Each entry gives the term in traditional and simplified form, its pinyin, the senses it carries in the classical corpus, the passages where it does real work, and how published translations have rendered it.
tài chōng
In the sixth chapter, the name for what lies behind the sage as he faces south, and the region in which lesser yin runs. This is a region of the body, not the great surge vessel of the first chapter: the two share a name and an image, but the sixth chapter is not talking about a vessel.
tài xī
The pulse behind the inner ankle where the kidney channel's qi issues, and the pulse this chapter takes when the earth circuit is in surplus: 歲土太過，雨濕流行，腎水受邪 — earth in surplus strikes the water of the kidney — and so it is 太谿, the kidney's pulse, whose stopping means death. The name is the hollow it is taken in. The chapter's own spelling is 谿, the graph it uses for a ravine throughout; the same word is often written 溪, and the two are one name, not two places.
tài yáng
The first of the three yang. In the sixth chapter it is the channel that lies above lesser yin, whose root is Zhiyin on the small toe and whose knot is the gate of life — Wang Bing takes the gate of life to be the two eyes. Its office is the open: the outermost of the three, turned toward the surface.
tài yīn
The first of the three yin. It lies below broad brightness, is named where the surge lies lowest, roots at Yinbai on the inner side of the great toe, and holds the office of the open — the outermost of the three yin.
tài yuān
The pulse at the wrist where the lung channel's qi gathers, and the pulse this chapter takes when the fire circuit is in surplus: 歲火太過，炎暑流行，金肺受邪 — fire in surplus strikes the metal of the lung — and so it is 太淵, the lung's pulse, whose stopping means death. The name is the place: a pool where water turns round upon itself, which is what a pulse feels like under the finger at that hollow. The chapter gives no anatomy; it names the pulse and gives its verdict, and the reader who knows which channel each pulse belongs to can reconstruct the rule.
fǎ tiān zé dì
Chapter 25's description of practice at its highest: not applying a technique but answering a situation, so that the response comes like an echo and follows like a shadow. The phrase is set directly against the competence of the common workmen, who know only that the empty should be filled and the full drained. The clause that closes the sentence is the one readers remember: 道無鬼神 — there are no ghosts or spirits in the way. It is the book's clearest refusal to explain a good outcome by anything other than the physician's own responsiveness.
shí quán
Ten in ten is what the books promise and what every student is taught to say. Lei Gong puts it in the mouth of his teachers — 循經受業，皆言十全 — and immediately admits that in practice there are failures, and asks to hear how they are to be explained. The emperor does not deny the ideal; he asks 所以不十全者, what it is that keeps ten from being ten, and answers with four failures, none of which is ignorance of the channels. The phrase thus does the work of a standard: because ten in ten is claimed, every failure must be accounted for, and the four accounts are the chapter. It is worth noticing that the chapter never says the standard is false — only that it is claimed before it is earned.
chì
The last stage of the disease that entered as wind-cold. When the kidney transmits to the heart, the sinews and vessels pull against one another and tighten, and this is named 瘛. It is the point at which only cautery and medicine remain, and after ten full days death is due by rule. The word is close in form to the 瘈 of 瘈瘲 in chapter sixteen, and the two are often confused; this chapter writes 瘛, and the base text is followed here.
tiān jì
The prohibitions laid on treatment by the calendar: no needling in cold weather, no draining as the moon waxes, no supplementing when it is full, no treatment at all when the rim is empty. Chapter 26 does not present these as rules of thumb but as the point at which a physician who ignores them injures the patient — hence the flat sentence that the taboos of heaven must not be unknown. The term is the chapter's own name for its subject, and it appears once, at the close of the opening movement.
shí dù
The ten measures of diagnosis, and the only place in the Suwen where they are listed. The chapter says 診有十度 and then names them: 度人，脈度，藏度，肉度，筋度，俞度 — the measure of the man, of the vessels, of the viscera, of the flesh, of the sinews, of the transport points. Six names, ten measures: the count comes from the viscera and the paired tissues, not from six separate acts. What the measures are for is stated at once: 陰陽氣盡，人病自具 — when the yin and yang qi are exhausted, the whole illness stands out. The measure of the man (度人) is read duó, to measure; the named measures (脈度, 藏度, 肉度, 筋度, 俞度) are read dù, a standard. The distinction matters: one is an act, the others are rules.
sān biàn
Three ways in which needling changes what it acts on: 有刺營者，有刺衛者，有刺寒痺之留經者 — the camp is reached by letting blood, the guard by letting qi, and cold bi lodged in the channels by bringing heat within. The order is from the deepest and most substantial to the most superficial and most external, and each has its own instrument in practice: fire for the labourer, a medicated compress for the nobleman.
sān cháng
Three things a diagnosis always asks, and all three are histories rather than signs. 診有三常，必問貴賤 — the first is rank: was this man enfeoffed and then ruined; does he want to be a marquis or a king; was he noble and has he lost his power? Though no evil strikes him, his spirit is injured within and his body will fail. The second is wealth: was he rich at first and poor after? Though no evil injures him, his skin is scorched, his sinews bend, and he wastes and stumbles into contraction. The third, which the chapter carries into the same sentence, is the temper that comes of these turns — the joy and hardship, the grief and fear that follow a change of station. The point is the one the five errors keep making: the illness is in the history, and a physician who examines only the body will not find it.