gù xié
Also rendered: The old pathogen (keeps 故 as prior and 邪 as the pathogenic) · Latent evil (clinical, and it adds a theory of latency) · The evil already there (plain, and it is a sentence rather than a term)
Reviewed · 2026-10-25
At a glance
The chapter’s answer to its own question, and a word that changes the shape of the argument. Something was hurt before — dampness that lodged in the blood and between the muscles, a fall that left blood inside, an anger or a meal or a change of weather that was never resolved — and it stayed, silent. When the pores open and wind and cold come, the new evil does not act alone; it joins the old, and the two together produce the illness. 相襲 is the verb: to come upon in succession, like garments put on one over another. The concept is the chapter’s real contribution, because it explains illness without an obvious cause: nothing new was needed, only the arrival of a small thing upon an old one. It is also why the chapter can speak of ghosts and mean it medically — what comes from so far back leaves no trace at the door.
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 | the old pathogen | the text's own temporality |
| Literal | former evil | exact, and it is archaic |
| Clinical | pre-existing pathogenic factor | clear, and it is long |
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