bìng zhī cháng
Also rendered: What is regular in disease (this site; 常 as what follows from the qi, not as what always happens) · The diseases proper to each qi (clearer; it drops the word 常, which is the category's argument)
Reviewed · 2026-10-14
At a glance
The last of the eight categories, and by far the longest: four paragraphs, each running through the six qi and naming what each does to a man. The first gives the symptoms that begin diseases — 厥陰所至，爲裏急；少陰所至，爲瘍胗、身熱；太陰所至，爲積飲、否隔；少陽所至，爲嚏嘔，爲瘡瘍；陽明所至，爲浮虚；太陽所至，爲屈伸不利，病之常也. The second gives the seat of the pain, the third the orifices and the sweat, the fourth what the qi does to the bowels and the skin. Together they are the point at which the chapter’s account of the year becomes an account of the patient, and they are the last thing said before the summary: 凡此十二變者，報德以德，報化以化.
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 | what is regular in disease | four paragraphs, one for seat, one for limb, one for orifice, one for discharge |
| Literal | disease's regularity | exact and thin |
| Gloss | the illnesses each qi brings, and where in the body they settle | right, and long |
Search the glossary
Reading path
Guided routes through the corpus, each built on a handful of chapters and their key terms.
See all reading paths