wǔ fā
Also rendered: The five outbreaks (plain, and it loses the inward start) · The five origins (clear, and 發 is an issuing not an origin) · The five eruptions (the site's convention, keeping the suddenness)
Reviewed · 2026-10-26
At a glance
The five eruptions are the chapter’s shortest table and its most compressed: 陰病發於骨，陽病發於血，以味發於氣。陽病發於冬，陰病發於夏. Two axes are folded into one line. By substance: yin disease breaks out in bone, yang disease in blood, and disease from flavour in qi. By season: yang disease breaks out in winter and yin disease in summer — the reverse of what a reader expects, and the reason the line is worth keeping. The chapter gives no explanation, and the omission is characteristic: 五發 stands between 五裁 and 五邪 as one more grid, a set of correspondences to be used rather than argued.
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 | the five eruptions | where disease breaks out |
| Literal | five issuings | exact, and colourless |
| Clinical | the five sites and seasons of onset | clear, and it explains both axes |
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