bó mài
Also rendered: the hammering pulse (Keeps the force of 搏) · the throbbing pulse (Rhythmic rather than forceful) · the forceful pulse (Plain clinical description)
Reviewed · 2026-09
At a glance
The pulse of the passage that runs 搏脉痺躄，寒熱之交 — a hammering pulse with blockage and lameness, which the chapter explains as cold and heat meeting in the body. It is one of the few places the book gives a pulse-quality and its clinical company together, and it sits two clauses from the opposite finding, 脉孤, the pulse with nothing behind it. Between the pulse that attacks the fingers and the pulse that has nothing to push it, the chapter has covered both ends.
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.
| Common English | a forceful pulse, or a beating pulse | Most renderings go functional and lose the violence of the word. |
| This site | the hammering pulse | 搏 is to seize and hold, and the same character gives 搏擊, to strike. A forceful pulse is a measurement; a hammering pulse is something that happens to your fingers, and the chapter is describing a pulse that arrives with obstruction and lameness attached to it — the violence is the point. |
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