wǔ yè
Also rendered: the five fluids (Plain, and says nothing about where they come from) · the five secretions (Too clinical; 液 is not only secreted) · the five humours (Imports the four humours of Greek medicine) · wu ye (Bare transliteration)
Reviewed · 2026-09
At a glance
Sweat belongs to the heart, snivel to the lung, tears to the liver, spittle to the spleen, sputum to the kidney. Few lines in the book have been more used and few are harder to defend: these are not fluids an organ secretes in any anatomical sense. They are what escapes when that organ stops holding — the heart letting go of sweat, the lung of snivel — which is why the same list turns up in later books among the signs of depletion. As anatomy it is wrong; as a description of what leaks, it is exact.
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.
| Wiseman & Feng | the five fluids | They use fluid for 液 throughout and keep the list exactly as the chapter gives it. |
| Unschuld | the five liquids | He stays close to the graph — water plus night — though liquid is what comes out of a bottle. |
| This site | the five fluids | The chapter is not describing glands. It is describing what the body loses when an organ stops holding, and fluid is the ordinary English for that. |
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