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.
luán jié
The joints drawn up and unable to open — what the chapter says will happen to the person with bone impediment. It is the last link in a chain: withered kidney fat, marrow that does not fill, cold that reaches the bone, and finally the joints.
jīn luán
The sinews drawn up and not letting go — the third of the three signs chapter 48 names together as 癇瘛筋攣, and the one that says what the pulling acts upon. Both occurrences in the chapter come from opposite pulses, a heart pulse full and large and a liver pulse small and tight.
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.
tuō yíng
The first of the two ills that have no outside cause, and the reason the first error is an error. A man was once honoured and has since fallen low; no evil has struck him, but the illness is born within, and it is called 脱營, the camp draining away. Wang Bing's gloss ties the name to the history: 嘗貴後賤，謂之脱營. What drains is the camp qi, the portion that runs inside the vessels; when it comes away the body dwindles day by day, the qi is deficient and without essence, and the man is chilled and startled from time to time. The physician who examines him finds nothing — the illness is not in the viscera and receptacles, and the bodily form has not changed — so he doubts, and does not know the name. That is precisely the case the chapter says one must ask about before treating.
bìng néng
The condition or bearing of an illness: 能 read as 態, not the ordinary 能. The chapter's great method runs 循尺滑濇寒溫之意，視其大小，合之病能，逆從以得，復知病名 — follow the cubit's smooth and rough, cold and warm, look at its great and small, join it to the condition of the illness; the contrary and the compliant being obtained, the name of the illness is known again. So 病能 is what the signs are joined to before the name is pronounced: the illness as it presents, not yet named. The Suwen has a whole discourse under this title (病能論, ch46), and the usage there is the same.