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.
xián
The fit. Chapter 48 names it twice from two opposite pulses — a heart pulse full and large, and a liver pulse small and tight — and both times it comes as 癇瘛筋攣, fit, tetany and contracted sinews together. The chapter's third use puts it with inversion in 癇厥, the fit that comes of the second yin going tight.
xián rén
The lowest of the four grades in Suwen 1's ladder — below the sage, above everyone else. What distinguishes the worthy is effort: they follow what the sages established by rule rather than by nature.
xiāo kě
Wasting with unquenchable thirst, reached in chapter 47 by a route worth following: rich food makes internal heat, sweet food makes the centre full, and the qi that overflows upward turns into this. It is the end of the spleen dan, and the chapter treats it with a single herb, lan, whose work is to remove the stale qi.
xī bēn
In the seventh chapter, the second thing that disease of the second yang transmits into — after wind-wasting — and the one that ends the sentence: death, beyond treatment. Breath that rushes upward and will not come back down. Later medicine made it one of the five accumulations, the lung's accumulation; the seventh chapter only says that when it arrives, nothing more can be done.
xiè yì
A state rather than a disease, given once in chapter 18 and never spoken of again: 尺脉緩濇，謂之解㑊 — a cubit pulse that is moderate and rough, and the body slack with it, the limbs unable to hold themselves up, sleep heavy and strength gone. The word is read xiè yì (some read jiě yì); the base text writes 㑊 , a character the 說文 does not contain, and later copies vary between 㑊, 亦 and 怠.
xíng
The body in its visible, labouring aspect — what walks, works, grows tired and decays. The texts nearly always pair it with spirit, and their programme is that the two should not come apart.
xī rán
A fine shivering, the rustling shudder of someone taking a chill. Chapter 32 uses it once, to open the lung heat disease: the patient shivers, the fine body hair stands up, there is aversion to wind and cold, and the tongue is yellow on top. It is the most superficial of the five opening signs in the chapter, as it should be — the lung governs the skin and its hair.
xuán jué
The quality by which the seventh chapter recognises a fatal pulse. A true storing pulse arrives suspended — hanging, with no evenness of the stomach beneath it — and cut off, breaking away from everything that should continue it. Read together with the day-counts that follow, it is the sign that lets the chapter name the number of days.