Volume III · Tài Yīn, Shào Yīn & Jué Yīn
Clause index
Clauses 273–398, grouped by formula family. 126 are written; the tracker below shows which are at full editorial depth and which are still in revision. Read the front matter first — method, scheduling notice and citation rules.
Volume progress
Tài Yīn, Shào Yīn & Jué Yīn, clauses 273–398
98% complete
124 complete · 2 in revision · 0 still to write, out of 126 clauses.
- Complete
- In revision
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- Tài Yīn — the cold, weak middle 辨太陰病脈證并治 · 273–2808/8
- Shào Yīn — the outline and the pulse 少陰病提綱 · 281–29212/12
- Cold transformation — the Sì Nì group 少陰寒化 · 293–31725/25
- Heat transformation and the throat clauses 少陰熱化與咽痛 · 318–3258/8
- Jué Yīn — heat above, cold below 辨厥陰病脈證并治 · 326–33812/13
- Reversal cold and the swing between heat and cold 厥熱勝復 · 339–36022/22
- Vomiting, diarrhoea and the closing clauses 嘔噦下利 · 361–38120/21
- Sudden turmoil disorder 辨霍亂病脈證并治 · 382–39110/10
- Exchange, relapse and convalescence 辨陰陽易差後勞復病脈證并治 · 392–3987/7
Translation coverage dashboard — a live check that every clause reads fully in English, with Chinese and pinyin kept as bracketed support.
Tài Yīn — the cold, weak middle
辨太陰病脈證并治273–280
Eight clauses and one idea: the digestion has gone cold and slack. Fullness without hardness, vomiting, diarrhoea and a pain that eases with warmth and pressure — and the standing warning that purging here makes everything worse.
273The one-line definition of Tài Yīn — a cold, weak, sagging middle — and the standing warning never to purge it.
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274A pulse-reading clause: even within a deficient pattern, a pulse that is recovering length is read as good news.275The spleen's resolving window sits in the late evening to just after midnight, tracking the classical body clock.276A floating pulse inside Tài Yīn signals a residual exterior layer still worth resolving gently, with the mildest formula in the book.Guì Zhī Tāng277The single differentiating question — is the patient thirsty? — separates cold diarrhoea from hot, and points straight to warming.278A reassuring clause: a burst of diarrhoea that clears the gut of stagnant matter can be the illness resolving, not worsening.279A mistaken purge drives Tài Yáng into Tài Yīn; the fix is the same base formula, adjusted by how much true excess has come with it.Guì Zhī Jiā Sháo Yào Tāng280A closing caution on clause 279: a weak pulse and loose stool mean less rhubarb and peony, not the standard dose.Shào Yīn — the outline and the pulse
少陰病提綱281–292
A faint, fine pulse and a patient who only wants to sleep. The opening clauses set out how depleted a Shào Yīn patient really is, and which presentations must never be sweated.
281The one-line definition of Shào Yīn — a pulse fading toward nothing, and a patient withdrawing into sleep as the body's reserves run low.
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282Thirst here does not mean heat — it is the body pulling water in to compensate for what deficiency is pouring out; pale urine confirms the cold.283A tight pulse should mean no sweat; sweating anyway is read as yáng escaping the body, not the illness resolving.284A treatment-error clause: forcing a sweat out of an already deficient Shào Yīn patient by fire methods can push the case into delirium.285A deep, thin, rapid pulse places the illness firmly in the interior — sweating would be aimed at the wrong layer entirely.286A faint pulse rules out sweating; a weak, choppy cubit (chǐ) pulse on top of that rules out purging too — both would finish off what little yáng is left.287A pulse that suddenly softens and limbs that warm up, even alongside diarrhoea, are read here as recovery — the cold pathogen releasing its grip.288Curled-up cold aversion looks grim, but warm limbs alongside it are the sign that tells you treatment can still succeed.289A curled-up, cold-averse patient who occasionally feels vexed enough to push off the covers still has warmth to spare — and a treatable prognosis.290The closing clause of this stretch: a pulse settling from tight excess toward balance, faint above and floating below, reads as recovery from Shào Yīn wind-strike.291A body-clock note: Shào Yīn's best chance of turning the corner falls in the deep night and pre-dawn hours.292Warm limbs and a returning fever, even amid vomiting and diarrhoea, are read as yáng qì still fighting — and a lost pulse calls for moxa, not despair.Cold transformation — the Sì Nì group
少陰寒化293–317
Where the division does its hardest work: cold limbs, undigested food in the stool, and the graded rescue formulas — Sì Nì Tāng, Tōng Mài Sì Nì Tāng, Zhēn Wǔ Tāng and the Fù Zǐ pairings.
293Cold-pattern Shào Yīn that turns wholly hot by day eight or nine has transformed into interior heat scorching the lower burner — and blood in the stool follows.294Forcing a sweat out of a Shào Yīn patient who has cold limbs but no sweat of their own can rupture blood upward — bleeding from the eyes, nose or mouth — a genuine treatment-induced catastrophe.295The full collapse picture — curled body, cold aversion, diarrhoea and cold limbs together — is given the starkest possible prognosis.296Vomiting, diarrhoea, agitated restlessness and cold limbs together mark the point past which the classical text offers no formula at all.297Diarrhoea stopping should read as recovery — unless it stops because there is nothing left to pass, in which case the dizziness that follows is a fatal sign.298A pulseless, curled, cold patient whose restlessness has no accompanying mental distress — pure physical thrashing with the mind already gone — is given no chance of recovery.299Breathing that has become shallow and confined to the upper chest by day six or seven signals the root qì has already detached from its source.300A quiet, sinking Shào Yīn presentation that seems merely exhausted turns fatal once diarrhoea and unrelieved restlessness arrive together several days later.301The division's turn toward treatment opens here: exterior cold riding straight onto a Shào Yīn base, warming the root while opening the surface in the same formula.Má Huáng Xì Xīn Fù Zǐ Tāng302A gentler cousin of the previous formula for the same pattern slightly further along — mild interior involvement calls for mild sweating, not the sharper Xì Xīn combination.Má Huáng Fù Zǐ Gān Cǎo Tāng303Not every Shào Yīn pattern is cold: this is the division's picture of yīn deficiency with fire flaring, heart fire unable to descend and kidney water unable to rise.Huáng Lián Ē Jiāo Tāng304A normal mouth rules out heat; localised cold on the back with an otherwise clear Shào Yīn picture points straight to yáng deficiency, treated with moxa and Fù Zǐ Tāng together.Fù Zǐ Tāng305The same formula as the previous clause answers a second Fù Zǐ Tāng pattern: whole-body and joint pain with cold limbs and a sunken pulse, distinguishing cold-damp impediment (bì) from an exterior ache.Fù Zǐ Tāng306Blood and mucus in the stool from a cold, collapsing lower burner — not damp-heat dysentery — calls for warming, astringing and binding rather than clearing.Táo Huā Tāng307The same formula returns for a fuller version of the pattern, tracked across days as cold diarrhoea deepens into a bleeding, pain-and-fluid-disordered collapse.Táo Huā Tāng308The same bleeding-stool picture offers a needling option alongside the herbal formula — a rare explicit acupuncture instruction in this division.309A severe cold-collapse presentation that looks like the earlier fatal clauses gets one more chance: Wú Zhū Yú Tāng, warming the stomach and descending violent counterflow.Wú Zhū Yú Tāng310Diarrhoea from below and throat pain, chest fullness and vexation from above, all from the same depleted yīn root — treated with a gentle, nourishing skin decoction rather than any strong herb.Zhū Fū Tāng311The mildest of the Shào Yīn throat clauses — a graded pair, one herb then two, for heat rising early in the disease.Gān Cǎo Tāng312A throat gone from painful to ulcerated and voiceless — treated with an almost homely mixture cooked in an eggshell.Kǔ Jiǔ Tāng313Throat pain from cold-phlegm obstruction rather than heat — warmed and dispersed rather than cooled.Bàn Xià Sǎn Jí Tāng314Yáng trapped by cold rather than simply deficient — a formula built to break the blockage, not just to warm.Bái Tōng Tāng315When a warming formula makes things worse rather than better — and the classic teaching on reading the pulse's return as prognosis.Bái Tōng Jiā Zhū Dǎn Zhī Tāng316Kidney yáng too weak to govern water — fluid spilling into the limbs, the gut and the lungs, treated by warming the root rather than chasing each symptom.Zhēn Wǔ Tāng317True yáng collapse with false heat floating to the surface — the flushed face and lack of cold-aversion are the danger sign, not a reassurance.Tōng Mài Sì Nì Tāng
Heat transformation and the throat clauses
少陰熱化與咽痛318–325
The other face of Shào Yīn: restless insomnia answered by Huáng Lián Ē Jiāo Tāng, the sore-throat sequence, and the three urgent purgation clauses that close the division.
318Cold hands and feet that have nothing to do with yáng deficiency — qì stagnation blocking the limbs, treated by freeing movement rather than warming.Sì Nì Sǎn319A yīn deficient, heat-and-water pattern hiding inside a division dominated by cold collapse — the same formula as clause 223, arriving here from the opposite direction.Zhū Líng Tāng320The first of the three Shào Yīn 'urgent purgation' clauses — dryness this early, this fast, means fluid is running out before the disease has run its course.Dà Chéng Qì Tāng321Diarrhoea that looks like fluid loss but is actually 'heat forcing a way through' — dry stool bound above, foul water leaking around it.Dà Chéng Qì Tāng322The third urgent-purge clause: a Shào Yīn illness that has quietly turned back into Yáng Míng, and needs treating as what it has become.Dà Chéng Qì Tāng323The mirror image of the urgent-purge trio: urgent warming, before dryness even needs a chance to show. Do not wait on this one either.Sì Nì Tāng324Two presentations that can look alike at the bedside — one calling for the vomiting method, the other forbidding it — distinguished by pulse and by what actually comes up.Sì Nì Tāng325The division's final clause, and its final resort — needle and herb both set aside for the oldest tool of all, moxa, when yáng has sunk too far for a decoction to catch up in time.
Jué Yīn — heat above, cold below
辨厥陰病脈證并治326–338
The outline clause with its thirst, its hunger without appetite and its warning against purging, and the great mixed formula of the division, Wū Méi Wán.
326The one-line definition of Jué Yīn: heat above, cold below, and a stomach too unsettled to hold food or bear purgation.
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327A pulse note: yáng returning to the surface, even faintly, is the sign that a Jué Yīn patient is turning the corner.328The last of the six resolution-time clauses: Jué Yīn eases in the pre-dawn hours, as yáng qì first stirs.329A small but important corrective: thirst returning in Jué Yīn is often a good sign, and should be met gently, not withheld or flooded.330A standing prohibition: cold limbs mean yáng qì cannot reach the extremities, and purging will only strip more of it away.331The opening move of the division's long argument: reversal cold and diarrhoea rise and fall together as yáng and yīn trade the advantage.332A worked example of the division's day-counting method, including the trap of a false, terminal appetite that must be tested rather than trusted.333A cautionary case: mistaking a cold, slow pulse for a heat pattern and clearing further heat with bitter-cold Huáng Qín Tāng can be fatal.334The same fever-versus-reversal-cold ledger, now tracking where surplus yáng heat goes if it does not simply resolve — either up into the throat, or down into a bloody stool.335The single most quoted line of the division: reversal cold and heat are matched in depth, and reading one tells you the depth of the other.336A balanced ledger — five days of cold against five days of heat — read as evidence that the fight is even and about to resolve.337The mechanism statement behind every reversal-cold (jué 厥) clause in the division: cold hands and feet mean yīn and yáng have lost their connection, not simply that the patient is cold.338Two reversal patterns that look alike at first glance — a fatal organ collapse, and a treatable roundworm disturbance — distinguished by restlessness versus intermittent vexation, with Wū Méi Wán as the answer to the latter.Wū Méi WánReversal cold and the swing between heat and cold
厥熱勝復339–360
Counting the days of fever against the days of cold limbs to read where the illness is heading, and separating cold reversal from heat reversal before you reach for a formula.
339A mild version of the pattern with two possible outcomes: clearing heat signalled by pale, free urination and returning appetite, or unresolved heat driving toward bloody stool.340Cold limbs plus a tender, full lower abdomen with no chest sign points to cold binding low in the pelvis, not to a heat-bound chest pattern.341Another worked ledger: fever outweighing reversal cold favours recovery, but fever that overstays its welcome tips toward bloody stool instead.342The unfavourable mirror of clause 341: when reversal cold outlasts fever overall, yáng is losing ground and the disease is worsening.343A grave presentation on day six or seven: a faint pulse and cold limbs call for moxibustion, and failure to warm signals a terminal prognosis.344Fever, diarrhoea, cold limbs and total restlessness together describe collapse rather than an ordinary mixed pattern — a fatal combination.345Severe diarrhoea plus unresolving reversal cold, even with fever present, marks the point where fluid and yáng loss have outrun the body's ability to recover.346Unrelenting sweat appearing together with newly onset fever and diarrhoea describes yáng qì draining away entirely, leaving only yīn.347A soft abdomen and an empty pulse alongside reversal cold rule out any bound repletion pattern; this is blood deficiency, and purging it is lethal.348A brief, sober note: fever and cold together, followed a week later by diarrhoea, is a genuinely hard case rather than a straightforward one.349A hurried, urgent pulse with cold limbs is treatable ground — unlike the faint, near-collapse pulses of the fatal clauses nearby, moxa is appropriate here.350The division's closing correction: a slippery pulse with cold limbs is interior heat pretending to be cold, and it is Bái Hǔ Tāng, not a warming formula, that resolves it.Bái Hǔ Tāng351Cold hands and feet with a thread-fine pulse — not the collapsed yáng of Sì Nì Tāng, but blood too thin to warm the limbs.Dāng Guī Sì Nì Tāng352When channel cold sits on top of an old, deep interior cold, the base formula is carried further inward with Wú Zhū Yú and Shēng Jiāng.Dāng Guī Sì Nì Jiā Wú Zhū Yú Shēng Jiāng Tāng353Sweat has poured out, fever persists, and the limbs are cramping and aching while diarrhoea and cold reversal set in — yáng is collapsing, not merely obstructed.Sì Nì Tāng354The same collapse stripped to its bare essentials: heavy fluid loss by either route, and the limbs go cold — treat it the same way, fast.Sì Nì Tāng355Cold limbs that come from a solid obstruction sitting high in the chest, not from cold or collapse — and the fix is upward expulsion, not warming.Guā Dì Sǎn356Cold limbs with a thumping sensation under the heart mean water is the problem to solve first — warm the reversal after, not before.Fú Líng Gān Cǎo Tāng357The most tangled clause in the division: heat trapped above, cold and collapse below, after a purge given at the wrong moment — Zhòng-Jǐng admits it is hard to treat and gives a formula built to hold both ends at once.Má Huáng Shēng Má Tāng358A practitioner's repeated vomiting and purging turns cold diarrhoea into a rejecting stomach: heat trapped above blocks cold below, so food comes straight back up.Gān Jiāng Huáng Qín Huáng Lián Rén Shēn Tāng359A moving, gurgling sensation travelling down toward the lower abdomen is the body's own early warning that diarrhoea is coming.360A weak pulse with a little warmth and thirst during diarrhoea is a good sign here, not a bad one — it says yáng is returning.
Vomiting, diarrhoea and the closing clauses
嘔噦下利361–381
Clear-food diarrhoea, hiccup, dysenteric diarrhoea with straining, and the formulas that answer them — Bái Tóu Wēng Tāng, Sì Nì Tāng, Wú Zhū Yú Tāng and the Xiǎo Chái Hú Tāng crossover.
361A rapid pulse with mild fever and a bit of sweat is also a recovery sign — but if the pulse tightens back up, the cold has not actually left.362Diarrhoea so severe the pulse disappears calls for moxibustion at once — and the outcome hinges on whether warmth and pulse actually return.363A floating, rapid pulse above with a choppy pulse below, during diarrhoea, predicts that the stool will turn to blood and pus.364Undigested food passing straight through means the digestive fire is too weak for a sweat to be safe — do that and the abdomen will bloat.365Three pulses, three different readings of the same diarrhoea: wiry means tenesmus, large means it is still running, faint-weak-rapid means it is winding down.366A flushed face on a pale, exhausted body means yáng is floating up and out — the crisis passes with a moment of dizziness and a sweat, not with cooling the face.367A rapid pulse with thirst is usually recovery — but if it does not settle, the underlying heat will push the diarrhoea into a dysenteric, bloody stage.368After severe diarrhoea the pulse can disappear entirely — give it a full day; its return with warming limbs means survival, its absence means the outcome is grave.369Ten or more bowel motions a day should leave the pulse depleted — if it is instead full and forceful, that mismatch is itself the danger sign.370Cold pouring through undigested, sweat on a cold body, false heat floating at the surface — the pulse-restoring, stronger cousin of Sì Nì Tāng.Tōng Mài Sì Nì Tāng371Burning, urgent diarrhoea with a dragging sensation in the rectum — damp-heat pouring down the intestines — meets its classical answer here.Bái Tóu Wēng Tāng372Body aches plus a cold, distended abdomen means the interior comes first, always — warm it with Sì Nì Tāng, then, and only then, address the surface with Guì Zhī Tāng.Sì Nì Tāng373Thirst during diarrhoea, read correctly, confirms heat rather than cold — and points straight back to Bái Tóu Wēng Tāng.374Diarrhoea does not rule out a bowel obstruction — delirious speech alongside loose stool means dry, impacted stool higher up needs clearing.Xiǎo Chéng Qì Tāng375Vexation after the diarrhoea has settled, with a soft, unresisting epigastrium, is residual heat with nothing to purge — Zhī Zǐ Chǐ Tāng, not another laxative.Zhī Zǐ Chǐ Tāng376When vomiting is the body clearing an internal abscess, do not suppress it — let the pus finish coming and the vomiting will stop on its own.377Vomiting with a weak pulse, easy urination, a little fever and then cold limbs together spell a yáng too weak to hold itself together — treat it, but expect it to be hard going.Sì Nì Tāng378Dry retching with frothy spit and a headache that pounds at the vertex — cold surging up the liver channel from a weak middle — answered by Wú Zhū Yú Tāng.Wú Zhū Yú Tāng379Vomiting with fever, on its own, is enough to license the Shào Yáng formula — a reminder that this pattern crosses freely between divisions.Xiǎo Chái Hú Tāng380Three successive assaults on a patient — vomiting, purging, sweating — leave the stomach cold and empty, and a well-meant drink of water to help a further sweat is what finally triggers hiccup.381The division's closing clause: hiccup with a full abdomen is solved by checking urination and bowel movement and clearing whichever is blocked.
Sudden turmoil disorder
辨霍亂病脈證并治382–391
Vomiting and diarrhoea together, fluid lost from both ends at once. The rules for telling a cold turmoil from a damp-heat one, with Lǐ Zhōng Wán and Wǔ Líng Sǎn on either side of the decision.
382A one-line definition opens the closing chapters: vomiting and diarrhoea together, arriving at once rather than in sequence.383Sudden turmoil disorder can look exactly like an exterior cold-damage onset — the same fever, headache and body ache — and the interior collapse is the true story underneath.384A faint, rough pulse links a sudden-turmoil origin to a cold-damage presentation, and appetite becomes the clinical thermometer for whether the bowel — and the case — is actually recovering.385When diarrhoea simply stops because there is nothing left to lose, that is not recovery — it is depletion, and it needs Fù Zǐ, Gān Jiāng and Rén Shēn together, not congratulation.Sì Nì Jiā Rén Shēn Tāng386Same acute picture, opposite thermostat: thirst for water points to Wǔ Líng Sǎn, refusal of water points to Lǐ Zhōng Wán — the whole chapter's central fork in one line.Wǔ Líng Sǎn
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387Once the interior turmoil has settled, lingering body pain is exterior residue — treated gently, and only now, with a small dose of Guì Zhī Tāng.Guì Zhī Tāng388Fever and sweating on the surface, cold and cramping at the limbs — the classic false-heat mask over collapsing yáng, and the plainest possible indication for Sì Nì Tāng.Sì Nì Tāng389Every fluid the body has is leaving it at once, the true state is cold at the core with only a false heat showing outside, and the pulse is barely there — the most severe collapse picture in the chapter.Sì Nì Tāng390The discharge has finally stopped, but not because the patient recovered — because there is nothing left to lose; bile is added to Sì Nì Tāng's cousin formula to carry yáng back in through a body too depleted to accept it plainly.Tōng Mài Sì Nì Jiā Zhū Dǎn Zhī Tāng391The closing note of the sudden turmoil (huò luàn) chapter: a settled pulse with only mild residual restlessness is simple convalescent weakness, not a sign to reach for another formula.Exchange, relapse and convalescence
辨陰陽易差後勞復病脈證并治392–398
The closing chapter of the book, and the one most useful in an ordinary practice: how people relapse after a serious illness through overwork, overeating or resuming sex too soon, and how to feed a recovering patient.
392A recovering patient resumes sexual contact too soon, the residual pathogen passes to the partner, and a distinct, name-worthy syndrome follows — treated with one of the most unusual formulas in the whole text.Shāo Kūn Sǎn393Doing too much, too soon after recovery, brings residual heat back to the surface — and the answer is the gentle, familiar Zhī Zǐ Chǐ Tāng family with Zhǐ Shí added for lingering fullness.Zhǐ Shí Zhī Zǐ Chǐ Tāng394Fever returning after apparent recovery is not automatically the same illness — the pulse decides whether this is a fresh exterior pattern, an interior bind, or genuine half-exterior half-interior relapse.Xiǎo Chái Hú Tāng395Convalescent lower-body swelling — a middle-to-lower burner still failing to move water properly after the acute illness — calls for this small, sharply draining powder.Mǔ Lì Zé Xiè Sǎn396Persistent, lingering spitting of clear saliva after a major illness signals residual chest-and-middle cold that a gentle, sustained pill formula is better suited to than a sharp decoction.Lǐ Zhōng Wán397Convalescent weakness with lingering heat and a stomach that still won't settle — the closing tonifying formula of the whole book, cooling residual heat while restoring qì and fluid together.Zhú Yè Shí Gāo Tāng398The final clause of the whole book: an even pulse but evening restlessness after eating too much, too soon — solved not with a formula but with a smaller plate.
Also available: Volume I — Tài Yáng, clauses 1–178; Volume II — Yáng Míng & Shào Yáng, clauses 179–272.