gǔ shí
Also rendered: Bone caries (clinical, and it names a modern disease) · Erosion of the bone (literal, and it keeps the process) · Bone erosion (the site's convention)
Reviewed · 2026-10-26
At a glance
Bone erosion is what happens when deep evil meets heat. 虚邪之入於身也深，寒與𤍠相搏，久留而内著 — the evil enters deep, cold and heat wrestle, and it stays long and settles within. If cold wins, the bones ache and the flesh dries; if heat wins, 則爛肉腐肌爲膿，内傷骨，内傷骨爲骨蝕 — the flesh rots, muscle decays into pus, the bone is hurt within, and the bone hurt within is bone erosion. The chapter gives no treatment. The name is the point: 蝕 is not a wound but a process, the bone being eaten away while the surface still holds, which is why the lesion is placed at the end of the deep-evil sequence and after the flesh has already gone.
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 | bone erosion | the process, not the lesion |
| Literal | bone being eaten | exact, and vivid |
| Clinical | deep bone destruction from lodged evil | clear, and it explains the cause |
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