Guest guest Posted July 21, 2004 Report Share Posted July 21, 2004 Hello everybody. I have been reading the Shang Han Lun (Mitchell, Ye and Wiseman) and have been enjoying it thus far. One thing I have noticed is that the dosages for the formulas are enormous compared to what I would commonly see in school. Here is an example: Line 163 pg.179 Gui Zhi Ren Shen Tang Gui Zhi 4 liang = 62.5g Zhi Gan Cao 4 liang = 62.5g Bai Zhu 3 liang = 46.88g Ren Shen 3 liang = 46.88g Gan Jiang 3 liang = 46.88g another example Line 66 pg.176 Hou Po Sheng Jiang Ban Xia Gan Cao Ren Shen Tang Hou Po .5 jin = 125g Sheng Jiang 10 jin = 2500g Ban Xia .5 Sheng = 100 ml Gan Cao 2 liang = 31.25g Ren Shen 1 liang = 15.63g A lot of these dosages are rather large. So my question is: 1. Why is there a difference between the dosage in the time of Zhang Zhong Jing and now? 2. Does anyone know of practitioners today that use these kinds of dosages in their formulas? Jim Hogg Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted July 22, 2004 Report Share Posted July 22, 2004 , " zhenmushi " <jameshogg@h...> wrote: > Hello everybody. I have been reading the Shang Han Lun (Mitchell, Ye > and Wiseman) and have been enjoying it thus far. One thing I have > noticed is that the dosages for the formulas are enormous compared > to what I would commonly see in school. Here is an example: > This may represent an even larger concern. I cannot remember in which reference book I read this, but the definitions of qian, liang, and jin changed many times over the years, sometimes by more than a factor of 2. Also the definition of the relationship among those units have changed with time as well. I wish I could remember which book it was in; the information was in a table-like format. To further complicate the issue, we have no way of knowing if a particular author in olden days is using the dose units correctly. He may be using numbers from an older time without converting properly. Then, someone later may use that authors numbers and convert to his current standard, which would still be wrong because his reference was wrong. So, when looking at dosing on old texts, unless the author defines the terms or gives the conversion factor to modern units, the exact dosing is pretty useless. What is useful, however, is the ratio of herbs used. A little bit of math will give you dosing for each herb after you decide how many total gm / day you want to give. .... and so it goes ... Brian C. Allen Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted July 22, 2004 Report Share Posted July 22, 2004 , " bcataiji " <bcaom@c...> wrote: > > This may represent an even larger concern. I cannot remember in which > reference book I read this, but the definitions of qian, liang, and > jin changed many times over the years, sometimes by more than a factor > of 2. It is actually possible that the ancient liang was actually today's qian. However, our resident classics expert at PCOM says the ancient liang is the same as the modern one, i.e. 30 grams. That would double your conversions which seem to have been made at a 15 g conversion. Was the rx a tang dispesned for one day or pills? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted July 22, 2004 Report Share Posted July 22, 2004 , " " wrote: > , " bcataiji " <bcaom@c...> > wrote: > > > > > This may represent an even larger concern. I cannot remember in > which > > reference book I read this, but the definitions of qian, liang, and > > jin changed many times over the years, sometimes by more than a > factor > > of 2. > > It is actually possible that the ancient liang was actually today's > qian. However, our resident classics expert at PCOM says the ancient > liang is the same as the modern one, i.e. 30 grams. That would > double your conversions which seem to have been made at a 15 g > conversion. Was the rx a tang dispesned for one day or pills? > On page 64 the text says a gentleman by the name of Ke Xue-Fan suggests the following dosages for equivalents: 1 jin = 250g 1 liang = 15.625g 1 zhu = 1/24 of a liang 1 ge = 20ml 1 sheng = 200ml 1 dou = 10 sheng Gui Zhi Ren Shen Tang For the above five ingredients use 9 sheng of water. First boil the last four ingredients to get 5 sheng. Add gui zhi and boil again to get 3 sheng. Remove the dregs. Take one sheng warm, once during the day and again at night. For this formula it looks like the dosage is for 1.5 days. Hou Po Sheng Jiang Ban Xia Gan Cao Ren Shen Tang For the above five ingredients use one dou of water. Boil to get three sheng and remove the dregs. Take one sheng warm 3 times a day. For this formula the dosage is for one day. With the liang being the equivalent of 30g it would make the dosage even larger and I would still wonder why the dosages are so big compared to what I see used today and if there is anyone these days that still uses these dosages. I will add that aside from the 2500g dosage of sheng jiang the two examples I gave are close to the norm dosage wise for the formulas that I have seen so far. Any insight is appreciated. Jim Hogg Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted July 23, 2004 Report Share Posted July 23, 2004 According the Shang Han Lun (Mitchell, Feng, Wiseman), p. 64, one SHL-era liang is believed to weigh about 15.68g. The modern liang in the PRC weighs 31.25g, whereas it weighs 37.5g in Taiwan, the US, and in all other overseas Chinese communities. The difference in weight between the PRC and the rest of the world reflects a simplification and rounding to make Chinese weights more evenly fit into the metric system. Thus, some committee decided that instead of one jin (=16 liang= 160 qian= 1600 fen) being equal to 600g, it would be rounded to 500g= 1/2 kilo. In Taiwan and the US, one jin is still 600g. In the mainland, it is 500g. There are about 12 jin in one US pound. The simplification of the PRC to round the numbers out to make them smoother with the metric system has caused books in English to express Chinese doses written in qian as 1 qian=3g. This is why dose numbers in Bensky are 3-9g, 6-12g, etc, because they are multiples of 3 depending on how many qian were in the source text. Weighing a calibration weight equivalent to one qian in America results in a gram measurement of 3.7g/1 qian. So the process of rounding 600g to 500g, then 31.25g to 30g, in the end results in a discrepancy of 3.7g qian vs. 3g qian. I asked Feng Ye about the SHL doses and he said that he believes in many instances the pack was assembled in a higher dose and then proportioned out to be taken in lower doses. He believes that the SHL era dosing was not too different from modern day, given that the entire pack was not given at a single time (and the weight of 1 liang is lower by a factor of two). Nonetheless, when I glanced at gui zhi tang, it splits the pack weight into three doses, each of which have a hefty 15g of gui zhi, a bit higher than we normally use, but the proportional bai shao is certainly not a high dose (also 15g). Eric Brand , " " wrote: > , " bcataiji " <bcaom@c...> > wrote: > > > > > This may represent an even larger concern. I cannot remember in > which > > reference book I read this, but the definitions of qian, liang, and > > jin changed many times over the years, sometimes by more than a > factor > > of 2. > > It is actually possible that the ancient liang was actually today's > qian. However, our resident classics expert at PCOM says the ancient > liang is the same as the modern one, i.e. 30 grams. That would > double your conversions which seem to have been made at a 15 g > conversion. Was the rx a tang dispesned for one day or pills? > Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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