《孫真人備急千金要方》Vol. 18

Volume 18 of Essential Prescriptions Worth a Thousand Gold classifies tongue disorders under “diseases of the seven orifices.” The text holds that sores or cracks on the tongue, a stiff tongue root, or pain on both sides of the neck may be related to “heat stored in the Heart” or “deficiency heat in the Heart.” These are explanations of disease causes in ancient Chinese medicine.

For sores, redness, swelling, and cracking of the tongue, the text gives a prescription using Sichuan lietterwort, blackberry lily, arborvitae leaves, Isatis leaf, bitter bamboo leaves, rehmannia juice, scrophularia juice, red honey, fresh reed root, and the white bark of rose root. First, boil the herbs in water and strain out the dregs. Then add the scrophularia juice, rehmannia juice, and honey in that order, and simmer until thick. Soak cotton in the decoction, place it on the tongue and hold it there, then swallow the liquid slowly.

For sores on the tongue accompanied by inability to eat, a stiff tongue root, and pain on both sides of the neck, the text gives another prescription: bupleurum, lietterwort, peony, gardenia seed, tetrapanax pith, scutellaria, Isatis leaf, apricot kernels, ginger, and gypsum. Boil them in water and take the decoction in four doses: three during the day and one at night. The strained herbs may also be boiled again for another dose.

The text also records that if the tongue suddenly swells until it fills the mouth and protrudes, like an inflated pig’s bladder, breathing may become difficult and the condition may be life-threatening. The original advises immediately puncturing both sides of the tongue to release the fluid, and also mentions puncturing it with a blade. It further describes bleeding the large vessels on both sides beneath the tongue with a needle, warning against puncturing the central vessel beneath the tongue, since the bleeding may not stop and could prove fatal. If the bleeding still cannot be stopped, the text says to heat an iron implement until red-hot and apply it to the wound to cauterize it.

Another prescription calls for washing and boiling pinellia, then simmering it in vinegar. Take a small amount of the liquid into the mouth, rinse, and spit it out. The text says the remedy works better with added ginger. The passage ends with a new heading, “Prescription for treating a tongue swollen like a pig’s bladder,” but the quoted text provides no ingredients or instructions for it.

Grind the soot from the bottom of a cooking pot into powder and mix it with vinegar to make a thick paste. Apply it to both the upper and lower surfaces of the tongue. When the paste comes off, apply it again. After a while, the swelling will subside. If the tongue has already cracked and begun to bleed, wait until the blood and fluid have finished flowing before applying the paste; this works better.

Patients often fail to recognize this illness and may receive the wrong treatment, causing it to worsen and even become life-threatening. Examine carefully beneath the tongue. There may be something there shaped like a small insect: some resemble a mole cricket, others a silkworm lying still. Look closely and you can distinguish its head from its tail; the head is slightly white. Heat an iron nail until red-hot and cauterize its head. Once it has been cauterized, it will disappear on its own.

A prescription for a swollen, stiff tongue and a feeling of fullness in the mouth

Hold a little sweetened vinegar in the mouth. After a while, when the heat feels as though it is flowing freely, the symptoms will stop.

A prescription for a swollen tongue and a feeling of fullness in the mouth that makes speaking impossible

One sheng of salt; thirty zhèchóng beetles.

Add three sheng of water to these two ingredients and bring to a boil three times. Hold the liquid in the mouth, then swallow it a little at a time. Take it three times a day.

A prescription for a stiff tongue that makes speaking impossible

Alum and the inner bark of cinnamon, in equal amounts. Grind them into powder and place it beneath the tongue. Recovery will be immediate.

If the tongue turns black and has several holes the size of chopstick ends, with blood gushing out like a spring, this is a disease of the heart. The prescription is as follows:

Rong salt, Scutellaria root (in another version, “mallow seeds”), Phellodendron bark, and rhubarb, five liang each; ginseng, the inner bark of cinnamon, and licorice, two liang each.

Grind these seven ingredients into powder and use honey to form pills the size of Chinese parasol tree seeds. Take ten pills at a time with a drink, three times a day. You may also heat an iron griddle and cauterize the affected places on the tongue.

A prescription for bleeding from the tongue like a spring

Heat an iron griddle and cauterize the bleeding holes. This works well.

Fifth: Diseases of the Lips (the Jia-jian Method and Moxibustion)

A treatment for Spleen heat and parched lips

Spleen-moistening Paste: a prescription for dry, parched lips caused by Spleen heat, lacking moisture and sheen

Fresh Chinese asparagus root, sliced; one sheng of fresh rehmannia juice; four liang each of fresh dwarf lilyturf root and fragrant solomon’s seal; three sheng of lard; two liang each of asarum, licorice, cnidium rhizome, and atractylodes; three liang each of astragalus and cimicifuga.

Cut up the eleven ingredients and soak them overnight in bitter wine, then wrap them in cotton cloth. When ready to simmer, add the fresh rehmannia juice and lard and cook them together until all the water has evaporated from the paste. Strain out the herbs and keep the paste. Take a small amount by mouth.

Jia-jian Lip Balm: a prescription for chapped lips and bad breath

First pound hemp into a paste and use it to seal the mouths of two clean ceramic bottles. Each bottle holds about one dou and has already…

Cut the ingredients listed above into slices about half an inch thick, then dry them in the sun.

Five liang of spikenard, one liang each of agallochum, alfalfa fragrance, and sweet rush, three liang of patchouli, and four liang of Lingling fragrance.

First combine one sheng of wine with five sheng of water to make a washing liquid. Wash the six fragrant ingredients, then chop them. Next, soak them overnight in one sheng each of wine and water. The following morning, take one dou and five sheng of black sesame oil and add the six ingredients. Simmer over low heat, heating and cooling the mixture three times. Strain out the herbs. Pour the oil into one of the bottles mentioned earlier, leaving a little space at the top.

Three jin of top-grade agarwood; three liang each of sparrow-head fragrance and storax; five liang each of white resin incense and white sandalwood; and one liang each of clove, musk, and operculum.

First combine wine and water to make a washing liquid, and wash the eight fragrant ingredients. Pound each ingredient separately, but do not grind them too finely. Mix them with two sheng of honey and one sheng of wine, then pack the mixture tightly into the porcelain bottle mentioned earlier. Cover the bottle’s mouth with cotton wadding, then bind it securely with crossed bamboo strips so that none of the ingredients can spill out.

First dig a pit and bury the bottle of oil, with its mouth level with the ground. Turn the bottle of fragrant ingredients upside down over the oil bottle, aligning their mouths. Seal the joint between the two bottle mouths firmly with hemp and clay, making the clay layer about half an inch thick. Surround the bottles with a layer of bran five inches thick and set it alight. When the fire is nearly out, add more bran. Keep the fire burning continuously for three days and three nights, using a total of twelve shi of bran. When the firing is finished, leave the bottles undisturbed for three days. Once they have cooled, take them out.

Next, take eight jin of wax. Melt and boil it several times, then add twelve liang of gromwell and fry it several dozen times. Rub a piece of gromwell on a fingernail to inspect it. When its hard core has turned white, remove the gromwell. Filter the liquid through cotton cloth and mix the filtrate evenly with the oil prepared earlier. Then add six liang of powdered cinnabar and stir thoroughly. When the mixture has cooled slightly but has not yet set, pour it into bamboo tubes. Cover each tube’s mouth with paper and tie it tightly with hemp cord. Once the mixture has set and cooled, remove the wrapping; it is then ready for use. This should make about fifty sticks.

Recipe for Jiajiant Lip Balm: Used to treat lips that are pale and bloodless, as well as bad breath.

Method for Making Incense Pomade

Agarwood, operculum, clove, musk, sandalwood, and storax.

The aromatics listed first—frankincense, Linglingxiang, white resin, patchouli, spikenard, and Eupatorium—are ingredients used in making incense. The original text says to prepare six liang of each medicinal ingredient and take five sheng of sesame oil. First heat the oil until cooked, then add the white resin, patchouli, spikenard, and Eupatorium. Simmer briefly, turn off the heat, strain through cotton cloth, and pour the oil into a porcelain bottle.

Pound the remaining eight aromatics into a powder and mix them with honey, taking care not to make the mixture too wet. Pack it into a small porcelain bottle, filling it to the top. Cover the mouth of the bottle with cotton cloth and secure it with crossed bamboo strips. Turn the small bottle upside down over a larger bottle so their mouths meet, then seal the joint tightly with thick mud. Bury the larger bottle containing the oil in a pit, with its mouth level with the ground. Pile dried cow dung around it and burn it; alternatively, use a fire made from rice husks. Keep the fire going for seven days and nights. There is no need to rush to burn it for twelve days, though doing so will produce a better result. Once it has cooled, remove the bottles; the incense is then ready. Before use, coat the bottles evenly with prepared mud about one cun thick and let them dry in the sun.

Method for refining wax and preparing Jia Jian

Jia Jian was an aromatic preparation used in ancient times to make fragrant creams and ointments. Take two liang each of wax and gromwell. First melt the wax, then add the gromwell and cook it briefly. Check its color: grind a little on a fingernail, and when the center of the gromwell has turned white, remove it. While the wax is still liquid, add one ge of Jia Jian and stir well, then pour the mixture into a tube. Leave it undisturbed until it cools and hardens, then remove it. This makes lip balm. The original text says to apply it to the lips and face three times a day.

Method for treating tight lips

“Tight lips” refers to symptoms in which the lips contract or feel tense. Twist white cloth into a thick wick about as wide as a finger, place it on the blade of an axe, and light it. When moisture appears on the blade as if it were sweating, wipe it off and apply it to the lips two or three times a day. Old blue cloth may also be used.

Other methods include burning a naturally dead mole cricket to ash and applying it; heating pine resin and placing it on the affected area; cleaning a snake’s skin, burning it to ash, and applying it; softening wax over a fire and placing it on the lips; or burning a grub to ash and swallowing it with water. Blue cloth may also be burned to ash and taken with wine, or its ash may be mixed with oil or fat and applied externally. Acupuncture and moxibustion methods include applying moxibustion at Hegu, the point on the back of the hand between the thumb and index finger—on the left hand for men and the right hand for women—or applying three cones of moxibustion at Chengjiang, the point directly below the lower lip.

Method for treating sunken lips

“Sunken lips” refers to a condition in which the lips appear depressed. Burn dried grubs to a powder, mix the powder with pork fat, and apply it before bed. Another remedy is to burn a turtle’s shell and head until the smoke stops, grind them to a powder, and apply it three times a day.

Method for treating sores on the lips

Apply scalp grime to the affected area three times a day; lead white, a white powder containing lead used in antiquity, may also be applied.

A remedy for sores at the edges of the lips that persist for years:

Take ten jin of indigo leaves gathered in the eighth month. Pound them and squeeze out the juice, then wash the affected area with it. It should heal within three days.

A remedy for sudden sores on the lips or tongue:

Burn the white part of chicken droppings to ash and grind it into powder. Wrap the powder in cloth and place it on the affected area, holding it in the mouth.

A remedy for hard lumps on the lips:

Take one sheng of pig dung. Mix it with water and strain out the liquid. Warm it and drink it.

A remedy for lips that turn black, swell, hurt, and itch unbearably:

Take four large coins and grind them on a stone with pig fat from the twelfth lunar month. Apply the liquid to the affected area.

Another remedy: Use a bamboo bow to prick the affected area and release the stagnant blood; this will bring a cure.

Another remedy: Burn tangled hair, a beehive, and the hair of the six domestic animals to ash. Mix the ash with pig fat and apply it. This can also treat “shen chun,” a term used in the original whose precise meaning is unclear.

A remedy for chapped, bleeding lips in winter:

Crush peach kernels, mix them with pig fat, and apply the mixture to the lips.

A remedy for wrinkles and chapping of the lips and face during long journeys:

Cook pig fat until rendered. On the night before setting out, apply it to the face repeatedly. Even after traveling ten thousand li and sleeping outdoors, the skin will not be harmed.

Essential Prescriptions Worth a Thousand in Gold for Emergencies by Sun Simiao, juan 18