Archives: Glossary

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.

  • 厥

    jué

    Inversion

    Reversal: a failure of the qi at the root that shows itself in the extremities — cold hands and feet, or hot soles, and in its counterflow form, loss of awareness. Chapter 45 is the Suwen's treatise on it, and it gives the word one anatomy: the lower body, the foot, and the paths yin and yang take through them. The site renders 厥 inversion throughout, following the existing entries for 煎厥 and 薄厥.

  • 遺溺

    yí niào

    Involuntary loss of urine · yi niao

    Losing urine involuntarily while coughing — the sign of bladder cough, which arises when a kidney cough has gone on long enough to pass into the palace paired with the kidney.

  • 疸

    dǎn

    Jaundice · dan

    Jaundice, in three signs. Chapter 18 gives urine that is yellow and red while the patient lies quietly; eyes that are yellow; and 胃疸, hunger returning as soon as food has been taken, which is the central wasting under another name. One point about the text: the first of these is written in the base text with 疽 , the graph for a deep abscess, while the third is written with 疸 , the graph 說文 glosses as 黃病也. The two are kept as the base text gives them and the difference noted, since 疸 is plainly what the chapter means in both places.

  • 瘕

    jiǎ

    Jia

    The gathering chapter 48 sets against shan: it comes of a small, tight pulse that fails to beat up under the finger, and the chapter names it both from the three pulses that share that shape and from tightness in the third yang. The distinguishing mark is 不鼓 — the pulse does not rise — which is exactly what the large tight pulse of shan does.

  • 痎瘧

    jiē nüè

    Jie malaria · jie nüè

    The opening word of the chapter and the only time it appears. Strictly the tertian malaria, every other day; here it stands for malaria in general, which is why the rest of the chapter can simply say 瘧. The question hung on it is not where malaria comes from — everyone knows it comes from wind — but why it keeps a schedule.

  • 腎痺

    shèn bì

    Kidney obstruction

    The black case, and the last of the five. The pulse comes hard and large in the upper part; the accumulated qi is in the lower belly and the genitals. The cause is the plainest in the chapter — bathing in cold water and then lying down. It is also the shortest of the five entries: no accompanying symptoms, no cold and heat, just the place and the cause.

  • 腎風

    shèn fēng

    Kidney wind · shen feng

    The fourth case, and the one the chapter spends the rest of its length on: wind in the kidney, with the face swollen and speech impaired. Asked whether it may be needled, Qi Bo answers that in vacuity one must not — and then describes, sign by sign, the wind water that follows five days after the wrong needling. The disease is less the point than the prohibition.

  • 結陽

    jié yáng

    Knotted yang

    What is knotted on the yang side, and the sign is swelling in the four limbs: 結陽者,腫四支. The chapter's rule is that a knot in the yang shows where the yang runs — out in the limbs — and a knot in the yin shows where the yin is stored, which is blood, and so 結陰者便血一升. The two sentences stand side by side and make one argument: the same word, 結, and the result depends on which side of the body it happens on. Where the three-yang, two-yang and three-yin knottings later in the chapter give each knot a disease name — 消, 隔, 水 — this pair gives the knot no name at all, only its sign.

  • 結陰

    jié yīn

    Knotted yin

    What is knotted on the yin side, and the sign is blood passing below: 結陰者便血一升,再結二升,三結三升 — knotted yin passes a pint of blood, knotted a second time two pints, knotted a third time three. The disease and its quantity are given together, and the arithmetic is the chapter's way of saying that the knot deepens. Set beside 結陽者,腫四支 it makes the pair that the paragraph is built on: a knot in the yang shows as swelling, where yang runs; a knot in the yin shows as blood, which is what the yin stores. 升 is a measure of capacity, and the chapter counts in it rather than saying ‘much’ or ‘little’.

  • 解墯

    jiě duò

    Laxness and listlessness

    Lax, listless and unwilling to move — limbs that will not hold and a person who cannot be bothered. Chapter 46 lists it among the signs of wind from wine, alongside the bathing sweat and the scant breath. The site has met the same word in chapter 16 and chapter 43, and reads it the same way: 墯 is simply 惰 written the way this base text writes it.

  • 漏病

    lòu bìng

    Leaking illness

    漏病 is the lower half of a pair. 三陽并至, and the chapter gives two directions for the same convergence: 上爲巔疾,下爲漏病 — above it makes illness at the crown, below it makes leaking illness. The word 漏 is taken from the clepsydra, where water escapes through a marked opening at a measured rate; the illness is named for that Escape, and 王冰 glosses it as 泄注, a pouring discharge. What matters for reading the chapter is the pairing rather than the identification of the organ: the same 并至 produces a sign at the top and a sign at the bottom, and neither is the disease itself. The chapter immediately adds that the condition has 外無期,内無正 — no fixed season outside, no fixed position within — which is why a name taken from a leaking vessel fits better than the name of any one viscus.

  • 漏風

    lòu fēng

    Leaking wind · lou feng

    Leaking wind is one of the winds named after the manner of contracting them: wind struck while drinking. Wang Bing's gloss explains the name — the heat is pent and the interstices loose, so the sweat pours out as though it leaked. Its signs are all signs of a body that cannot keep its fluids in.