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Use of 抵当汤

By Karina • Jun 27th, 2008 • Category: lower jiao, shanghanlun

The situation:

“太阳病六七日,表证仍在,脉微而沉,,反不结胸,其人发狂者,以热在下焦,少腹当硬满,小便自利者,下血乃愈。” (line 124a)

“所以然者,以太阳随经,瘀热在里故也,抵当汤主之。” (line 124b)

“小便自利者,下血乃愈” in line 124a tells us that once your urine starts coming out smoothly, blood will come out with it, a prognosis for recovery. This type of recovery is very much like that seen in line 106a. Indeed, even the problem is the same, that of heat in the bladder and/or 下焦 caused by some externally contracted infection.

Line 124b gives us the big picture, that the pathogen came to the bladder from the Greater Yang bladder channel, and manifests as heat-stasis. It also give us the treatment: use 抵当汤.

There is another instance in line 125. See below:

“太阳病身黄,脉沉结,少腹硬,小便不利者,为无血也。” (line 125a)

“小便自利,其人如狂者,血证谛(di4)也,抵当汤主之。” (line 125b)

Line 125a speaks of a situation where a ‘greater yang’ immune reaction leads to jaundice as well as a tightness in the lower abdomen (where the bladder is). But his urine is not passing smoothly, this is termed ‘no blood’. Hence, this is a 蓄水 pattern. I push it one step further and say that 五苓散 in indicated.

Line 125b says that if the urine is coming out smoothly and the person is already behaving crazy, this is truly a blood pattern (血证). Use 抵当汤 [to treat the blood pattern.] What I also gather here is that the urine is passing, but there is no mention of blood coming out. Viewing this in a natural-philosophical way, we can imagine that the blood is stuck in the body and not coming out with the urine. From a biomedical perpective, there must be some level of poisoning, if not fever that is causing all this crazy behavior despite the urine symptom turning positive.

2 Responses »

  1. […] IT IS! And this means that “there is blood.”  What? Not clear here, but from line 125b, we can infer that urine passing smoothly means that “there is blood” in the blood, […]

  2. do you know that 虻虫 are parasites you find on cows? yuk

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