---
title: "Bai Tou Weng"
url: "https://books.drcassone.com/21/traditional-medicines-of-east-asia/410/bai-tou-weng"
---

 ![bai tou weng, pulsatillae radix.jpg](/u/bai-tou-weng-pulsatillae-radix-RTfFNo.jpg) 

# Bai Tou Weng

### Pulsatillae Radix

_bitter, cold_

#### PRIMARY FUNCTION:

_**Clears Heat and Resolves Toxicity**_

CLASSICAL MANIFESTATIONS:
- Disorders of the gastrointestinal tract
 - Dysentery
 - Diarrhea
 - Due to heat or damp-heat patterns

Bai Tou Weng is a cold herb so it treats heat pathogens and it is
bitter so it eliminates the pathogens by draining them downward
and out of the body. When the body goes into patterns of
diarrhea or dysentery based on infection, the diarrhea is the
body’s mechanism for attempting expulsion of the pathogen.

Stopping the diarrhea in such a case would keep the pathogen
inside the body and prolong the sickness. Bai Tou Weng acts by
taking the pathogen out of the body (bitter function) which is the
same direction that the body is attempting to go with the diarrhea.
This is very different than diarrhea caused by a deficiency pattern.

Bai Tou Weng can also treat blood in the stool when caused by
heat by entering the blood level to cool the blood.

**Channels:** stomach, large intestine

COMMON APPLICATIONS AND CLINICAL
POSSIBILITIES:
- Diarrhea
 - Due to heat patterns
- Dysentery
 - Due to heat patterns
- Hemafecia
 - Due to heat patterns
- Antimicrobial
- Antiparasitic
- Pain relief
- Epistaxis
 - Due to heat in the blood
- Hemorrhoids
- IBS
 - Due to heat patterns
- Crohn’s
 - Infection stage
- Ulcerative Colitis
 - Infection stage

**Formulas:**
- Bai Tou Weng Tang

**Contraindications:** none noted in classic texts but this herb
should be used carefully if the patient has a spleen and stomach
deficiency pattern because it is cold and bitter

**Zoo Image:** a beluga whale sits on the “dysentery forever” toilet while he spells
out DAMP HEAT with toilet paper

[Cassone Wellness](https://www.cassonewellness.com)