cháng tán
Also rendered: Intestinal massing (keeps 覃 as spreading) · Intestinal polyp (clinical, and it names the tissue) · Mass beside the gut (explanatory, and it gives away the site)
Reviewed · 2026-10-25
At a glance
The first of the two abdominal masses, and the one that moves. Cold qi lodges outside the intestine and wrestles with the guarding qi; the qi can no longer nourish, something ties and binds, evil qi rises and a fleshy polyp grows. It begins the size of a hen’s egg and enlarges until the belly looks like a pregnancy; in long cases it lasts for years, feels hard under the hand, shifts when pushed, and the menses come on time. That last clause is the whole diagnosis: a mass outside the womb leaves the womb’s calendar intact, and it is exactly what separates 腸覃 from 石瘕, which sits in the womb and stops the menses. The name is thus a description of behaviour — a thing that extends along the gut, outside it — rather than of shape.
Passages where the term does real work, with the original, pinyin and English on the same line.
Every rendering below is a decision about which reader is being addressed. There is no neutral option.
| This site | intestinal massing | the text's own image of extension |
| Literal | intestine-reaching | exact, and it is not English |
| Clinical | a moving mass outside the intestine | clear, and it is a description |
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