Witnessed by: TCM · Ayurveda
Gypsum, of the sulfate mineral family. White to colourless fibrous, tabular or granular masses, soft enough to scratch with a fingernail; native range: bedded in evaporite sequences with anhydrite and rock salt, and as crystals in clays and desert crusts; the drug is quarried chiefly in Hubei, Anhui and Shandong, and in the Indian gypsum beds. Globally recognized as 石膏 shi gao in Chinese, godanti in Sanskrit, godanti in Hindi, and gypsum, plaster stone in English. The part used is the crushed stone, raw for internal use and calcined for external. White, silky or pearly, sometimes water-clear in plates, tasteless and light for a stone; so soft that a nail marks it, and it loses its water and turns to a dull chalky plaster on the fire.
In this cross-tradition database, we analyze how this substance operates across world medicine systems — tracking its traditional tastes, temperatures, tissue affinities, post-digestive effects, and planetary correspondences across Ayurveda, Unani, and Western herbalism.
GYPSUM
IDENTITY
Name
- Common
- gypsum
- Scientific name
- Gypsum (hydrated calcium sulfate, CaSO₄·2H₂O)
- Family
- sulfate mineral
Form
- Part used
- the crushed stone, raw for internal use and calcined for external
PROPERTIES
Nature
Taste
how the plant declares itself on the tongue
- TCM
- pungent · sweet
Temperature
- TCM
- cold (very)
- Ayurveda
- cooling (sheeta)
Affinity
where in the body it travels
Organs / channels
- TCM
- Lung · Stomach
PRACTICE
Virtue
Actions
- TCM
- clears heat and drains fire from the qi level, relieves irritability and quenches thirst; clears heat from the Lung to stop wheezing and from the Stomach to stop toothache; calcined, it drains damp and heals sores and burns
- Ayurveda
- pittashamaka, jwaraghna (relieves fever), shirashoolahara (relieves headache), raktastambhaka, dahaprashamana (allays burning)
Cautions
- Contraindications
- cold from deficiency of the spleen and stomach; fever without real heat; the raw stone in the weak — it is the coldest drug in the pharmacopoeia and stops the digestion of anyone who does not need it
- Toxicity
- an inert, barely soluble mineral, and unpoisonous; the harm it does is by its coldness, not by its substance
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