Suwen · On the Bone Hollows

The text

The Yellow Emperor asked: I have heard that wind is the beginning of the hundred illnesses. To treat it with the needle — how is it? Qi Bo answered: Wind enters from without, making a person shiver with cold, sweat go out, the head ache, the body heavy, and averse to cold. Treat it at wind-mansion; attune its yin and yang. If insufficient, fill; if there is a remainder, drain. Great wind and pain in the neck and nape: needle wind-mansion. Wind-mansion is at the upper vertebra. Great wind and sweat going out: moxa yi-xi. Yi-xi is below on the back, flanking the spine about three cun; press it and make the ill person cry "yi-xi" — yi-xi answers the hand. From wind, hating wind: needle the heads of the brows. Lost pillow is in the space of the transverse bone on the shoulder; fold it, make them draw the arm level with the elbow, and moxa the center of the spine correctly. The network of the side-loin and the lowest flanks pulls the lesser abdomen with aching and swelling: needle yi-xi. Pain in the low back, one cannot turn or sway; it urgently pulls the yin-eggs: needle the eight liao and above the pain. The eight liao are in the divisions of the waist and sacrum. Rat-fistula with cold and heat: return and needle the cold-mansion. The cold-mansion is in the camp of the outer joint beside the knee. To take what is above and outside the knee, make the person bow; to take the center of the sole, make the person kneel. The conception vessel starts below the central extreme, rises to the hairline, follows the inner abdomen, rises to the origin-pass, reaches the throat, rises the chin, follows the face, and enters the eyes. The thoroughfare vessel starts at the qi-street, joins the channel of shaoyin, flanks the navel and rises, and reaches the chest-center and scatters. When the conception vessel is ill: in men, inner knotting as the seven shan; in women, belt-discharge, concretions, and gatherings. When the thoroughfare vessel is ill: counterflow qi and inner urgency. When the governor vessel is ill: the spine is rigid and bends backward. The governor vessel starts from the center of the bone below the lesser abdomen. In women it enters and ties to the court-hole — that hole is the tip of the urine-hole. Its collateral follows the yin organs, joins in the space of the perineum, winds behind the perineum, separately winds around the buttocks, and joins the middle collateral of shaoyin and great-yang. Shaoyin rises the inner rear edge of the thigh, pierces the spine, and belongs to the kidney. Together with taiyang it starts at the inner canthus, rises the forehead, crosses the crown, rises and enters to network the brain, returns out, separately descends the nape, follows the inner shoulder-blade, flanks the spine to the waist-center, enters, follows the muscles beside the spine, and networks the kidney. In men it follows the stalk down to the perineum, the same as in women. What rises straight from the lesser abdomen pierces the center of the navel, rises and pierces the heart, enters the throat, rises the chin, rings the lips, and ties above to the center below the two eyes. The illness this gives birth to: from the lesser abdomen it rushes up the heart and aches; one cannot go before or behind — this is rushing-shan. In women: no pregnancy, dribbling, piles, leaking urine, a dry throat. When the governor vessel gives birth to illness, treat the governor vessel; treat it on the bone; if severe, in the camp below the navel. When rising qi has a sound, treat the center of the throat, that which is in the empty basin. When the illness rushes up the throat, treat its gradual — the gradual is what flanks the chin above. A lame knee that stretches and will not bend: treat its bar. Sitting, the knee aches: treat its pivot. Standing, the heat unbinds: treat its bone-pass. The knee aches, the pain reaching the big toe: treat the hollow of the knee. Sitting, the knee aches as if something is hidden: treat its pass. The knee aches and cannot bend or stretch: treat the inner back. The linking thigh-bone as if broken: treat the middle shu-liao of yangming. If it is separate: treat the brooks of great-yang and shaoyin. Seeping limpness and aching of the shin, one cannot stand long: treat the tie of shaoyang, five cun above the outer ankle. Above the supporting bone and below the transverse bone is the bar. Flanking the hip is the pivot. The joint of the knee is the bone-pass. The bone flanking the knee is the linking bone. Below the bone is the support. Above the support is the hollow of the knee. Above the hollow of the knee is the pass. The transverse bone of the head is the pillow. The water shu, fifty-seven points: above the sacrum, five lines, five on each line. Above the crouching rabbit, two lines, five on each line; left and right, one line each, five on each line. Above the ankles, one line each, six points on each line. The marrow hollows: three fen behind the brain, below the sharp bone at the edge of the skull. One below the gum-base. One below the doubled bone in the center behind the nape. One in the upper hollow of the spine-bone, above wind-mansion. The lower hollow of the spine-bone is in the lower hollow of the sacral bone. Several marrow hollows are on the face, flanking the nose; or a bone hollow is below the mouth, level with the two shoulders. The two shoulder-blade bone hollows are in the yang of the center of the shoulder-blade. The arm-bone hollow is on the yang of the arm, four cun from the wrist, between the two bone hollows. The upper hollow of the thigh-bone is on the yang of the thigh, five cun above the emerging knee. The thigh-bone hollow is at the upper end of the supporting bone. The bone hollow at the edge of the thigh is below the movement in the hair. The sacral-bone hollow is behind the thigh-bone, four cun apart. Flat bones have seeping grain and gatherings, and have no marrow-holes; they exchange marrow and have no hollows. The method of moxa for cold and heat: first moxa the great vertebra of the nape, taking the years as the number of cones. Next moxa the peg-bone, taking the years as the number of cones. Look at the back shu that are sunken and moxa them. Raise the arm; the hollow above the shoulder: moxa it. Between the two lowest ribs: moxa it. The tip of the broken bone above the outer ankle: moxa it. Between the little toe and the next toe of the foot: moxa it. The sunken vessel below the calf: moxa it. Behind the outer ankle: moxa it. On the bone of the empty basin, where pressing is hard and painful like a sinew: moxa it. Between the sunken bones in the breast-center: moxa it. Below the binding bone of the palm: moxa it. Three cun below the navel at the origin-pass: moxa it. The arterial vessel at the hairline: moxa it. Three cun below the knee, in the space between divisions: moxa it. The arterial vessel of foot yangming on the instep: moxa it. One on the crown: moxa it. Where a dog has bitten: moxa it, three cones, and then moxa by the method of dog-wound illness. In all, twenty-nine places should be moxa'd. Injury by food: moxa it. If it does not end, you must look at the channel that has gone too far into yang; needle its shu several times and give medicine.

The line

The Yellow Emperor asked: I have heard that wind is the beginning of the hundred illnesses. To treat it with the needle — how is it?

The note

Wind is the beginning of the hundred illnesses, and the bone hollows are where wind lives after it has gone deep. A hollow is not nothing. It is a road.