Qu Ling Wan: Removing the Bell Pill by Li Shizhen

时珍曰︰。。。古方有去铃丸︰用茴香二两，连皮生姜四两，同入坩器内腌一伏时，慢火炒之，入盐一两，为末，糊丸梧子大。每服三、五十丸，空心盐酒下。此方本治脾胃虚弱病。茴香得盐则引入肾经，发出邪气。肾不受邪，病自不生也。亦治小肠疝气有效。

[Li] Shizhen: …There is an ancient formula ‘Qu Ling Wan’: It utilizes two liang of Hui Xiang and four liang of Sheng Jiang with its skin intact. Pickle both [ingredients] in an earthenware for one day cycle, then dry-fry on low heat, add one liang of salt, grind into a powder, and paste it into pills in the size of Chinese parasol seeds. Each time, take thirty to fifty pills and ingest with salted alcohol on an empty stomach. This formula originally treats spleen and stomach disease of vacuity and weakness. By acquiring salt, Hui Xiang is then guided into the kidney channel, where it effuses and discharges evil qi. When the kidneys do not receive any evils, then naturally, one will not engender any disease on its own. It also effective in the treatment of shan qi of the small intestine.

There were a couple of decisions to be made in the process which is the interesting part when practically making medicine, as the instructions are often not crystal-clear. The maker has to resort to their own experience, common sense or pick other people’s brains for enlightenment. The issues at hand were, firstly, the ginger was only added for the pickling stage, yet removed for the dry-frying, because to dry fry ginger would take a lot longer than to dry-fry fennel and thus would have not been feasible in the same container.

Another option would have been to dry-fry them separately (thanks to Lorraine Wilcox for providing another excerpt that clarified the processing of dry-frying). The pasting was done with overcooked long grain rice since sticky rice was not available at the time. For the alcohol to be ingested with the pill hard liquor or high spirits of Bai Jiu 白酒 (56%) was harnessed. It is debatable whether this passage refers to rice wine or grain-distilled spirits. It was decided on high spirits due to its warming qualities for the spleen.

Notes: It was surprising how much powder was used up for one scoop of rice to get the consistency right -enough to make more than 200 pills. This constituted an issue because rice over the time of 48 hours produces aflatoxins, which is why this pill should be prepared fresh every couple of days. Initially the pill size was too big and it was hard to swallow 30 pills. Once being less over-keen and complying with the parasol tree sized instructions, it was much more pleasant, although the high salt content combined with salty spirits was rather unpalatable.