sàn
Also rendered: The dispersing pulse (Literal) · The rootless pulse (Clinical)
Reviewed · 2026-10-28
At a glance
The scattered quality: a pulse without root, whose beats come apart instead of gathering. It appears once in the five chapters, and once is enough: 傷寒欬逆上氣，其脉散者死，謂其形損故也 — a cough with rebelling qi, and a pulse that scatters, means death, because the body has already been damaged. The entry therefore records the one occurrence and the reason given for it, and refuses to build a shape out of later handbooks.
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 scattered quality | one occurrence, one meaning |
| Literal | scattered | exact, and it is also an ordinary verb |
| Clinical | running away | vivid, and it is not a term |
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