zhěn yào
Also rendered: essentials of diagnosis (Literal; keeps 診 as examining) · the essentials of examination (Closer to 診's own gloss in 說文) · the key points of diagnosis (Reads 要 as points rather than what binds them)
Reviewed · 2026-09
At a glance
The chapter’s title word, and the question the Emperor opens with: 診要何如. What the chapter gives as the answer is unexpected — before any symptom it gives a calendar of where the human qi sits in each month of the year, and then the season’s needling rule that follows from it. Diagnosis here is not a technique applied to a patient; it is knowing where you are in the year and what depth that calls for. The second half of the chapter then takes 診 as far as it can go: the recognition of how the channels end.
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.
| Common English | essentials of diagnosis | Standard for the chapter title, and there is little variation. |
| This site | essentials of diagnosis | 診 is 視, to look at — nearer to examination than to diagnosis in the modern sense. But the chapter's 診 covers the calendar, the needling rule and the signs of dying, which is a wider thing than examination and closer to what diagnosis meant before it became a laboratory word. The essentials is kept for 要 because 要 is the waist — the part that holds the rest together — and the chapter is giving what holds the practice together, not a list of key points. |
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Reading path
Guided routes through the corpus, each built on a handful of chapters and their key terms.
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