Loading...
Chapter 16 of 16
奇经八脉考
The content in this section consists of pulse diagnosis literature from ancient Chinese medical classics. Descriptions such as "stirring with suffering" and "floating, choppy, slippery, or tight" are observations and theoretical summaries made by the ancients. They are intended solely for the study of traditional culture and must not be used directly for self-diagnosis or treatment.
The hand-inspection chart states: Among the five viscera, the lung occupies the highest position, covering the other organs like a ceremonial canopy. It corresponds to Heaven above, regulates the qi of the entire body, governs the movement of essential qi, patterns itself after the five phases, respondes to the changes of the four seasons, and is also associated with the five flavors. The qi opening (i.e., the inch-opening, the site of radial artery pulsation at the wrist) is where yin and yang converge. Within it are divided five regions — front, back, left, and right each have their corresponding observations — and further divided by upper, lower, and central into the nine pathways. By examining these nine pulse pathways, the location of pathogenic influences can be deduced.
Li Shizhen states: The pulse at the qi opening may be divided into nine pathways, encompassing the twelve regular meridians and the eight extraordinary meridians, each with its own palpation method. This was the secret oral instruction transmitted from Qi Bo to the Yellow Emperor. Bian Que further elaborated upon it, using the inch-opening alone to determine issues of life and death. This is because the qi opening is the source point where all the hundred vessels of the body converge and pay court. Although the three-part examination method has been passed down, the nine-pathway pulse method gradually became obscure, and thus the pulse manifestations of the extraordinary meridians are seldom known to the world. I now present a chart and append the explanations to reveal this thousand-year-old secret.
Qi Bo states:
🌿 The front-outer region: Corresponds to the Foot-Taiyang Bladder Meridian.
When the pulse moves abnormally, the patient suffers from dizziness, blurring vision, and stiffness and pain in the head, neck, lower back, and spine; in men, dampness and itching of the genitals may be seen; in women, lower abdominal pain extending to the mingmen (the "gate of life" between the lower abdomen and lumbar spine as referred to by the ancients), pain inside the genitals, blockage of the uterus, and irregular menstruation. A floating pulse indicates wind; a choppy pulse indicates cold; a slippery pulse indicates consumptive heat; a tight pulse indicates food stagnation.
🌿 The middle-outer region: Corresponds to the Foot-Yangming Stomach Meridian.
When the pulse moves abnormally, the patient suffers from headache and facial flushing. A slippery pulse indicates internal accumulation of water-fluid; a floating pulse indicates difficult defecation; a choppy pulse indicates drowsiness, intestinal rumbling, and inability to eat; numbness and pain of the lower leg may also be observed.
🌿 The back-outer region: Corresponds to the Foot-Shaoyang Gallbladder Meridian.
When the pulse moves abnormally, the patient suffers from pain in the lower back, lower legs, thighs, joints, and sinews. A floating pulse indicates qi stagnation; a choppy pulse indicates wind; a rapid pulse indicates muscle cramping and strain injury.
🌿 The front-inner region: Corresponds to the Foot-Jueyin Liver Meridian.
When the pulse moves abnormally, the patient suffers from lower abdominal pain drawing into the lower back and difficult defecation. In men, pain inside the penis, difficult urination, hernia, and retraction of the testicles may be seen; in women, irregular menstruation, coldness within the genitals, closure of the cervical os, and cramping of the lower abdomen.
🌿 The middle-inner region: Corresponds to the Foot-Taiyin Spleen Meridian.
When the pulse moves abnormally, the patient suffers from abdominal distension, stomach pain, cold in the upper abdomen, inability to take food or drink, and a sensation of coldness and heaviness above the waist as if sitting in water. A deep and choppy pulse indicates heaviness of the body, cold and pain in the lower legs, irritability, fullness preventing restful sleep, occasional coughing with blood-streaked sputum, and diarrhea with undigested food.
🌿 The back-inner region: Corresponds to the Foot-Shaoyin Kidney Meridian.
When the pulse moves abnormally, the patient suffers from lower abdominal pain drawing into the heart and back, and dribbling, painful urination; in women, during menstruation, qi ascending to attack the chest and heart, fullness in the flanks and ribs, and cramping of the inner thighs.
🌿 The front-center vertical region: Corresponds to the Hand-Shaoyin Heart Meridian and the Hand-Taiyang Small Intestine Meridian.
When the pulse moves abnormally, the patient suffers from hardness and pain below the heart and cramping of the abdomen and flanks. A replete and rapid pulse indicates contraction of external pathogens or rebellious qi; a vacuous pulse indicates diarrhea and intestinal rumbling. In women, itching and pain in the genitals; a slippery pulse, according to the ancients, suggested possible pregnancy.
🌿 The middle-center vertical region: Corresponds to the Hand-Jueyin Pericardium Meridian.
When the pulse moves abnormally, the patient suffers from heart pain, facial flushing, easy inclination to anger or joy, difficulty swallowing, and bitter taste in the mouth with a dry throat. A slightly floating pulse indicates sorrow, indistinct thinking, and absent-mindedness; a choppy pulse indicates cold below the heart; a deep pulse indicates fear, as if someone were about to seize one, with alternating chills and fever, accompanied by disharmony of qi and blood.
🌿 The back-center vertical region: Corresponds to the Hand-Taiyin Lung Meridian and the Hand-Yangming Large Intestine Meridian.
The original text reads "Hand-Taiyang Lung," which is suspected to be a transcription error and should normally be taken as the Hand-Taiyin Lung. When the pulse moves abnormally, the patient suffers from cough, rebellious qi, and difficult breathing. A floating pulse indicates wind; a deep pulse indicates heat; a tight pulse indicates heat accumulated in the chest; a choppy pulse indicates frequent coughing of blood.
🌿 The front region with a transverse pulse at the inch-opening, moving like a rolling pearl or pellet: Corresponds to the Conception Vessel.
When the pulse moves abnormally, the patient suffers from lower abdominal pain, rebellious qi surging upward into the chest and heart, and chest tightness preventing bending forward or backward. The Pulse Classic states: When the inch-opening pulse is tight, thin, replete, and long, extending downward to the bar region, it belongs to the Conception Vessel. When stirred, the patient suffers from pain around the navel in the lower abdomen; men have various types of hernia; women have abdominal masses and accumulations.
🌿 When all three portions — inch, bar, and cubit — are floating and the pulse runs straight upward and downward: Corresponds to the Governing Vessel.
When the pulse moves abnormally, the patient suffers from stiffness and pain in the lower back and spine, inability to bend forward or backward; in adults, manic-depressive episodes may be seen; in children, seizure disorders.
🌿 When all three portions are firm and the pulse runs straight upward and downward: Corresponds to the Thoroughfare Vessel.
The patient suffers from cold hernia in the chest. The Pulse Classic states: When the pulse is firm and solid in the center, running straight down to the bar region, it belongs to the Thoroughfare Vessel. When stirred, the patient suffers from lower abdominal pain, qi surging upward toward the heart, possibly with abdominal masses, hernias, and enuresis; in women, infertility may be seen.
🌿 When the front region pulses with left-right flicking: Corresponds to the Yang Motility Vessel.
When the pulse moves abnormally, the patient suffers from lower back and spine pain, epilepsy, falling stiffness, making bleating sounds like a sheep, hemiplegia, bi-obstruction, and rigidity of the body.
🌿 When the middle region pulses with left-right flicking: Corresponds to the Belt Vessel.
When the pulse moves abnormally, the patient suffers from lower abdominal pain drawing into the mingmen; in women, absence of menstruation, or return of menstrual bleeding after it had ceased, even extending to inability to conceive; in men, lower abdominal cramping, or seminal emission and spermatorrhea.
🌿 When the back region pulses with left-right flicking: Corresponds to the Yin Motility Vessel.
When the pulse moves abnormally, the patient suffers from epilepsy, alternating chills and fever, stiff and numb skin, lower abdominal pain with internal urgency, and pain connecting the lower back and buttocks; in men, yin hernia; in women, incessant vaginal discharge.
🌿 When the pulse runs obliquely from the Shaoyin region to the Taiyang region: Corresponds to the Yang Linking Vessel.
When the pulse moves abnormally, the patient suffers from falling, bleating sounds like a sheep, spasmodic twitching of the hands and feet, extending in severe cases to loss of voice and inability to speak, and muscular numbness with itching.
🌿 When the pulse runs obliquely from the Shaoyang region to the Jueyin region: Corresponds to the Yin Linking Vessel.
When the pulse moves abnormally, the patient suffers from epilepsy, falling stiffness, bleating sounds like a sheep, loss of voice, muscular numbness with itching, sweating, and aversion to wind.
The "pronunciation guide" at the end of the section is a phonetic annotation and definition table that originally accompanied the ancient text, primarily explaining body parts, symptoms, and pulse terminology — for example, "qiao" refers to lifting the foot high, "fu" refers to the dorsum of the foot, "jia" refers to accumulative disease, and "wei" refers to needle scars. Its function is as a tool to aid reading, and it is not elaborated upon item by item here.
The core of this section is the nine-pathway pulse method of the qi opening. It divides the small region of the inch-opening — according to spatial orientations such as front, back, left, right, upper, lower, and center — into nine pathways, then respectively correlates them with the twelve regular meridians and the eight extraordinary meridians.
Its theoretical foundation is "the lung pays court to the hundred vessels": the lung governs qi, and the hundred vessels all converge at the lung. Since the qi opening is where the lung meridian passes, the state of qi and blood throughout the body can be reflected at the qi opening. The nine-pathway pulse method further holds that the qi of different meridians manifests as different pulse patterns at the qi opening — such as outer-deviating, inner-deviating, running straight up and down, left-right flicking, or running obliquely — thereby allowing judgment of which meridian the pathogen resides in.
This embodies two important ideas in Chinese medical pulse diagnosis:
It also represents an expansion of the "take only the inch-opening" pulse method. Bian Que took only the inch-opening to determine issues of life and death, while the nine-pathway pulse method further refines this into nine pathways, attempting to incorporate the eight extraordinary meridians into inch-opening diagnosis.
Bu Gua maintains that, from a modern scientific standpoint, the radial artery at the inch-opening can indeed reflect heart rate, rhythm, vascular tone, blood volume, and other information. Chinese medical pulse diagnosis has some empirical value with respect to these macroscopic pulse characteristics. However, the "nine pathways" concept finely divides the inch-opening region into nine precise zones with one-to-one correspondence to viscera and meridians, which lacks support from modern anatomy and physiology and should be regarded as an ancient theoretical model.
Descriptions in the original text such as "a slippery pulse may indicate pregnancy" contain some empirical elements, but modern pregnancy diagnosis relies on laboratory testing and imaging, not pulse diagnosis. Many of the "stirred, suffers from…" passages in the text belong to descriptions of ancient symptom complexes and are not diagnostic criteria for modern diseases.
Therefore, the value of this section lies primarily in the domains of medical history and traditional Chinese medical theory and literature; it must not be used directly as a clinical diagnostic tool.
From this ancient text, some general lifestyle insights may be drawn:
The above are only general health suggestions and are not directed at any specific illness.
Related Concepts
Further Reading
This content is based on classic ancient Chinese medical texts and is provided solely for the study of traditional culture and scholarly reading. It does not constitute any medical diagnosis, medication recommendation, or treatment advice. If you are unwell, please seek prompt medical attention.