定喘消痰 It Calms The Cough
國王問眾官道：「馬兜鈴是何品味？能醫何症？」時有太醫院官在旁道：「主公：国王问众官道：「马兜铃是何品味？能医何症？」时有太医院官在旁道：「主公：
逐句解 Line by line
The king asked his officials, "What sort of drug is horse-bell? What ailments does it cure?"
And the king does the one thing that could break the story: he asks a professional.
An officer of the Imperial Medical Court was standing by, and said: "Your Majesty —
A prose sentence ending in a direct address and a colon, with the verse starting inside it. The physician's speech opens here in prose and will close on the last line of the poem.
"Horse-bell is bitter in flavour, cold in nature, and free of poison; it settles panting and disperses phlegm, and has great virtue.
The pharmacopoeia formula again — flavour, nature, toxicity — this time in verse and from an actual physician. Every word of it is correct, which is exactly why Pilgrim's improvisation holds.
"It frees the breath and is best of all for dispelling blood congestion; it supplements depletion, quiets the cough, and eases the middle."
The quatrain rhymes on both of the positions that need it and takes no rhyme on the opening line. 寧 is níng, to quiet or settle, not the nìng of "would rather". 中 is zhōng, here the middle of the body.
The king then does the one thing that could break the story wide open: he asks his own physician. An officer of the Imperial Medical Court is standing right there, and the question is put to him directly.
The answer comes in a quatrain, and every word of it is correct. Bitter in flavour, cold in nature, free of poison; it settles panting, disperses phlegm, frees the breath, quiets a cough. The physician recites the standard account of birthwort and confirms Pilgrim's improvisation without the faintest idea that he is doing it.
The verse is a regular quatrain, rhyming on both positions that require it and taking no rhyme on the opening line. The physician begins speaking in prose and finishes inside the poem — his quotation opens in one register and shuts in another.