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.
jué yīn
The third of the three yin, and the closed. It lies before lesser yin and roots at Dadun on the great toe. The chapter calls it both 'the yin that cuts off yang' and 'the ultimate yin' — the last of the yin, where yang returns.
suì xīng
The planet Jupiter, the star of wood and of the east, and the one this chapter names when the wood circuit moves. Its name is the year: the planet steps through the lodges and returns in twelve years, and 歲 came to mean the year itself. In the ten tables of the chapter each circuit closes with 上應 and a star, and wood answers to this one — in surplus (歲木太過…上應歲星), in falling short (歲土不及…上應歲星), and again when revenge comes and the wind rises (復則大風暴發…上應歲星).
jù xū
Two points below Sanli on the stomach channel, named by their distance from it: 復下三里三寸,爲巨虚上廉;復下上廉三寸,爲巨虚下廉. The chapter gives them because it has just said that the large and small intestine both attach to the stomach, and the two points are where that attachment is read: 大腸屬上,小腸屬下. The phrase is compressed — 廉 is understood from the line before — and Zhang Jiebin expands it to 大腸屬上廉,小腸屬下廉. Later needling knows the points as Shangjuxu (Stomach 37) and Xiajuxu (Stomach 39), the lower of which is still the point for intestinal disorders.
jù yáng
This chapter's name for the greater yang channel. On the foot it is the bladder channel, on the hand the small intestine channel — exactly what chapters six and seven call 太陽. 王冰:足少陰,腎脈。巨陽,膀胱脈。The name matters because of the route: the bladder channel runs to the crown, which is why a crown disease is faulted there, and why the chapter can say the fault is in 足少陰、巨陽 in one breath.
dé shǒu shī shǒu
The chapter's verdict on the five depots, and its plainest sentence: 得守者生,失守者死. What the depots keep is the interior — 五藏者,中之守也. The chapter then names the ways the guard is lost: the voice muffled as though spoken in a closed room (damp in the central qi); speech so faint it resumes only after a whole day (qi snatched away); clothes left open, foul and indiscriminate talk (the spirit disordered); the granary that will not store; the bladder that cannot hold. Each is a failure of keeping, and the word for all of them is the same.
shèn zhī
The fatty, unctuous substance of the kidney — a phrase the Suwen uses once, in this chapter, where it is needed as something that can dry up. Withered and no longer growing, it is the first link in the chain the chapter traces to bone impediment: no growth in the kidney, no filling of the marrow, cold reaching the bone, joints drawn up.
shèn bì
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.
shèn qì
What drives growth in the seven-year cycles: teeth, hair, and the capacity to conceive. The single most important caution for a new reader is that 腎 here is a system of functions rather than the organ of modern anatomy.
shèn fēng
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.
tóng qì
Kindred qi — 同 tóng, the same; 氣 qì, qi — the qi that is of a piece with what it belongs to. 《說文》 has 同,合會也, brought together, which is close enough: this is the qi that belongs, against the qi that is only lodging. The chapter uses it once, in 人有客氣,有同氣, and never again, and it does not say what it means. 馬蒔 takes it as a person's own qi against invading evil; 張介賓 takes both words from the doctrine of the circuit qi, so that 同氣 is the seasonal qi that repeats year after year against the qi of the year that never does. The chapter moves straight on to the rule about the passages, so both readings are left standing. The word has not appeared in any chapter transcribed on this site before.
jié yáng
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.
jié yīn
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’.