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.
hóng
The surging quality: a pulse that comes full, broad and high, like flood water. It belongs to summer and to the heart, and the book states both in one line: 春弦秋浮，冬沉夏洪, and 腎沉心洪，肺浮肝弦. In disease it appears after heavy sweating (脉洪大者，與桂枝湯如前法) and as the herald of a fatal collapse (脉浮而洪，身汗如油). The same fullness can therefore mean the season's health or the last movement of a dying man, and the company it keeps decides which.
hé yú
The point of the breastbone, used in this chapter as the middle landmark of the trunk. Two measurements hang on it: from the supraclavicular fossa down to it is nine cun, and from it down to the heavenly pivot is eight cun. Each length carries a consequence — over nine the lung is large, under it the lung is small; over eight the stomach is large, under it the stomach is small. The bone is thus not only a landmark but a gauge of the organs behind it.
tiān jì
The prohibitions laid on treatment by the calendar: no needling in cold weather, no draining as the moon waxes, no supplementing when it is full, no treatment at all when the rim is empty. Chapter 26 does not present these as rules of thumb but as the point at which a physician who ignores them injures the patient — hence the flat sentence that the taboos of heaven must not be unknown. The term is the chapter's own name for its subject, and it appears once, at the close of the opening movement.
shí dù
The ten measures of diagnosis, and the only place in the Suwen where they are listed. The chapter says 診有十度 and then names them: 度人，脈度，藏度，肉度，筋度，俞度 — the measure of the man, of the vessels, of the viscera, of the flesh, of the sinews, of the transport points. Six names, ten measures: the count comes from the viscera and the paired tissues, not from six separate acts. What the measures are for is stated at once: 陰陽氣盡，人病自具 — when the yin and yang qi are exhausted, the whole illness stands out. The measure of the man (度人) is read duó, to measure; the named measures (脈度, 藏度, 肉度, 筋度, 俞度) are read dù, a standard. The distinction matters: one is an act, the others are rules.
sān biàn
Three ways in which needling changes what it acts on: 有刺營者，有刺衛者，有刺寒痺之留經者 — the camp is reached by letting blood, the guard by letting qi, and cold bi lodged in the channels by bringing heat within. The order is from the deepest and most substantial to the most superficial and most external, and each has its own instrument in practice: fire for the labourer, a medicated compress for the nobleman.
sān cháng
Three things a diagnosis always asks, and all three are histories rather than signs. 診有三常，必問貴賤 — the first is rank: was this man enfeoffed and then ruined; does he want to be a marquis or a king; was he noble and has he lost his power? Though no evil strikes him, his spirit is injured within and his body will fail. The second is wealth: was he rich at first and poor after? Though no evil injures him, his skin is scorched, his sinews bend, and he wastes and stumbles into contraction. The third, which the chapter carries into the same sentence, is the temper that comes of these turns — the joy and hardship, the grief and fear that follow a change of station. The point is the one the five errors keep making: the illness is in the history, and a physician who examines only the body will not find it.
sān xū
The three emptinesses are the three deficiencies of time. 乘年之衰，逢月之空，失時之和，因爲賊風所傷，是謂三虚 — to ride a year of decline, meet a month whose moon is empty, and lose the harmony of the season, and then be hurt by a thieving wind: that is the three emptinesses. The chapter's claim is that they decide death: 三虚者，其死暴疾也, and that a physician who does not know them 工反爲麤 — turns crude. The set has two uses. In chapter 77 it explains why the same wind kills one man and not another: 三虚相摶，則爲暴病卒死. In chapter 79 it explains why the same wind kills in one year and not the next. Against it stands 三實, the same three in their favour, which the chapter seals in the golden casket.
sān shí
The three fullnesses are the exact reverse of the three emptinesses. 逢年之盛，遇月之滿，得時之和，雖有賊風邪氣，不能危之也 — meet a year at its height, a month at its full, and a season in its harmony, and even thieving wind and evil cannot endanger a man. Huang Di receives the answer with unusual warmth — 善乎哉論！明乎哉道！請藏之金匱，命曰三實 — and then Shao Shi adds the sentence that keeps the doctrine honest: 然此一夫之論也, this is the account of one man. The three are therefore not a promise for a population but a rule for an individual, which is why the chapter can hold both the three emptinesses and the three fullnesses without contradiction.
sān pǐn
The three grades of the pharmacopoeia — upper, middle and lower — and the chapter's one sentence about them: 帝曰：三品何謂？歧伯曰：所以明善惡之殊貫也. The whole weight of the entry lies in the exchange just before it. The emperor has asked about 方制君臣, and the answer has been 主病之謂君，佐君之謂臣，應臣之謂使，非上下三品之謂也 — the lord and ministers of a prescription are not the graded drugs of the materia medica. Pressed on what the grades then are for, the chapter answers with 殊貫: they mark the difference in what each drug is good for and the constancy of it, so that the same drug's rank does not change with the disease while its office in a formula does. The distinction is the chapter's own, and it is why 方制君臣 and 三品 stand apart on this site.
sān bù jiǔ hòu
The diagnostic scheme the chapter is named for. The numbers of heaven and earth begin at one and end at nine: one is heaven, two earth, three the human, and tripling that gives nine, which answers to the nine regions. So the body has three sectors — lower, middle and upper — and each sector has three probes, heaven, earth and human. The nine probes are then matched to named vessels: the upper sector to the arteries at the temples, the cheeks and before the ear; the middle to hand taiyin, hand yangming and hand shaoyin; the lower to foot jueyin, foot shaoyin and foot taiyin. And each probe is given an organ to report on: liver, kidney, spleen and stomach below; lung, chest and heart in the middle; head and temples, mouth and teeth, ears and eyes above. The chapter insists the scheme is not bookish — the probes must be pointed out on a body before they count as true.
sān zàng
The three viscera are the spleen, liver and kidney, and the chapter names them 土木水參居, earth and wood and water dwelling together — a child knows that much, Huang Di says, because they sit side by side below the diaphragm and their pulses therefore come out looking like one another. That is exactly why they matter: 脾虚浮似肺，腎小浮似脾，肝急沈散似腎, and a physician who does not match kinds will read one for another. The chapter's correction comes at the end of the case: 一人之氣，病在一藏也，若言三藏俱行，不在法也 — one man's qi falls ill in one viscus, and to say all three act together is not within the rule.
sān yáng
The three yang are the yang conduits in their three divisions, and the chapter uses the name for their qi rather than for their anatomy: 三陽者，至陽也 — the three yang are the utmost yang. What the chapter then does is follow that one qi through its deviations. It is 天爲業, heaven is its work, so its movement is 上下無常, without constancy above or below; when it arrives alone it is 三陽獨至, and 獨至 is already 并至, a convergence rather than a single current. From that convergence the chapter derives a whole set of signs — 上爲巔疾，下爲漏病, 九竅皆塞, 陽氣滂溢, 乾嗌喉塞, 薄爲腸澼, 三陽直心 — and then closes by turning the same phrase into a question about method: 三陽之病，且以知天下，何以别陰陽，應四時，合之五行. The three yang are thus the chapter's single subject, and every other term in it is a phase of their arriving.