liù huà fēn zhì
Also rendered: The six transformations divided and governed (this site; 分 is the separation, 治 the charge each is given) · The six transformations in their several charges (smoother English, and it drops the sense of an act of dividing)
Reviewed · 2026-10-14
At a glance
The chapter’s one instruction about the six transformations: hold them apart, each in its own charge. It is the sentence that turns the preceding six paragraphs from a table into a rule — 故治病者，必明六化分治，五味五色所生，五藏所宜，乃可以言盈虚，病生之緒也 — and it is why the six paragraphs are built in parallel at all: 蒼化 belongs to 厥陰 the way 酸化 belongs to its 在泉, and a physician who lets the two run together cannot say whether the year is in excess or in want. 分治 is therefore the method the rest of the discourse assumes.
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 six transformations, each in its own charge | the instruction that makes the six paragraphs a method |
| Literal | six transformations divided and governed | exact about both graphs, and wooden |
| Descriptive | keeping each transformation to the office it belongs to | clear, and it loses the two-graph symmetry with 六化 |
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