zhēn xīn tòng
Also rendered: True heart pain (keeps the contrast with the five reversed forms) · Genuine cardiac pain (plain, and it invites a modern diagnosis) · Central heart pain (interpretive, and it is not in the text)
Reviewed · 2026-10-25
At a glance
The heart pain that belongs to the heart itself. The chapter gives five 厥心痛 — kidney, stomach, spleen, liver, lung — each diagnosed by what the pain draws on and what the colour does, and each treatable at named points. Then the true one: hands and feet cold to the joints, the pain severe, onset at dawn and death by evening, or onset at evening and death by dawn. The structure is the argument. Where the pain is a branch of another organ the channel can be reached; where it is the heart’s own, the extremities are already cold and there is no time.
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 | true heart pain | the text's own contrast |
| Literal | the heart pain proper | exact, and it is stiff |
| Clinical | heart pain with cold extremities | clear, and it is a description |
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