Bitterwood

Traditional Use

Primary Actions

• Clears heat and resolves toxin - Ku Mu is used for upper-respiratory infection, pneumonia, dysentery, damp-heat sores, and other conditions in which toxic heat is prominent.
• Dries dampness and kills parasites - official and regional use includes eczema, scabies-like itching, and chronic damp skin disorders treated with washes or powders.
• Reduces swelling and helps external healing - topical application appears in folk and official practice for burns, insect bites, and even snakebite support.

Secondary Actions

• Modern official naming emphasizes branches and leaves of Picrasma quassioides, although older trade language and English glosses sometimes make it sound like a bark or wood drug. This page stays with the current medicinal-material identity rather than the misleading wood-only label.
• Ku Mu is distinctly bitter and somewhat toxic in older warnings, so it belongs to the detoxifying-bitter category rather than to the gentle bitter-tonic quassia products familiar in Western herbalism.

Classic Formulas

• Ku Mu with Shi Liu Pi or Huang Lian - dysentery-focused pairing logic for damp-heat bowel infection and abdominal pain.
• Topical powders or decoction washes with Ku Shen or Huang Bai - external damp-heat strategy for eczema, itchy skin disease, and suppurative lesions.
• Regional burn and bite applications - official modern references still preserve these external uses even though the evidence base is limited.

Classical References

• Official Chinese references describe Ku Mu as bitter and cold, entering the Lung and Large Intestine to clear heat, detoxify, dry dampness, and kill parasites.
• The listed indications include upper-respiratory infection, pneumonia, acute infectious diarrhea or dysentery, eczema, burns, and snakebite support.
• Traditional caution notes that the herb is mildly toxic and should not be treated as an everyday tonic.