suǒ zé
Also rendered: Dry and lustreless (this site; literal, and it keeps the seeking in 索 and the sheen in 澤, so the dryness is said twice) · Suo ze (transliteration; how the name appears wherever the chapter's transmissions are listed out)
Reviewed · 2026-10-11
At a glance
The second of the two transmissions of disease of the third yang: 三陽爲病，發寒熱，下爲癰腫，及爲痿厥腨㾓，其傳爲索澤，其傳爲頽疝. The third yang falls ill with cold and heat, sends sores down to the lower body, brings flaccidity and cramping in the calves — and then transmits. One transmission is 索澤: the moisture is used up and the skin goes lustreless. The other is 頽疝, a swelling that hangs. The chapter gives the pair as the two directions the same heat can go — outward to the surface, downward to the private parts — and 索澤 names the outward one.
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.
| This site | dry and lustreless | 索 is the seeking of what is no longer there and 澤 the moisture that is gone; the pair names a surface, not a disease of an organ |
| Transliteration | suo ze | how the term is written in lists of this chapter's transmissions; right about the referent, and it says nothing about the skin |
| Descriptive | loss of lustre of the skin | exact about what is seen, and 澤 in this chapter is a fluid's sheen rather than a polish |
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