diān jí
Also rendered: epilepsy (The modern identification, and the one every reader will recognise) · peak illness (Renders 癲 literally by the crown rather than by the disease)
Reviewed · 2026-09
At a glance
The falling disease — fits, seizures, and the derangements that go with them. Chapter 28 judges it entirely by the pulse: a pulse that beats large and slippery will settle of itself in time, while one that is small, hard and racing means death and no cure. Pressed on whether the disease is vacuous or replete, Qibo gives the answer that inverts the usual rule — vacuous, it can be treated; replete, the patient dies — because here repletion means the evil has taken hold and vacuity means it is loosening.
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 | epilepsy | They use the modern disease name, which is what a clinician reading the passage will expect for a falling disease with fits. |
| Unschuld | peak illness | Unschuld keeps the literal reading of 癲 as the top of the head and notes the later commentaries that connect it to derangement rather than to fits alone. |
| This site | epilepsy | We use the modern word because chapter 28's two criteria — whether the pulse can still move, and whether the disease is loosening or has taken hold — are recognisably about the falling diseases. We avoid 'madness' or 'derangement' alone: 癲 here is a body falling before it is a mind wandering. |
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