tì qiàn
Also rendered: Sneezing and yawning (this site; literal from the two graphs, and it keeps both of them because this base text writes both) · Sneezing (what the parallel passage in chapter 52 has, and what 張介賓 thought was meant — 重出，增一欠字)
Reviewed · 2026-10-05
At a glance
Sneezing and yawning — 嚏 tì, a sneeze; 欠 qiàn, a yawn — and this chapter gives them as one sign, the sign that the needle has struck the kidney: 中腎，六日死，其動爲嚏欠. The chapter sets out five such signs, one for each depot, each with its own interval: 中心一日死而動為噫, 中肝五日死而動為語, 中肺三日死而動為欬, 中腎六日死而動為嚏欠, 中脾十日死而動為吞. Four of the five are a single graph; the kidney’s is two. The parallel passage in chapter 52 writes 嚏 alone, and 張介賓 notes the difference in three words — 重出，增一欠字. The site keeps what this base text writes and records the variant instead of choosing between them. The word 動 is the chapter’s own: 其動則依其藏之所變 — the movement shown follows whichever depot was struck.
Passages where the term does real work, with the original, pinyin and English on the same line.
Every rendering below is a decision about which reader is being addressed. There is no neutral option.
| This site | sneezing and yawning | literal from the graphs — 嚏 a sneeze, 欠 a yawn — and kept as two, because the base text of this chapter writes two and the parallel passage writes one, and that difference is the sort of thing a reader of these texts needs to be told about |
| Later usage | sneezing, with yawning noted as a variant | how a commentary handles it; 張介賓's 重出，增一欠字 is the note, and it is a judgment rather than a reading |
| Clinical | sneezing as a sign of renal injury from needling | the modern phrasing; it makes the sign legible and quietly drops the six days, which is the part the chapter actually states |
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