Each entry gives the term in traditional and simplified form, its pinyin, the senses it carries in the classical corpus, the passages where it does real work, and how published translations have rendered it.
miù cì
The needling method named in the chapter's prescription, and distinct from ordinary needling: the puncture is made on the side opposite the disease, and — in the later chapter devoted to it — in the surface network vessels rather than the channels. Here it is only one item in a sequence: remove the accumulation, move the limbs gently, keep the clothing warm, needle across, and the frame comes back.
fǎn zuǒ
Assistance given from the contrary side, and the last resort of the chapter's order of prescriptions: 偶之不去，則反佐以取之，所謂寒熱温涼，反從其病也. Where the ordinary rule is 治寒以熱，治熱以寒, 反佐 takes a drug of the same disposition as the disease and puts it in the formula, so that the medicine follows the illness instead of opposing it — 反從其病 — and by following it, gets in. The chapter gives no formula and no proportion; it gives the principle, and the principle is the same one it states later in the passage on 反治: 熱因寒用，寒因熱用，塞因塞用，通因通用，必伏其所主，而先其所因. Though the name says 反, what the physician is doing is finding the way in, which is why the next sentence of that passage adds 其始則同，其終則異.
fǎn zhì
Treatment that runs with the disease rather than against it, and the chapter's longest exposition of a single term: 帝曰：反治何謂？歧伯曰：熱因寒用，寒因熱用，塞因塞用，通因通用，必伏其所主，而先其所因，其始則同，其終則異，可使破積，可使潰堅，可使氣和，可使必已. The four clauses are the whole of it: a disease of heat is met with what its heat comes from, a blockage is met with what blocks, a flux with what flows — the medicine agrees with the symptom so that it can reach the cause, and only then turns against it. The chapter's own sentence for this is 其始則同，其終則異, the beginning the same and the end different, and it is why the term is named with 正治 in one breath: 逆者，正治，從者，反治. Its practical form appears later as 諸寒之而熱者，取之陰；熱之而寒者，取之陽，所謂求其屬也.
shī jué
Corpse inversion — 尸 shī, a corpse; 厥 jué, inversion — and the chapter uses it once, at the close of its hardest case: 五絡俱竭，令人身脉皆動，而形無知也，其狀若尸，或曰尸厥. The body's vessels are all moving and the form knows nothing; he looks like a corpse, and 或曰 — some call it — corpse inversion. The hedging word is the point. This is the state that looks like death and is not, and the chapter is careful not to collapse the two. Its prescription is the longest in the chapter: five punctures in order, then — if they fail — a bamboo tube blown into the ears, an inch of hair from the left temple burned, and a cup of wine given, or poured in for a man who cannot swallow. 《史記·扁鵲倉公列傳》 has 扁鵲 bringing the crown prince of 虢 round from the same state and writes the word 尸蹶, with 蹶 where this base text writes 厥. The word has not appeared in any chapter transcribed on this site before.
kài
The single symptom chapter 38 is written about. It is defined not by its sound but by its causes: an evil that enters through the skin and body hair, cold food and drink that rise from the stomach to the lung, and an evil from outside meeting an evil from within. Once that meeting has happened, each store and each palace coughs in its own way.
jué nì
Qi that has turned and is travelling against its proper direction. In chapter 30 it is the state of Yangming when it rebels upward: the patient pants, the panting distresses him, and the distress makes him unable to bear company. The same counterflow carries the chapter's only prognostic judgement — reached to the depots it kills, reached only to the channels it does not.
jué qì
In chapter 21 this is not a named disease but the behaviour behind several of them. The lesser yang arrives alone and it is counterflow qi. Greater yang arriving alone breathes counterflow: panting, with empty qi rising. At the end of the chapter the reverting yin governs, true emptiness aches in the heart, and the counterflow qi lodges and presses against something until white sweat breaks out. Chapter three named two disorders on the same word, scorching inversion from a summer heat and sudden inversion from a rage that carries blood upward; here we are one step upstream of those namings, watching the motion itself.
nì qì
Qi moving against its own course. What makes the idea clinical rather than abstract is that the chapter always says which qi and which course: the stomach's qi should go down and instead goes up, and the person cannot lie down; the lung's connecting vessels should follow the channels up and down and instead lodge, and the person's breathing is audible while the rest of life goes on as usual.
cēn wǔ
The word for comparing one reading against another until they either agree or betray a lie. In chapter seventeen it is what one does with the five things looked at — essence, colour, the five viscera, the six palaces, the shape of the body — 以此參伍，決死生之分. Here it is what the nine probes do for each other: form and qi in accord means life, but if the probes do not cross-check, that is disease. The art is not in any single probe; it is in the disagreement between them.
cùn kǒu
The pulse at the wrist, and the place that became the standard one to feel it. In this chapter it is the yin half of the comparison: one degree fuller means ceasing yin, two lesser yin, three greater yin, four or more is 關陰. When both it and 人迎 are four times too full, the condition is 關格, and the chapter gives that a prognosis in plain words.
jué gǔ
The point above the ankle known later as 懸鐘 (Gallbladder 39), named here for the place where the bone appears to end. The chapter needles it with a chisel needle, letting blood, for the shank pain that cannot be pressed — the marrow-adhering disease. It is one of only three points the chapter names outright.
jué rén cháng mìng
To cut short the long life that was a person's — the sentence chapter 27 passes on the physician who needles without knowing the three regions and nine indicators. It appears twice, closing each of the last two paragraphs, and the second time it is preceded by 釋邪攻正 — releasing the evil and attacking the upright — which is what the cutting consists of. The phrase belongs with 天年 of chapter 1: the life is conceived as an allotted quantity, and the physician's incompetence is measured as a subtraction from it.