Eat and waste · shi yi

At a glance

Pinyin

shí yì

Simplified

食亦

Literal

食亦 shí yì — to eat, and 亦. The 亦 is not the adverb 'also'; the old commentaries gloss it as 易, to change, to pass through: the illness in which food goes through a body without ever becoming flesh. Eat well, grow thin. Chapter 37 names it twice and from two different directions — once when the large intestine shifts heat into the stomach, once when the stomach shifts heat into the gallbladder — which is the chapter's way of saying that one illness can have two sources. The line in which it first appears carries a graph the base text has and most modern editions do not: 善食而瘦入, eat well and waste with 入. Wang Bing's edition has it too. This site keeps it and records the omission in the collation.

Shuowen

《說文解字》：食，一米也——**本義為飯食**；**「亦」之本義為「人之臂亦（腋）」**——**本篇「食亦」之「亦」，舊注讀為「易」，謂食入移易而過、不生肌膚**。「食」讀 shí，本篇3見，**皆讀 shí**；「亦」讀 yì，本篇3見；「瘦」讀 shòu；「入」讀 rù，**本篇惟此一見**——**底本有「入」字，今通行本多無之，本站照錄**。