Beautiful Sweetgum Resin

Traditional Use

Primary Actions

• Invigorates Blood and alleviates pain - used when blood stasis and constrained circulation produce fixed painful swelling, traumatic tenderness, or stubborn nodular lesions that benefit from a resinous moving medicinal.
• Resolves toxin and disperses deep-rooted boils - classically applied for scrofula, carbuncles, ulcers, and chronic suppurative lesions when toxic swelling and local stagnation coexist.
• Cools Blood while assisting hemostasis - extended to epistaxis, hematemesis, and bleeding from cuts or ulcerated lesions when Heat and stasis are both part of the presentation.
• Promotes tissue repair in topical use - ground resin or plaster preparations were used on difficult wounds and sores to reduce pain while encouraging new flesh to form.

Secondary Actions

• Bai Jiao Xiang and Feng Xiang Zhi are synonym names for the same sweetgum resin; this record keeps the Bai Jiao Xiang entry because the import spreadsheet split the resin into two pinyin variants.
• Its clinical niche overlaps trauma, painful swelling, and ulcerative external medicine more than routine long-course internal tonification.

Classic Formulas

• Xiao Jin Dan (小金丹) - from Wai Ke Zheng Zhi Quan Shu Ji, where Bai Jiao Xiang helps regulate qi and blood, disperse hard swellings, and relieve pain in scrofula, deep abscesses, and fixed nodular masses.

Classical References

• TCM Wiki and American Dragon both identify Bai Jiao Xiang as the same medicinal substance as Feng Xiang Zhi, a sweetgum resin with pungent-bitter, neutral properties that enters the Spleen, Lung, and Liver channels.
• Traditional indications consistently include epistaxis, hematemesis, deep-rooted boils, ulcers, scrofula, dental pain, and other painful toxic swellings, with both internal powder use and external paste application described.
• IMPORT NOTE: The spreadsheet created separate slugs for Bai Jiao Xiang and Feng Xiang Zhi, but the source literature treats them as the same resin under alternate names.
• Older materia medica and trade references may list the Latin under forms such as Resina Liquidamberis Taiwanianae or Resina Liquidamberis Formosanae rather than the modernized Liquidambaris Resina.