes out dirt like lye. It is the rainwater of the fifth month.
Clinical note임상 주석
The date is the name: 梅雨 is the plum rain, the long rains of the fifth lunar month that fall while the plums are yellowing, and the vernacular gloss says exactly that rather than naming a month. 澣衣去垢如灰汁 — it takes out dirt like lye — is the identifying property, and it is the one claim here with a basis: rain is soft water, nearly free of the calcium and magnesium that defeat soap, so it washes like an alkaline lye where hard well water will not. 㾗 stands for 痕.
1.13 Mid-Air River Water 半天河水
나모구무과왕대그르해고인빋믈 나무 구멍과 왕대 그루에 고인 빗물 rainwater standing in a hollow of a tree or in the stump of a giant bamboo
譯 1.13.1 Source원문
性平一云微寒, 一云寒, 味甘, 無毒. 治心病ㆍ鬼疰ㆍ狂邪氣ㆍ惡毒, 能殺鬼精ㆍ恍惚妄語. 此竹籬頭及高樹穴中盛天雨水也. 皆可飮, 幷洗諸瘡. 《本草》
Translation영역
Its nature is balanced one source says slightly cold, one source says cold, its flavour sweet, and it is without toxicity. It treats heart illness, ghost infixation, mad evil qi and malign toxin; it can kill ghost essences, and abstraction with deranged speech. This is the rainwater of heaven held in the top of a bamboo fence or in the hollow of a tall tree. All of it may be drunk, and it is also used to wash sores of every kind.
Clinical note임상 주석
The indications are all of one kind — ghost infixation, mad evil qi, abstraction and deranged speech — and this is the water for the spirit disorders, which is why it stands apart from the rest of the chapter. Read for what it is, the drug is rainwater that has stood in a tree hollow or a cut bamboo, and that is water with leaf litter and mosquito larvae in it; it is the exact case 1.1 forbids as 停汚濁, standing and foul. 幷 is the transcription's form for 並.
譯 1.13.2 Source원문
長桑君授扁鵲, 飮以上池之水, 乃竹籬藩頭管內之積水耳. 取其淸潔自天而降, 未受下流汚濁之氣, 故可以煉還丹ㆍ調仙藥之用也. 《正傳》
Translation영역
When Changsang Jun handed it on to Bian Que, giving him the water of the upper pool to drink, it was simply the water collected inside the tube at the top of a bamboo fence or hedge. It is taken for being clean and pure, come down from the sky, not having received the foul and turbid qi of the lower streams, and so it may be used for refining the Reverted Elixir and for compounding the drugs of the immortals.
Clinical note임상 주석
上池之水 — the water of the upper pool — is from the Shiji account in which Changsang Jun gives Bian Que the water that lets him see through a person's body, and the Jeongjeon is deflating the legend: the upper pool was rainwater standing in a bamboo. The justification is the same as at 1.2 — water that has come straight from the sky has not picked up what runs along the ground — and it is the opposite of the pharmacology of 千里水 at 1.18, which is prized precisely for the ground it has crossed.
1.14 Water Run Off a Tiled Roof 屋霤水
디새집우ᄒᆡ셔흘러ᄂᆞ린믈 기와집 위에서 흘러내린 물 the water that has run down off the top of a tiled house
譯 1.14.1 Source원문
主洗犬咬瘡. 以水澆屋簷承取用之. 又以水滴簷下, 令土濕, 取土付犬咬瘡, 卽差.
Translation영역
It governs the washing of a dog-bite sore. Pour water over the eaves of the house, catch what comes off, and use it. Or let the water drip below the eaves until the earth is wet, and take that earth and apply it to the dog-bite sore, and it is cured at once.
Clinical note임상 주석
The method is made rather than found — water is poured over the tiles so as to produce the drug — and the second half turns it into an earth preparation, the mud under the eaves, which puts this section next to the earths of 土部. As treatment for a dog bite it is useless and worse than useless: a dog bite is a rabies exposure and a deep inoculation of oral flora, and it requires wound irrigation, assessment for post-exposure prophylaxis and often antibiotics. Nothing in this section should delay that.
譯 1.14.2 Source원문
有大毒, 誤食必生惡瘡. 《本草》
Translation영역
It has great toxicity; swallowed by mistake it will certainly raise malign sores.
Clinical note임상 주석
The Bogam's own warning, and it is correct for a reason the Bencao could not have given: roof runoff carries bird and rodent droppings, lichen and whatever has been burnt onto the tiles, and in this period it also carried lead and other metals from glazes and flashing. 有大毒 marks this as one of the few items in 水部 the book says outright is not to be drunk, and it is the only water here with an external use and an internal prohibition.
1.15 Water Dripping from a Thatched Roof 茅屋漏水
새집우ᄒᆡ셔흘러ᄂᆞ린물 새집(초가집) 위에서 흘러내린 물 the water that has run down off the top of a thatched house
譯 1.15.1 Source원문
殺雲母毒, 煉雲母時用之. 《本草》
Translation영역
It kills the toxin of mica, and is used when refining mica.
Clinical note임상 주석
No 性味, no indication, one line, and a single purpose: this is a processing liquid, not a medicine. 雲母 is mica, which 石部 carries as a drug and which has to be calcined and levigated before use, and thatch runoff is what the Bencao specifies for the step that is held to kill its toxin. The project leaves the herb link empty because no formula calls for this water as an ingredient; the two places in the corpus where the characters 茅屋漏水 appear are both the simile 如茅屋漏水, describing a discharge that leaks like water through thatch, and not a prescription. Why thatch rather than tile is not explained; straw runoff is mildly acidic and rich in dissolved organics, which would in fact change how a mineral leaches, but the book makes no such argument.
1.16 Jade-Well Water 玉井水
옥나ᄂᆞᆫᄃᆡ셔ᄉᆡᆷᄂᆞᆫ믈 옥 나는 데서 샘솟는 물 the water that springs up where jade is found
譯 1.16.1 Source원문
性平, 味甘, 無毒. 久服令人體潤, 毛髮不白. 出諸有玉處山谷中. 山有玉則草木潤, 猶潤於草木, 何况於人乎. 今人近山多壽者, 豈非玉石之津乎. 《本草》
Translation영역
Its nature is balanced, its flavour sweet, and it is without toxicity. Taken long it makes the body moist and keeps the hair from whitening. It comes from the mountain valleys of all the places where jade occurs. Where a mountain has jade the plants and trees are moist; if it moistens even the plants and trees, how much more a person. That people living near such mountains are now many of them long-lived — is that not the liquor of the jade stone?
Clinical note임상 주석
The argument is by inference from the vegetation and it is explicitly offered as an inference, 豈非…乎, is it not. The chapter puts the water of a jade-bearing valley beside the jade itself, which 玉部 carries as 玉屑; the premise is that the stone gives its virtue to the water that runs over it. There is a thin real basis — the mineralogy of a catchment does set the dissolved-solid profile of its springs, and jade-bearing rock is serpentinite and related ultramafics — but that would make such water magnesium-rich and in places asbestiform, not life-prolonging. 况 stands for 況.
1.17 Sea Water 碧海水
譯 1.17.1 Source원문
性小温, 味醎, 有小毒. 煮浴去風瘙ㆍ疥癬. 飮一合, 吐下宿食ㆍ臚脹.
Translation영역
Its nature is slightly warm, its flavour salty, and it has slight toxicity. Boiled for a bath it removes wind itch and scabies and lichen. Drink a gill of it and it makes one vomit and brings down abiding food and abdominal distension.
Clinical note임상 주석
有小毒 — it has slight toxicity — is the Bencao being accurate, and this is one of the places in the chapter where the book's own warning should be read as the operative sentence. A gill of seawater is an emetic because it is a hypertonic salt load, and that is exactly why it is dangerous: salt-water emetics cause hypernatraemia, and deaths from them are recorded in the modern literature. The bath is another matter and is harmless. 醎 stands for 鹹.
譯 1.17.2 Source원문
當取大海中味醎色碧之水. 《本草》
Translation영역
One should take water from the open sea, salty in flavour and blue-green in colour.
Clinical note임상 주석
The quality criterion is the open sea rather than an estuary or a shore pool, which is a sensible instruction for avoiding river dilution and fouling, and the colour is the name — 碧, blue-green.
1.18 Thousand-Li Water 千里水
Medicinal entry 멀리셔흘러오ᄂᆞᆫ강믈 멀리서 흘러오는 강물 river water that comes flowing from far away 譯 1.18.1 Source원문
性平, 味甘, 無毒. 主病後虛弱. 揚之萬過, 煮藥ㆍ禁神皆驗.
Translation영역
Its nature is balanced, its flavour sweet, and it is without toxicity. It governs vacuity and weakness after illness. Ladle it up and pour it back ten thousand times, and for boiling medicines and for the spells of interdiction it is in every case effective.
Clinical note임상 주석
揚之萬過 — ladled and poured back ten thousand times — is the same operation as the making of 甘爛水 at 1.19, and the two sections are the two ends of one practice: here the agitation is a thousand-fold intensifier of a water already prized for distance, there it is the whole of the drug.
譯 1.18.2 Source원문
長流水卽千里水也. 二水皆堪盪滌邪穢, 煎煮湯藥ㆍ禁呪鬼神. 《本草》
Translation영역
Long-flowing water is simply thousand-li water. Both waters are fit to scour away evil filth, to decoct medicinal brews, and for the spells and incantations addressed to ghosts and spirits.
Clinical note임상 주석
長流水卽千里水也 is an explicit identification by the book itself, and it matters for the drug records: formulas call for 長流水 in some sixteen places and for 東流水 in five, and this is the section those names belong to. The project leaves the herb link empty all the same, because 千里水 has no entry of its own in the herb table yet; the pair is reported for the alias table rather than asserted here.
譯 1.18.3 Source원문
千里水從西來者謂之東流水, 取其性快順疾速, 通關下膈也. 《食物》
Translation영역
Thousand-li water that comes from the west is called east-flowing water; it is taken for a nature that is brisk, compliant and swift, so as to free the gates and bring down through the diaphragm.
Clinical note임상 주석
東流水, east-flowing water, is thousand-li water named by its direction, and the direction is the pharmacology: a river running eastward is running with the grain of things, so the water is given to move things along and downward. This is the same analogical move as 逆流水 and 順流水 at 1.20 and 1.21, and it fails in the same way — the direction a river happens to run does not change the water.
譯 1.18.4 Source원문
長流水者, 但取其流長而來遠耳, 不可泥於千里也. 以其性遠而通達, 歷科坎已多, 故取以煎煮手足四末之病ㆍ道路遠之藥及通利大小便之用也. 《正傳》
Translation영역
As for long-flowing water, one takes it only for flowing far and coming from a distance, and one must not be stuck on the thousand li. Because its nature is far-reaching and freely passing, and it has already crossed many pits and hollows, it is taken for decocting medicines for diseases of the hands and feet and the four extremities, medicines that must travel a long road, and for the purpose of freeing and disinhibiting stool and urine.
Clinical note임상 주석
不可泥於千里 — do not be stuck on the thousand li — is the Jeongjeon reading the name as a figure, and the clinical rule that follows is the most explicit case of the chapter's reasoning: a drug that has to reach the fingers and toes is boiled in water that has come a long way. 歷科坎已多, having crossed many pits and hollows, is offered as evidence of the water's capacity to get through obstacles. It is an analogy and nothing more; water from a long river differs from water from a short one in its dissolved load and its microbiology, neither of which is what is being claimed.
譯 1.18.5 Source원문
江河之水, 夏秋大雨後, 山谷中䖝蛇之毒從流而下, 人馬飮之多斃, 不可不知. 《食物》
Translation영역
As for the water of rivers and streams, after heavy rain in summer and autumn the toxin of insects and snakes in the mountain valleys comes down with the flow, and people and horses that drink it often die; this must be known.
Clinical note임상 주석
The best observation in the chapter, and it contradicts everything above it: the long-travelled river water just praised is the water that kills after a storm. The attributed cause is wrong — it is not the venom of insects and snakes — but the epidemiology is exact. Heavy rain flushes the catchment and surface water after a storm is when waterborne disease arrives; this is the first-flush effect, and the passage records it, including the fact that livestock die of it too.
1.19 Sweet Agitated Water 甘爛水
Medicinal entry 만히동당이텨거품진믈 많이 동당이쳐 거품이 진 물 water dashed about many times until a froth has formed on it 譯 1.19.1 Translation영역
It treats sudden turmoil, and entering the bladder it treats running piglet.
Clinical note임상 주석
No 性味. 奔豚, running piglet, is the surging sensation that rises from the lower abdomen to the chest, and this water is its classical vehicle — 茯苓桂枝甘草大棗湯 in the Jingui is decocted in 甘爛水 and is given for exactly that. The project leaves the herb link empty, but this is one of the three waters in the chapter with a real claim on an entry of its own: formulas in this corpus call for 甘爛水 by name as a decocting and draught liquid in several places.
譯 1.19.2 Source원문
作甘爛水法, 取水斗許置大盆中, 以杓揚之數百遍, 水上作珠子五六千顆, 撆取用之. 一名百勞水. 《本草》
Translation영역
The method of making sweet agitated water: take about a peck of water, set it in a large basin, ladle it up and pour it back several hundred times, and five or six thousand beads will form on the surface of the water; skim them off and use it. One name for it is hundred-labours water.
Clinical note임상 주석
The one section in 水部 where the drug is wholly manufactured, and the method is given precisely enough to repeat: a peck of water, several hundred ladlings, and the foam skimmed off the top. 一名百勞水, hundred-labours water, names the work rather than the water. This is also the place in the chapter where the traditional rationale and a modern one nearly meet: violent aeration does change water, raising dissolved oxygen and driving off dissolved carbon dioxide and with it some volatiles, so agitated water is not the same water. Whether that difference has any bearing on running piglet is a separate question and the answer is no. 撆 is the transcription's form for 撇, to skim; the project's variant table does not fold it.
譯 1.19.3 Source원문
此水與月窟水同, 取其味甘温而性柔, 故可以烹傷寒隂證等藥也. 《正傳》
Translation영역
This water is the same as moon-grotto water; it is taken for a flavour sweet and warm and a nature pliant, and so it may be used to boil the medicines for the yin patterns of cold damage and the like.
Clinical note임상 주석
月窟水, moon-grotto water, has no entry anywhere in the Bogam and the project cannot say what it is; it is left untranslated beyond the literal rendering and flagged as unidentified. The clinical point stands on its own: this is the water for the yin-pattern formulas of cold damage, which is consistent with the Jingui's use of it, and 性柔, a pliant nature, is how the agitation is understood — the water has been softened.
1.20 Counter-Flowing Water 逆流水
Medicinal entry 거스리도라흐르ᄂᆞᆫ믈 거슬러 돌아 흐르는 물 water that turns back and flows against the stream 譯 1.20.1 Source원문
逆流水者, 卽倒流水也, 乃慢流廻瀾之水也. 以其性逆而倒流, 故取以調和發吐痰飮之劑也. 《正傳》
Translation영역
As for counter-flowing water, it is simply back-flowing water, that is to say the water of a slow current and a turning eddy. Because its nature is contrary and it flows backward, it is taken for mixing the preparations that induce vomiting of phlegm-rheum.
Clinical note임상 주석
No 性味, and the whole of the pharmacology is in the single clause 以其性逆而倒流, because its nature is contrary and it flows backward: water that goes up is given to make things come up. This is the clearest piece of analogical reasoning in the chapter and it should be read as that and not as pharmacology. Water from an eddy and water from the main current are the same water; there is no chemical or physical difference between them that could make one an emetic. 瀾 is the transcription's form here, which the project's variant table folds to 灡. What is real in the section is the clinical category: an emetic is being chosen for phlegm-rheum lodged above the diaphragm, and that is a live indication in the 痰飮門 whatever is used to mix it.
譯 1.20.2 Source원문
倒流水者, 取其回旋留止, 上而不下也. 《本草》
Translation영역
As for back-flowing water, it is taken for turning round and holding still, for going up and not down.
Clinical note임상 주석
倒流水, back-flowing water, is identified by the book as the same thing as the headword, and formulas call for it by name in five places, so this is the section those prescriptions belong to; the pair is reported for the alias table.
1.21 Downstream Water 順流水
Medicinal entry 슌히흘러오ᄂᆞᆫ믈 순히 흘러오는 물 water that comes flowing smoothly with the current 譯 1.21.1 Source원문
其性順而下流, 故取以治下焦腰膝之證及通利二便之用也. 《正傳》
Translation영역
Its nature is compliant and it flows downward, and so it is taken to treat patterns of the lower burner, the lumbus and the knees, and for the purpose of freeing and disinhibiting the two excretions.
Clinical note임상 주석
The mirror of 1.20 and the shortest section in the chapter: one sentence, no 性味, no source but the Jeongjeon. Counter-flowing water goes up and is given to bring things up; downstream water goes down and is given to bring things down. The pair is the argument, and set side by side the two sections show what kind of argument it is — the same river yields both drugs within a few yards of each other, and the water is identical. The clinical categories are not empty, and formulas in this corpus do call for 順流水 by name as a vehicle for lower-body and urinary prescriptions, which is why this is reported as a candidate for an entry of its own.
1.22 Swift-Flowing Water 急流水
여흐레ᄲᆞᆯ리흐르ᄂᆞᆫ믈 여울에 빨리 흐르는 물 water running fast over a shoal
譯 1.22.1 Source원문
卽湍上峻急之流水也. 以其性速急而達下, 故特取以煎熬通利二便及足脛以下之風藥也. 《正傳》
Translation영역
It is simply the water flowing steep and swift over a rapid. Because its nature is quick and urgent and reaches downward, it is taken especially for decocting medicines that free and disinhibit the two excretions, and wind medicines for the parts from the shin downward.
Clinical note임상 주석
The third of the flow-waters and the most specific: not merely downstream but over a rapid, so the speed is added to the direction and the indication moves further down the body, from the lumbus and knees of 1.21 to the shin and below. No 性味. The one place in the corpus where the characters 急流水 occur in a formula is a processing step — a bag of medicine is tied in a swift stream and steeped overnight — not an ingredient, which is why the project does not propose this section for the herb table. The vernacular gloss adds what the Chinese does not, yeoul, the shoal or riffle, which is where one would actually stand to fill a jar.
1.23 Hot Spring 温泉
더운ᄉᆡᆷ믈 더운 샘물 hot spring water
譯 1.23.1 Source원문
主諸風筋骨攣縮及皮膚頑痺ㆍ手足不遂ㆍ大風疥癬者, 入浴. 浴乾當虛憊, 可與藥食補養. 《本草》
Translation영역
For all wind with contracture of the sinews and bones, and for stubborn impediment of the skin, for hands and feet that will not follow, and for great wind with scabies and lichen, the sufferer should go in and bathe. When the bathing is done and one is dry, one is bound to be vacuous and worn out, and medicine and food may be given to supplement and nourish.
Clinical note임상 주석
One of the genuinely different items in this chapter: a mineral water, and a treatment that is a bath rather than a draught. The indications are musculoskeletal and dermatological and the first of them — contracture of sinew and bone, stubborn impediment of the skin — is what hot-spring bathing is still used for, with modest evidence in chronic musculoskeletal pain. 浴乾當虛憊, one is bound to be vacuous and worn out afterwards, is an honest description of post-immersion exhaustion and hypotension, and the instruction to feed the patient afterwards is sound. 大風 is leprosy in the older nomenclature. No 性味 opens the section; the Sikmul supplies one in the next passage.
譯 1.23.2 Source원문
温泉性熱有毒, 切不可飮. 患疥癩及楊梅瘡者, 飽食入池久浴, 得汗出乃止, 旬日諸瘡皆愈. 《食物》
Translation영역
Hot-spring water is hot in nature and has toxicity, and on no account may it be drunk. One suffering from scabies or leprosy or bayberry sores should eat his fill, go into the pool and bathe long, stopping only when sweat comes out; in ten days the sores will all heal.
Clinical note임상 주석
切不可飮 — on no account may it be drunk — is the Sikmul contradicting the drinking culture of hot springs outright, and it is right to: sulphurous and arsenical spring waters are not potable, and the sulphur the next passage names is the reason. 楊梅瘡, bayberry sores, is syphilis, and here the chapter needs a plain statement — syphilis is a treponemal infection, it is not cured by bathing, it progresses silently to cardiovascular and neurological disease, and it is curable with penicillin. Leprosy likewise is a treatable mycobacterial infection. Prolonged immersion to the point of sweating, in a patient who has just eaten his fill, is also a straightforward way to produce syncope.
譯 1.23.3 Source원문
下有硫黃, 卽令水熱. 硫黃主諸瘡, 病水亦宜然. 水有硫黃臭, 故愈風冷爲上. 《本草》
Translation영역
Below there is sulphur, and that is what makes the water hot. Sulphur governs sores of every kind, and water that is ill ought to be the same. The water has the smell of sulphur, and therefore it is best at curing wind-cold.
Clinical note임상 주석
The one causal explanation in 水部 that is framed as mineralogy rather than analogy, and it is half right. The smell of sulphur is correctly read as sulphur in the ground, and the therapeutic reputation of sulphurous springs for skin disease is not baseless — sulphur is still used topically for scabies and seborrhoeic complaints. What is wrong is the heat: hot springs are hot from geothermal gradient, not from sulphur, and no chemistry of sulphur in the rock heats water.
1.24 Cold Spring 冷泉
마시ᄠᅥᆲ고ᄎᆞᆫ믈 맛이 떫고 찬 물 water that is astringent in taste and cold
譯 1.24.1 Source원문
俗謂之椒水. 主偏頭痛ㆍ背寒ㆍ火欝ㆍ惡寒等證, 浴之皆差.
Translation영역
Commonly it is called pepper water. It governs hemilateral headache, cold in the back, fire depression, aversion to cold and the like, and bathing in it cures them all.
Clinical note임상 주석
椒水, pepper water, is a vernacular name taken from the taste, which the Korean gloss gives as tteolgo, astringent — the pucker of alum rather than the burn of pepper. The source mark is 俗方, a local prescription, which in the Bogam means a Korean usage rather than a Chinese citation, and this section and 1.23 together are the chapter's record of Korean spring bathing. 欝 stands for 鬱.
譯 1.24.2 Source원문
下有白礬, 故水味酸澁冷冽. 於七八月時浴之, 切不可夜浴, 夜浴必死. 《俗方》
Translation영역
Below there is alum, and that is why the water's flavour is sour and astringent and it is piercingly cold. Bathe in it in the seventh and eighth months; on no account bathe at night, for bathing at night will certainly kill.
Clinical note임상 주석
The mineralogy is again a real reading of the taste: 白礬 is alum, and an acid sulphate spring tastes exactly as described, sour and astringent. Korea has such springs — the carbonated and ferrous-sulphate cold springs are the same class of water. 夜浴必死, bathing at night will certainly kill, reads as superstition and is not: a cold immersion at night, unobserved, in a spring whose dissolved gas can displace air in a hollow, is a drowning and a hypothermia risk, and the prohibition is the sort of rule that is kept because people died. The seventh and eighth months are the warm months, which is the same safety instruction stated positively.
1.25 Fermented Millet Water 漿水
譯 1.25.1 Source원문
性微温, 味甘酸, 無毒. 止渴ㆍ霍亂ㆍ泄利, 解煩去睡. 《本草》
Translation영역
Its nature is slightly warm, its flavour sweet and sour, and it is without toxicity. It checks thirst, sudden turmoil and diarrhoea and dysentery, and it resolves vexation and dispels drowsiness.
Clinical note임상 주석
味甘酸, sweet and sour, is the signature of the drug and the reason this is one of the genuinely different items here: 漿水 is not a found water but a fermented one, the sour supernatant of millet gruel left to stand, and the sourness is lactic acid. The indications fit what it is — thirst, sudden turmoil, diarrhoea — and a slightly acid, slightly salty cereal water with live lactic flora is a plausible oral rehydration fluid and a plausible fermented drink. It is one of the five waters the project's herb table carries.
譯 1.25.2 Translation영역
The sort made from newly ripened foxtail millet, with a white bloom on it, is good.
Clinical note임상 주석
白花, the white bloom, is the film of yeast and lactic bacteria on the surface of a good ferment, and it is named here as the quality criterion. The grain is 粟米, foxtail millet, which the vernacular gloss gives as jopssal.
譯 1.25.3 Translation영역
It is simply what is commonly the clear part of boiled millet gruel.
譯 1.25.4 Source원문
熟水漬生米爲之, 味酢. 夏月浸井中如氷冷, 北方飮以祛暑. 《杜註》
Translation영역
It is made by steeping raw grain in boiled water, and the flavour is vinegary. In the summer months it is sunk in a well until it is cold as ice, and in the north it is drunk to drive off summer-heat.
Clinical note임상 주석
A second recipe, different from the gruel of the preceding passages: boiled water poured over raw grain and left to go vinegary, then chilled in a well and drunk as a summer cooler. This is a soured grain drink of the kind still made across north China and Korea, and the entry is dietetics rather than pharmacy. 《杜註》, the commentary of Du, is the only occurrence of this source mark in the project so far and the project cannot yet say which Du is meant; the romanization Duju is provisional.
1.26 Yellow Earth Water 地漿
누른ᄒᆞᆰ믈 누런 흙물 yellow earth water
譯 1.26.1 Source원문
性寒, 無毒. 解中毒煩悶, 又解諸毒. 山中有毒菌, 人煮食必死. 又楓樹菌食之, 令人笑不止, 亦死. 惟飮地漿皆差, 餘藥不能救矣. 《本草》
Translation영역
Its nature is cold and it is without toxicity. It resolves the vexation and oppression of being poisoned, and it resolves all toxins besides. In the mountains there are poisonous mushrooms, and one who boils and eats them will certainly die. There are also the mushrooms of the maple tree, which when eaten make a person laugh without stopping, and he dies of that too. Only drinking earth water cures them all; no other medicine can save them.
Clinical note임상 주석
The one antidote in 水部 with a mechanism that survives translation. 地漿 is a clay suspension, and the clay adsorbs: the drug is doing what activated charcoal is used for, and the Bencao's claim that no other medicine will serve is an accurate statement of how few options existed. 楓樹菌, the maple mushroom that makes one laugh without stopping, is a recognisable description of a muscimol or psilocybin syndrome, and the Bencao is also right that such poisonings can kill. But this must not be read as a treatment: mushroom poisoning is a medical emergency, the lethal syndromes are amatoxin ones with a deceptive latent period of six to twenty-four hours, and the only thing that saves an amatoxin patient is early presentation to a hospital. Clay water would not. 土部 carries the same adsorptive logic under 好黃土.
譯 1.26.2 Source원문
掘黃土地作坎, 以水沃其中, 攪令濁, 俄頃取淸飮之. 《本草》
Translation영역
Dig a pit in yellow earth, pour water into it, stir until it is turbid, and after a little while take the clear part and drink it.
Clinical note임상 주석
The method, and it is a preparation rather than a collection: the pit, the water, the stirring, and the decanting after the coarse fraction has dropped. What is drunk is the colloidal fine fraction still in suspension, which is the part with the surface area, so the procedure selects for exactly what makes the drug work. The project leaves the herb link empty: the formulas of this corpus call not for 地漿 but for 泥漿, clay water, which the herb table already carries as nijang; whether the two are the same drug is not stated anywhere in the Bogam, and the project does not assert the identification. The resemblance is close — the formulas ask for 淸泥漿, clear clay water, which is what the method here produces — and the pair is reported as a question rather than a pairing.
1.27 Rain-Pool Water 潦水
Medicinal entry 뫼ᄭᅩᆯ애비와고인믈 산골에 비가 와서 고인 물 water that rain has fallen and pooled in a mountain hollow 譯 1.27.1 Source원문
仲景方治傷寒發黃麻黃連翹湯, 以潦水煎服, 取其味薄而不助濕也. 《入門》
Translation영역
In Zhongjing's prescription for the yellowing that breaks out in cold damage, Ephedra and Forsythia Decoction, it is decocted in rain-pool water and taken, this being chosen for a thin flavour that will not aid dampness.
Clinical note임상 주석
No 性味; the section opens on a formula instead, which is unusual in this chapter and is the reason the water is here at all. The prescription is the 麻黃連軺赤小豆湯 of the Shanghanlun, given for jaundice in cold damage, and the Shanghanlun does specify 潦水 for it. 取其味薄 — chosen for a thin flavour — is the operative phrase and it is the nearest thing in 水部 to a real pharmaceutical criterion: rainwater pooled in fresh earth is low in dissolved solids, a thin water, and a thin water is held not to add dampness to a damp-heat pattern.
譯 1.27.2 Source원문
潦水又名無根水, 山谷中無人迹處新土科凹中之水也. 取其性不動搖而有土氣內存, 故可以煎熬調脾進食ㆍ補益中氣之劑也. 《正傳》
Translation영역
Rain-pool water is also named rootless water; it is the water in a hollow or depression of fresh earth, in a mountain valley where there is no trace of people. It is taken for a nature that does not stir or shake while having the qi of earth held within it, and so it may be used to decoct preparations that regulate the spleen and promote eating, and that supplement and boost the centre qi.
Clinical note임상 주석
無根水, rootless water — water with no spring feeding it — is the name formulas use, and the corpus has it as a pill-making liquid; this section is where that name belongs, and the pair is reported for the alias table. The reasoning is the mirror image of 千里水 at 1.18: there the virtue was motion and distance, here it is stillness, and the same chapter asserts both. 有土氣內存, having the qi of earth within it, is the bridge to the spleen indications, and is the one point where 水部 reasons the way 土部 does. The caution is plain enough: standing water in a hollow, in a place with no people, is surface water with no barrier at all between it and whatever animal has used it.
1.28 Raw and Boiled Water 生熟湯
Medicinal entry ᄭᅳᆯ흔믈과ᄎᆞᆫ믈ᄩᆞ니 끓인 물과 찬 물을 탄 것 boiled water and cold water mixed together 譯 1.28.1 Source원문
味醎, 無毒. 以炒𥂁投中, 飮之一二升, 吐出宿食ㆍ惡毒之物. 欲爲霍亂, 吐盡便愈. 《本草》
Translation영역
Its flavour is salty and it is without toxicity. Cast parched salt into it and drink a quart or two, and it brings up abiding food and malign toxic matter. Where sudden turmoil is coming on, once the vomiting is finished one is cured.
Clinical note임상 주석
No 性, only 味 — one of the places in the 湯液篇 where the book gives part of the nature-and-flavour line and not the rest, and a reason the project keeps no field for it. The preparation is a salt-water emetic, and it needs the same warning as 碧海水 at 1.17: a quart or two of salt water taken to induce vomiting is a sodium load that has killed people, acute hypernatraemia from salt emetics is a documented cause of death, and emesis is in any case no longer used in poisoning. 𥂁 stands for 鹽. It is one of the five waters the herb table carries.
譯 1.28.2 Source원문
人大醉及食苽果過度, 以生熟湯浸身, 湯皆爲酒及苽味. 《本草》
Translation영역
When a person is very drunk, or has eaten melons and fruit to excess, soak the body in raw and boiled water, and the water all takes on the flavour of the liquor and of the melon.
Clinical note임상 주석
A whole-body immersion in which the bath is held to draw the drink and the fruit back out through the skin, and the proof offered is that the water tastes of them. It does not happen; ethanol and sugars do not leave the body across intact skin in any quantity, and the taste is an artefact. The passage is kept as the Bencao has it. An unsupervised bath for someone very drunk is dangerous for the obvious reason.
譯 1.28.3 Source원문
百沸湯半椀, 新汲水半椀, 合和, 名曰隂陽湯, 卽生熟湯也. 《醫鍳》
Translation영역
Half a bowl of hundred-times-boiled water and half a bowl of newly drawn water, combined together, is named yin-yang decoction, and it is simply raw and boiled water.
Clinical note임상 주석
The defining recipe, and it names the two drugs the project's herb table already carries separately — 百沸湯 and 新汲水 — as the two halves of this one. The name 隂陽湯 is the whole argument: boiled water is yang and fresh-drawn water is yin, and the mixture is held to be balanced. 隂 stands for 陰 and 鍳 is the transcription's form of 鑑.
譯 1.28.4 Source원문
河水與井水合用, 亦名隂陽湯. 《回春》
Translation영역
River water and well water used together are also named yin-yang decoction.
Clinical note임상 주석
A second recipe for the same name, built on a different opposition — surface water against ground water instead of boiled against raw. The Bogam prints both without reconciling them, which is its usual practice.
1.29 Hot Water 熱湯
譯 1.29.1 Source원문
性平, 味甘, 無毒. 主忤死及霍亂轉筋.
Translation영역
Its nature is balanced, its flavour sweet, and it is without toxicity. It governs death from malign affront, and sudden turmoil with cramping sinews.
Clinical note임상 주석
忤死 is sudden collapse and death attributed to being struck by a malign agency, and 霍亂轉筋 is sudden turmoil with cramping of the sinews — the muscle cramp of severe salt and water loss, which is how cholera presents. For both the treatment is hot water, externally as in the next passage, and in the second case warm fluid by mouth is in fact the right instinct, though what is needed is oral rehydration salts.
譯 1.29.2 Source원문
助陽氣, 行經絡. 患冷痺人, 以湯渫脚至膝, 厚覆汗出佳. 《本草》
Translation영역
It assists yang qi and moves the channels and network vessels. For a person suffering from cold impediment, soak the legs to the knee in hot water, cover thickly, and it is good when sweat comes out.
Clinical note임상 주석
The most straightforwardly usable passage in 水部: a hot footbath to the knee, then covering to raise a sweat, for cold impediment. Local heat does vasodilate and does ease the pain and stiffness of cold-aggravated joints, and the method is still used. The one caution is the one the passage does not give — a hot footbath at this depth and temperature is how a neuropathic or vasculopathic foot gets scalded, and anyone with diabetic neuropathy or peripheral arterial disease should not be asked to judge the temperature by feel.
譯 1.29.3 Source원문
熱湯須百沸過, 若半沸則食之病脹. 《食物》
Translation영역
Hot water must be taken past a hundred boilings; if it is only half boiled then drinking it will make one ill with distension.
Clinical note임상 주석
須百沸過 — it must be taken past a hundred boilings — is the quality criterion and it is the point at which this section meets 百沸湯, hundred-times-boiled water, which the herb table carries as a drug of its own and which formulas call for in eleven places. The project does not link this section to that entry: 熱湯 is hot water and 百沸湯 is the fully boiled grade of it, and the sentence here is precisely the distinction between them. Half-boiled water causing distension is a dietetic reading of what is really a hygienic rule — water brought to a rolling boil is safe and water merely warmed is not.
1.30 Hemp-Steeping Water 麻沸湯
Medicinal entry ᄉᆡᆼ삼ᄉᆞᆯ믄믈 생삼 삶은 물 the water in which raw hemp has been boiled 譯 1.30.1 Source원문
漚麻汁. 主消渴, 取其氣薄而泄虛熱也. 《入門》
Translation영역
It is the liquor of retted hemp. It governs dispersion-thirst, being taken for a thin qi that drains vacuity heat.
Clinical note임상 주석
No 性味. 漚麻 is the retting of hemp — the stalks are left to steep until the bast loosens — and the Immun takes the standing liquor of that process as the drug. This matters for reading the classics: 麻沸湯 in the Shanghanlun, where 大黃黃連瀉心湯 is steeped in it, is usually read as water boiled until it seethes like a mass of hemp fibres, not as hemp-steeping liquor, and the Bogam here follows the other reading. The project records the divergence without settling it. What should be said plainly is that retting liquor is anaerobic, heavily contaminated vegetable-fermentation water, and it is not something to drink; the formula use in this corpus is as a steeping liquid for a cold-draining prescription.
譯 1.30.2 Translation영역
It is simply the liquor of boiled green hemp.
Clinical note임상 주석
The second gloss differs from the first: 漚, retting by steeping, against 煮, boiling. The vernacular gloss follows the second, salmeun, boiled. Boiled hemp-stalk water and retting liquor are not the same thing, and the section gives both without choosing.
1.31 Silk-Reeling Water 繰絲湯
고티현믈 고치 켠 물 the water in which cocoons have been reeled
譯 1.31.1 Source원문
無毒. 主蚘䖝. 此煮蠒汁, 爲其殺䖝故. 《本草》
Translation영역
It is without toxicity. It governs roundworm. This is the liquor of boiled cocoons, and the reason is that it kills worms.
Clinical note임상 주석
無毒 with no 性 and no 味 before it. The drug is the water left from reeling silk — cocoons boiled to soften the sericin so that the filament can be drawn off — so what is drunk is a dilute solution of sericin and the pupal matter boiled out with it. 蚘 stands for 蛔, roundworm; 蠒 stands for 繭 and 䖝 for 蟲. Ascariasis is a real and common infection and is treated with albendazole or mebendazole; there is nothing anthelmintic in sericin.
譯 1.31.2 Source원문
又主消渴口乾. 此物屬火, 有隂之用, 能瀉膀胱中相火, 引淸氣上潮于口. 煮湯飮之, 或蠒殼ㆍ絲綿湯飮之, 亦效. 《丹心》
Translation영역
It also governs dispersion-thirst with dry mouth. This substance belongs to fire and has the function of yin; it can drain the ministerial fire in the bladder and lead clear qi to flood upward to the mouth. Boil it into a brew and drink it; or drink a brew of the cocoon shells and the silk floss, and that is effective too.
Clinical note임상 주석
屬火, 有隂之用 — it belongs to fire and has the function of yin — is a double attribution of the kind the Danxi school makes often: the silkworm is a creature of fire, but the product acts as yin, so it drains the ministerial fire below and brings fluid up. The indication is 消渴, dispersion-thirst, which overlaps with diabetes mellitus, and that needs saying: thirst with a dry mouth that does not settle is a presentation to investigate for diabetes, and silk-reeling water is not a treatment for it. 蠒殼 and 絲綿, the cocoon shells and the floss, are given as substitutes, and 石部 and 蟲部 carry the silkworm products proper.
1.32 Steamer-Lid Water 甑氣水
밥ᄠᅵᄂᆞᆫ시르둡게예ᄆᆡ친믈 밥 찌는 시루 뚜껑에 맺힌 물 the water that gathers on the lid of the steamer in which rice is being steamed
譯 1.32.1 Source원문
主長毛髮. 以物承取沐頭, 令髮長密黑潤, 朝朝取用. 《本草》
Translation영역
It governs the growing of the hair. Catch it in something and wash the head with it, and it makes the hair long, thick, black and glossy; gather and use it morning after morning.
Clinical note임상 주석
No 性味, one indication, and a drug that is condensate: steam from the rice collecting on the underside of the steamer lid is distilled water carrying a little of what came off the grain. The use is external and daily, and the claim — longer, thicker, blacker hair — is cosmetic rather than medical. There is nothing in distilled rice steam that would alter hair growth; rice-water rinses are a live cosmetic practice and their effect, such as it is, is on the hair shaft and not on the follicle. The vernacular gloss is the most elaborate in the chapter and reads as a set of instructions: the steamer, the lid, the rice being steamed, the water beaded on the inside.
1.33 The Sweat on a Brass Vessel 銅器上汗
퉁그ᄅᆞᆺᄉᆡᄆᆡ친믈 퉁그릇에 맺힌 물 the water that gathers on a brass vessel
譯 1.33.1 Source원문
銅器盖食上汗滴食中, 令人發惡瘡內疽. 《本草》
Translation영역
Where a brass vessel covers food, the sweat on it drips down into the food and makes a person break out in malign sores and inner abscess.
Clinical note임상 주석
Not a drug and not a use: the section is a warning, which is why it carries no 性味 and no 主治 and why the project leaves its herb link empty. It is also, of the thirty-five items in this chapter, among the two or three that are simply correct. Condensate standing on copper or brass dissolves copper, and copper salts are irritant and emetic; food contaminated from a brass cover was a recognised cause of illness, and copper cookware is still lined for this reason. 銅 in the period covers copper and its alloys, and the vernacular tunggeureut is the brass vessel of a Korean kitchen. 盖 stands for 蓋.
1.34 Day-Old Rice-Pot Water 炊湯
무근슉ᄂᆡᆼ믈 묵은 숭늉 stale sungnyung, the water left standing from cooking rice
譯 1.34.1 Source원문
經宿洗面無顔色, 洗體則成癬. 《本草》
Translation영역
Left overnight, it takes the colour from the face if one washes with it, and if one washes the body with it, lichen results.
Clinical note임상 주석
The second of the two warning sections and the shortest entry in the chapter. Again there is no 性味 and no use, only what goes wrong, and again the observation is a good one: starchy water left standing overnight is a culture medium, and washing in it is a route to dermatophyte and yeast infection. 癬 covers the tineas, and ringworm from a shared, contaminated wash water is exactly how it spreads. The vernacular name is 熟冷, boiled-and-cooled water — the water poured into the rice pot after the rice is served, modern Korean sungnyung — qualified as mugeun, kept past its day. The chapter thus closes its waters on two things not to do.
1.35 The Six Qi of Heaven 六天氣
譯 1.35.1 Source원문
服之令人不飢, 長年, 美顔色. 《本草》
Translation영역
Ingesting them makes a person free of hunger, long-lived, and fair of face.
Clinical note임상 주석
The last item of 水部 and not a water, not a drug, and not swallowed: this is a breathing and fasting discipline, and the project leaves its herb link empty on that ground. It is counted as a section because the table of contents counts it, and together with 論水品 at 1.1 it is why the chapter has thirty-five sections where its own head says thirty-three kinds — the head is counting drugs, and these two are not drugs.
譯 1.35.2 Source원문
陵陽子明經言, 春食朝霞, 日欲出時向東氣也. 秋食飛泉, 日欲沒時向西氣也. 冬食沆瀣, 北方夜半氣也. 夏食正陽, 南方日中氣也. 幷天玄地黃之氣, 是爲六氣. 《本草》
Translation영역
The Scripture of Lingyang Ziming says: in spring eat the morning glow, which is the qi facing east at the hour when the sun is about to rise. In autumn eat the flying spring, which is the qi facing west at the hour when the sun is about to set. In winter eat the midnight vapour, which is the qi of the north at the middle of the night. In summer eat the full yang, which is the qi of the south at midday. Together with the qi of the dark of heaven and the yellow of earth, these make the six qi.
Clinical note임상 주석
The scheme is four seasonal airs taken from the four directions at four hours, plus the two of heaven and earth, making six — the 六天氣 of the title. 朝霞, 飛泉, 沆瀣 and 正陽 are the technical names of the four, and they are terms of Daoist 服氣 practice, the ingestion of breath, taken here into a materia medica. The Bogam prints it where it does because breath, like water, is held to be a thing taken in from outside; nothing here is a prescription.
譯 1.35.3 Source원문
人有急難阻絶之處用之, 如龜蛇服氣不死. 昔人墮穴中, 其中有蛇, 每日如此服氣. 其人依蛇時節日日服之, 漸覺體輕, 啓蟄之後, 人與蛇一時躍出焉. 《本草》
Translation영역
A person uses it where there is urgent distress and he is cut off and cannot get out, as the tortoise and the snake ingest qi and do not die. Long ago a man fell into a pit, and in it was a snake which ingested qi in this way every day. The man followed the snake's times and seasons and ingested it day after day, and he gradually felt his body grow light; and after the Awakening of Insects the man and the snake leapt out together.
Clinical note임상 주석
The use is survival rather than therapy — what to do when trapped and without food — and the warrant is the hibernating reptile, which does survive months without eating. 啓蟄 is the solar term of the Awakening of Insects, at the start of the second lunar month, which is when a snake would in fact emerge, so the story keeps its own calendar. As the chapter's closing passage it is a parable and should be read as one: 服氣, breath ingestion, does not replace food, and prolonged fasting on the strength of a breathing practice is dangerous. Inedia has killed people, and the refeeding of a long-starved person is itself a hazard that needs managing.
About this translation 凡例
Base text: Donguibogam (東醫寶鑑, 1613 first edition), Decoctions and Medicinals, Volume 1, Waters 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.