huǒ ruò
Also rendered: Fire cautery (keeps the burning and the medical frame) · Moxibustion (the later term, and it names the material instead of the act) · Cauterisation (clinical, and it carries a modern surgical echo)
Reviewed · 2026-10-25
At a glance
Moxibustion, named by its action rather than its material. The chapter pairs it with needle and stone at the very first question: the strength of the bones, the firmness of the flesh, the thickness of the skin and the density of the interstices all differ, and the pain of needle, stone and fire differs with them. The answer is a rule about tissue rather than about disease — hard bone, soft sinew, slack flesh and thick skin bear pain, and bear fire too; hard flesh with thin skin does not. Fire is thus treated as a stimulus of the same order as the needle, to be judged by the same bodily measure, and the chapter’s later questions about black complexion and strong bone extend the same logic to the point where a man may be said to bear moxa at all.
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 | fire cautery | the text's own action |
| Literal | fire-burning | exact, and it sounds like an injury |
| Clinical | moxa cautery | clear, and it adds the herb |
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