Nature: sweet, cold

Enters: Lung, Liver

Actions: Disperses wind-heat; expresses skin eruptions; promotes vision by removing nebulas; relieves convulsions by subduing liver wind (large dose); strongly clears heat from the nose, eyes, and throat.

Indications:
• Wind-heat: loss of voice, sore throat, cough, hoarseness, or fever, headache.
• Wind-heat or early measles: incomplete expression of skin rash.
• Liver wind-heat: red eyes, tears, nebulas, conjunctivitis, painful eyes, blurry vision.
• Liver wind-heat: childhood febrile disease, morbid night crying in babies, spasms, convulsions, delirium, night terrors; tetanus.
• Doctrine of signatures: skin treats skin; big eyes indicate affinity for eyes/liver; cicadas are silent at night – for calming children at night.
Hsu: Anticonvulsant; decreases muscle tremors caused by nicotine.
DY: Disinhibits the throat; diffuses the portals of the Lungs and increases the voice.
• One of few herbs in the materia medica which calms the liver and settles convulsions and is also non-toxic, even at high doses of up to 30g/day (unlike scorpion and centipede). For this reason, it is good for children.
• Vexation, agitation, insomnia, night crying, night fears, nightmares, clonic convulsions, epilepsy.
• With Shi chang pu to effectively rouse the spirit and open the portals. For vertigo, tinnitus, and deafness due to obstruction of the portals.

Dose: 3-12g