xiāo dān
Also rendered: wasting and thirsting (Keeps both halves: the flesh going, the drinking that cannot keep up) · diabetes (The modern identification; too narrow, and anachronistic as a name)
Reviewed · 2026-09
At a glance
The wasting disease — what later ages called 消渴, in which the patient drinks constantly and still loses flesh. Chapter 28’s answer is the only one in the chapter that weighs the length of the illness against the pulse: if the pulse is replete and large, even a long illness can still be treated; if it is hanging, small and hard, then a long illness cannot. The same pulse that would be encouraging in another disease is here read against time, because a body that has been burning through itself for years has less to draw on.
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.
| Wiseman & Feng | dispersion-thirst | They follow the later Chinese term 消渴 literally, giving the standard pair dispersion for 消 and thirst for 渴. |
| Unschuld | wasting and thirsting | Unschuld expands both halves into participles so that the English reads as a process rather than a name. |
| This site | wasting and thirsting | We keep the two-part rendering because chapter 28 pairs the disease with 偏枯 and 僕擊 as a disease of the wealthy and well-fed, where the emphasis is on the body consuming itself. We avoid 'diabetes': the chapter says nothing about sugar, and the modern word would invite a reading the text does not support. |
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Reading path
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