Library

The formula is found in the category of "Heart Pain".

The difficulty of practicing medicine is a common affliction throughout ancient and modern times. Moreover, when adults are ill, they can articulate the causes of their illness and specify their suffering; physicians can then integrate pulse diagnosis with symptomatology and treat them according to patterns of deficiency/excess and cold/heat, which makes recovery relatively easier. In contrast, infants and children cannot verbalize the origins of their ailments or pinpoint their distress, making medical consultation significantly more challenging. Furthermore, during the prodromal phase of smallpox and chickenpox (variolous eruptions), before the rash fully emerges, symptoms may include high fever or palpitations with fright, presenting a complex picture that is difficult to distinguish without profound medical expertise. Novice practitioners, lacking extensive experience, often adhere to biased views. They frequently assume that infants possess a "pure yang" constitution, leading to macules due to stomach heat, and thus invariably administer cooling agents. While viewing rashes as heat-related is one valid perspective, categorizing all cases as heat is incorrect. The public is aware that excessive use of warming drugs often damages the eyes, yet fails to realize that excessive consumption of cold drugs frequently results in fatal consequences, with both harms being significant. Given that infants have delicate and fragile gastrointestinal tracts, varying prenatal endowments, differing states of deficiency and excess, and diverse climatic influences such as cold, heat, dryness, and dampness, it is advisable to prescribe medications based on specific syndromes to achieve optimal outcomes, rather than adhering to rigid, partial viewpoints. In recent years, book markets have published numerous medical texts, filling warehouses and exhausting oxen. However, literature regarding variolous eruptions is scattered and difficult to verify, making reference cumbersome. Collectors of formulas often lack comprehensive collections; consequently, when encountering such diseases, families are filled with anxiety and desperation, resorting to mediocre physicians in hopes of a lucky outcome. Alas, how lamentable! Regarding the theories and formulas for smallpox and chickenpox, my family has possessed this manuscript for a long time. It contains discussions, formulas, syndromes, and treatments, with categories and headings fully detailed. Its efficacy is evident and reliable, not subject to falsehood. I dare not keep it secret. In the spring of Gengyin year of the Shaoding era, I respectfully commissioned its woodblock printing to disseminate it widely, hoping that those interested in medicine will find it convenient for study.

Historically, treatments for variolous eruptions were often conflated with those for wind-cold damage (Shanghan), seasonal epidemics, food stagnation with wind-heat, tidal fever, and malnutrition fever. In cases of diagnostic ambiguity, a single medication was administered indiscriminately. This approach ignores the differences between pathogenic factors and healthy qi, as well as variations in deficiency and excess. Mild conditions may worsen, while severe cases face life-threatening dangers akin to a candle flickering in the wind, leaving patients helpless and awaiting death—a truly sorrowful situation. I shall now attempt to discuss this matter. Although variolous eruptions initially present with fever similar to Shanghan and seasonal epidemics, other accompanying symptoms differ, allowing for differential diagnosis; these are listed in the subsequent section. When an infant presents with body heat, cold ears, cold buttocks, and cough, it is indicative of variolous eruptions. Although the five zang organs exhibit distinct syndromes, upon investigation, they ultimately converge on a single organ. Rashes arise from internal fullness generating toxic heat, inherited from the mother's womb, unlike conditions caused by internal deficiency and external cold invasion. Ancient medical theories state: "Wind-heat damaging the fetus leads to neonatal trismus; wind-cold damaging the fetus leads to neonatal crying." Accumulation of filth results in blood masses; fetal weakness leads to various forms of epilepsy; accumulated fright causes night crying; and retained heat causes macules and toxins. From this, we see that the child's deficiency or excess is determined by the mother's vitality. If the mother is ill, it becomes a hazard to the child; thus, it is understood that smallpox and chickenpox involve the retention of toxic heat within the womb, distinct from external pathogens like sudden cold, seasonal epidemics, or food-damage wind-heat encountered after birth. Scholars must carefully examine these distinctions.