xīn chè
Also rendered: Heart-tugging (this site; literal, and it keeps 掣 as a pull rather than flattening it into palpitation) · Xin che (transliteration; how the name appears wherever the chapter's transmissions are listed out)
Reviewed · 2026-10-11
At a glance
What the first yang’s disease transmits into: 一陽發病，少氣、善欬、善泄，其傳爲心掣，其傳爲隔. The first yang is the lesser yang; the disease begins with breath that is short and a readiness to cough and to purge, and what it transmits into is this — the heart pulled, and then a blockage at which food will not go down. 掣 is a drawing, the motion of something tugged rather than of something beating, and the commentaries keep the distinction: 王冰 reads the heart as pulling itself, and later writers class the sign with the palpitations that have that dragged quality. The chapter itself names it and moves on to 隔.
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 | heart-tugging | 心 is where it is felt and 掣 is what the motion is — a drawing, which the word for palpitation does not carry |
| Transliteration | xin che | how the term is written in lists of this chapter's transmissions; right about the referent, and it loses the tug |
| Descriptive | palpitation with a dragging quality | exact about the feel, and it puts the sign into a category the chapter does not name |
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