earticle

영어

In the eastern traditional medicine, Gypsum Fibrosum ( ) has been used in a fever 石膏 by its characteristic effect of heat-clearing and fire-purging (淸熱瀉火). This study was aimed to investigate the effect of heat-clearing and fire-purging effect of Gypsum through investigating literatures. The descriptions of medicinal effect of Gypsum Fibrosum were collected from 16 kinds of medical books as well as Treatise on Febrile Diseases (傷寒論) and Detailed Analysis of Epidemic Warm Diseases (溫病條辨). The results of this study suggest that Gypsum Fibrosum was used to treat fever-related symptoms initially in the traditional Chinese medicine. However, the concept of fever was further divided into two categories: fever (熱) and fire (火), which make the concept of fire-purging (瀉火) separated form heat-clearing (清熱). Therefore, the meaning of ‘heat-clearing’ effect should cover diseases caused by pathologic heat and that of ‘fire-purging’ effect should cover severe diseases or mental disorders.