zhěn qīng
Also rendered: The light touch in diagnosis (this site; 輕 is lightness of hand and of method) · The canon of diagnosis (the 太素 reading 診經, recorded in the collation)
Reviewed · 2026-10-17
At a glance
診輕 is the chapter’s last name for its own method, and it is a name with a textual shadow. 明引比類從容，是以名曰診輕 — to draw plainly on the matching of kinds and the Congrong is what is called the light touch in diagnosis; and the Song editors note that the 太素 reads 診經, the canon of diagnosis, rather than 診輕. Either way the sentence closes the chapter on method: what Lei Gong did with the slack-limbed man was to reach for a familiar name, injury of the lung, instead of matching kinds until the spleen showed. The light touch is the opposite of that — not a light judgement, but a reading that need not strain because the kind has been found.
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 | the light touch in diagnosis | a reading that need not strain because the kind has been found |
| Literal | diagnosis light | exact, and it sounds like carelessness |
| Descriptive | sure and unlaboured diagnosis | clear, and it loses the word 輕 |
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Reading path
Guided routes through the corpus, each built on a handful of chapters and their key terms.
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