Jin Zhi
StarFermented night-soil supernatant (aged/clarified; a processed human-derived preparation, not a taxon)
Traditionally used for
- Nose & throat
- Colds & fever
- Digestion
- Mood & calm
- Skin
☯ TCM Properties
Strongly clears Heat and cleans toxins
Traditional Chinese Uses
Jin Zhi ('golden juice,' 金汁; Latin Succus Faecalis Aureus) is a classical processed human-derived preparation — the aged, clarified supernatant of fermented night-soil, historically sealed in jars and buried for years until it became a clear liquid. In traditional texts it is intensely bitter and cold, entering the Stomach, and was reserved to strongly clear Heat and resolve toxicity in severe warm-febrile disease with high fever, delirium, mania, throat sores and toxic swellings when milder heat-clearing herbs had failed.
This substance is of historical and textual interest only. It is not part of contemporary clinical practice, is not a pharmacopoeia item, and carries obvious biological-contamination and infection hazards; it should never be prepared or used. Modern practice substitutes safe heat-clearing, toxin-resolving herbs.
Relationships
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Botanical Description
Jin Zhi (金枝) is a Pinyin entry that translates literally as 'golden branch' or 'golden twig.' The name does not correspond to any standardized entry in Bensky & Gamble, the Chinese Pharmacopoeia, or major TCM materia medica compendia, and may refer variously to a folk or poetic name for a yellow-stemmed plant, to a small Cinnamomum-related twig product, or to a regional name not retained in modern practice. Because no single accepted Linnaean identity can be established with confidence, all substantive fields except tradition are left null. The entry is flagged for further research; without verified identification, no morphological description, parts, or properties can be responsibly assigned.
⚠ Drug Interactions
Corticosteroids, calcineurin inhibitors and other immunosuppressants; cytotoxic chemotherapy
Jin Zhi is not a plant drug and has no phytochemistry. It is the clarified upper layer decanted from human faeces that has been slurried with well water and earth, strained through cloth, sealed in a buried earthenware jar and aged in the ground for a period conventionally given as ten years. Nothing in that process is a validated sterilisation step. Aged faecal material can carry enteric bacteria, enteric viruses including hepatitis A and E, norovirus and enteroviruses, and the ova of soil-transmitted helminths (Ascaris lumbricoides, Trichuris trichiura, hookworm) and, in endemic regions, Schistosoma japonicum, whose eggs are specifically noted to survive weeks in excreted stool. The hazard is not hypothetical even for far more controlled material: modern faecal microbiota transplantation, using screened donors and processed stool, still transmitted extended-spectrum beta-lactamase-producing Escherichia coli to two immunocompromised recipients, one of whom died (DeFilipp and colleagues, New England Journal of Medicine, 2019). An unscreened, uncharacterised preparation given to a patient whose immunity is pharmacologically suppressed is the same exposure without any of the safeguards.
Clinical note: Do not administer. This is the substantive safety finding for this drug and it applies regardless of the indication. In an immunocompromised patient there is no dose at which the infectious risk is acceptable, and the preparation cannot be batch-tested in the way a donor stool sample can.
Proton pump inhibitors and H2-receptor antagonists (omeprazole, ranitidine and similar)
Gastric acid is the principal host barrier against ingested enteric bacteria and parasites. Pharmacological acid suppression raises gastric pH and is an established risk factor for enteric infection generally. Since the recognised hazard of this preparation is the viable organisms it may carry rather than any chemical constituent, anything that reduces the infectious dose required to establish infection compounds that hazard directly.
Clinical note: Do not administer. Acid suppression is extremely common in the febrile, hospitalised or elderly patients for whom this drug was classically indicated, which makes the combination more likely than it first appears.
Antibacterial therapy for enteric fever, sepsis and severe febrile illness (ceftriaxone, azithromycin and similar)
The classical indications for Jin Zhi are precisely the presentations that now carry the highest need for prompt antimicrobial treatment: epidemic febrile disease with high fever and delirium, heat-toxin rashes and macules, and the warm-disease syndromes that map onto enteric fever, sepsis and severe viral illness. There is no clinical evidence of any kind that this preparation treats those conditions. Substituting or delaying antimicrobial therapy in favour of it is a direct route to avoidable death, and modern Chinese sources reviewing the drug note that its efficacy is unverified and its toxicity potentially significant. Faecal medicines were largely removed from the Pharmacopoeia of the People's Republic of China during the late twentieth century.
Clinical note: Treat this as a historical entry rather than a dispensable drug. A patient presenting with the classical indication needs urgent conventional assessment and antimicrobial therapy, not this preparation.
Dosage
| Form | Amount | Frequency | Duration | Population | Notes |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| not recommended | Not established — obsolete substance | Daily | — | — | Obsolete. Fermented night-soil supernatant. No ChP monograph; not dispensed in modern practice on infection-control grounds. Recorded for historical completeness only. |
Evidence Tier
Limited evidence · 1 studyRecorded studies by study design, strongest design at the top. This is a study-design tier only, not a GRADE rating: it does not weigh risk of bias, consistency or precision.
Systematic review / meta-analysis
0
Randomized controlled trial
0
Other clinical trial
0
Observational / case report
1
0 verified · 1 unverified
In vitro / animal
0
Other / unclassified
0
Verified: design read from PubMed for a DOI that resolves to the cited paper Unverified: taken from the study's recorded description
Clinical Studies
Associations between Schistosomiasis and the Use of Human Waste as an Agricultural Fertilizer in China
Not a study of the medicinal preparation itself, but the closest epidemiological evidence on its source material. An open cohort across 36 villages in rural Sichuan tested 2,005 residents in 2007 and 1,365 in 2010 for Schistosoma japonicum. In 2007 residents of villages in the highest quartile of night-soil use were 10.8 times more likely to be infected than those in the lowest (95% confidence interval 3.25 to 35.87), and the authors estimated that eliminating night-soil use would have cut prevalence by roughly 49%; the association was absent by 2010. The relevant point for this monograph is that untreated human excreta remains a demonstrated vehicle for parasite transmission at the community level in the regions where the drug was traditionally made.
Historical Texts
Zhou Hou Bei Ji Fang (Handbook of Prescriptions for Emergencies), Ge Hong
Eastern Jin dynasty, 4th century CEBen Cao Gang Mu (Compendium of Materia Medica), Li Shizhen
Ming dynasty, 1596References
- DeFilipp Z, Bloom PP, Torres Soto M, Mansour MK, Sater MRA, Huntley MH, Turbett S, Chung RT, Chen YB, Hohmann EL. Drug-Resistant E. coli Bacteremia Transmitted by Fecal Microbiota Transplant . New England Journal of Medicine (2019) [DOI]
- Zhang F, Luo W, Shi Y, Fan Z, Ji G. Should We Standardize the 1,700-Year-Old Fecal Microbiota Transplantation? . American Journal of Gastroenterology (2012) [DOI]
- Du XH, Song YM, Cai JA, Zhu YG. Utilization of human excrement in pre-modern China, its theoretical interpretations and ecological significance . Soil Ecology Letters (2024) [DOI]
- Qi W, Pan L. Cognitive Bricolage: Reconciling Fecal-Based TCM with Gut Microbiota Science Through Bidirectional Legitimation . Humanities and Social Sciences Communications (2026) [DOI]
- Chen YD, Qian MB, Zhu HH, Zhou CH, Zhu TJ, Huang JL, Li ZJ, Li SZ, Zhou XN. Soil-transmitted helminthiasis in China: A national survey in 2014-2015 . PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases (2021) [DOI]
This information is for educational purposes only and is not intended to replace professional medical advice. Always consult a qualified healthcare provider before using any herbal remedy, especially if you are pregnant, nursing, or taking medications.
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