Sanguisorba Root (Garden Burnet Root) dì yú · 地榆

Sanguisorba officinalis L. (root)

Nature and flavour. Bitter and sour, slightly cold; Liver and Large Intestine systems.

Classed as cooling the blood and stopping bleeding, and as resolving toxin and closing sores. It is the haemostatic that the tradition associates most specifically with the lower body: the classical descriptions are of blood in the stool, of bleeding from haemorrhoids, and of bloody dysentery, and that downward direction is its character. It is also the one in this group that is as much a topical material as an internal one — the classical sources record it dried and applied to burns, scalds and weeping sores, and the burn use is the one most English-language readers have heard about.