Blood withering · xue ku

At a glance

Pinyin

xuè kū

Simplified

血枯

Literal

血 xuè — blood; 枯 kū — withered, dried up, as a tree that has lost its sap. The name is a diagnosis in two syllables: this is not blood that has been spilled or blood that is hot, but blood that has run out. Chapter 40 gives it two causes, both of them belonging to youth — a great loss of blood, or entering the chamber drunk — and one consequence that fixes the illness in a woman's body: 月事衰少不來, the monthly affair dwindles and does not come. Its prescription is the most detailed in the whole Suwen: four parts of cuttlebone to one of madder, rolled into pills with sparrow's egg the size of a small bean, five before the meal, washed down with abalone juice. The pairing is worth noting — a shell from the sea and a root from the earth, and the pill bound with egg and carried down with fish. Where drum distension is too much in the belly, blood withering is too little in the vessels, and the chapter puts the two first for the contrast.

Shuowen

《說文解字》：血，祭所薦牲血也——**本義為祭祀所薦之牲血**，**引申為一身流行之赤液**；枯，槁也——**本義為木之乾槁**。「血」讀 xuè、**本篇6見，本站一律讀 xuè**；「枯」讀 kū、**本篇1見**，**「血枯」1見**。**其因有二**：「脱」讀 tuō血（**本篇1見，不作「脫」**）「醉」讀 zuì入房中，**一失之於血、一傷之於精**；**其驗則在「月事」（「月」讀 yuè「事」讀 shì）**，**本站「月事」一條見 #1006**。