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.
gǔ jū
Bone abscess is the fourth of the six lesions. 有所結，深中骨，氣因於骨，骨與氣并，日以益大，則爲骨疽 — a knot forms, it strikes deep into the bone, the qi attaches to the bone, bone and qi merge, and it grows greater by the day. The chapter contrasts it with the next: the same knot that settles in flesh and finds heat turns to pus, and finding no heat becomes a flesh abscess; the one that settles on bone needs no heat, because bone and qi together are already a mass. 疽 is the flat deep sore of the Lingshu, as against the raised hot 癰, and 骨疽 is where that distinction reaches its limit.
gǔ suǐ
The deepest lodging of disease, and the phrase chapter 25 opens with. The complaint is that the sickness is invisible while it travels and obvious only when it has arrived somewhere nothing can reach; 留淫日深 describes the travelling and 著於骨髓 the arrival. Everything in the chapter — the three images of a vessel failing, the ruined depot that drugs and needles cannot touch, the insistence on seeing the autumn down — follows from the wish to catch a disease before it gets this far.
gǔ shí
Bone erosion is what happens when deep evil meets heat. 虚邪之入於身也深，寒與𤍠相搏，久留而内著 — the evil enters deep, cold and heat wrestle, and it stays long and settles within. If cold wins, the bones ache and the flesh dries; if heat wins, 則爛肉腐肌爲膿，内傷骨，内傷骨爲骨蝕 — the flesh rots, muscle decays into pus, the bone is hurt within, and the bone hurt within is bone erosion. The chapter gives no treatment. The name is the point: 蝕 is not a wound but a process, the bone being eaten away while the surface still holds, which is why the lesion is placed at the end of the deep-evil sequence and after the flesh has already gone.
gǔ wěi
The flaccidity of the bones, from heat in the kidney, described twice: once as the withering of bone and marrow with the back unable to straighten, and once as the outcome of great heat met on the road, where yang qi is struck down within and the heat lodges in the kidney. The Lower Classic is quoted: bone flaccidity arises from great heat.
gǔ bì
Cold that has got into the bone. It is diagnosed by two negatives that do not look like a pair: the body cannot be warmed from outside, and it does not shiver. The chapter explains both at once — the kidney, which is water and makes bone, has stopped generating, so the marrow does not fill; and there is no shivering because the liver is one yang and the heart a second, while the kidney is a solitary store, so one water cannot overcome two fires.
gǔ kōng
The opening in a bone — the foramina and sockets through which the vessels pass — and this chapter's own word for the places one treats. It never defines the term; it enumerates it, going down the body: 髓空在腦後三分，在顱際鋭骨之下, then 一在齗基下, 一在項後中復骨下, 一在脊骨上空在風府上; 脊骨下空在凥骨下空; 數髓空在面俠鼻; 或骨空在口下當兩肩; 兩髆骨空在髆中之陽，臂骨空在臂陽，去踝四寸兩骨空之間; 股骨上空在股陽，出上膝四寸; 䯒骨空，在輔骨之上端; 股際骨空，在毛中動下; 凥骨空在髀骨之後，相去四寸. What distin-guishes this from a list of points is the last line of the section: 扁骨有滲理，湊無髓孔，易髓無空 — a flat bone seeps, joins, exchanges marrow, and has no opening. So the 空 belongs to bones of a certain kind, and a point in this chapter is a fact about a bone before it is a fact about a channel. The chapter counts with a different word, 穴 — 水俞五十七穴者, 行六穴 — which is why both are recorded here. 空 is read kōng throughout, as written, and not kǒng as in 鍼空 in chapter 24. The word occurs seven times in this chapter, and the chapter is named for it; it has not appeared in any chapter transcribed on the site before.
hún shù wéi yī
The phrase the whole chapter turns on, and the one the next chapter quotes back. The Emperor has the nine needles as nine chapters and nine instruments; what he lacks is the knot that holds them. 渾 is the word for what has not yet been divided, 束 the word for tying a bundle, and the compound is a demand for a method that is one thing rather than nine. Qi Bo's answer is three images — sun and moon, water and mirror, drum and echo — each an inside read from an outside without delay, and the closing formula of examination is the knot itself. 《禁服》 opens with Lei Gong quoting this very phrase at the Emperor and asking what it means, which is the book's own way of saying that the chapter succeeded: the question was answered, and the answer became a text.
cháng liū
Bowel flow is the second of the six lesions and the slowest. 有所結，氣歸之，衛氣留之，不得反，津液久留，合而爲腸溜，久者數歲乃成 — something forms a knot, the qi returns to it, the defending qi stays there and cannot turn back, the fluids remain a long time and join into a bowel flow; the long ones take several years to complete. The chapter adds the one sign that separates it from the next: 以手按之柔 — press it and it is soft. That softness is what makes it 溜 and not 瘤, fluid and not hardened tissue, and it is why the same passage can go on to describe 昔瘤 as the same knot pressed and found hard.
bó yāng
肓之原出於脖胦，脖胦一 — the source of the membrane issues at boyang, and boyang is one. It is the twelfth of the twelve sources and the only one that belongs to no viscus: with 鳩尾 it makes the pair 膏之原 and 肓之原, the fat above the diaphragm and the membrane below it. The chapter gives no location, only a count; later texts place it below the navel and call it 氣海, and 素問 40 already says 肓之原在臍下. The word is the reason the twelve are not simply five times two.
nǎo fēng
Brain wind is the first of the two head winds chapter 42 names: wind qi that travels up by 風府, the point at the nape where wind gathers. Wang Bing explains the route — above the wind palace lies the brain door, and so wind that follows the palace upward reaches the brain.
máo zhé
The sign that stands at the end of all five true visceral pulses. Each of the five has its own shape under the finger and its own colour in the face — the liver's is like running a finger along a blade and the complexion green-white, the heart's like a string of coix seeds and red-black — and each closes with the same three words: 毛折乃死, when the body hair breaks, then death. It is the one sign the chapter repeats five times without variation, and it is not a pulse sign at all: it is something you see on the body when the lung, which governs the skin and its hair, can no longer send anything to the surface.
xī jī
A long-standing accumulation under the ribs, named for the breath that has stopped moving rather than for the mass itself, and defined in chapter 47 as much by what cannot be done to it as by what it is: it does not hinder eating, it is not to be cauterised or needled, and drugs alone will not disperse it. The treatment the chapter names is guiding-and-pulling together with medicine.