Journal of Chinese Medicine • Number 111 • June 2016


Huang Di Nei Jing Ling Shu: The Ancient Classic on Needle Therapy


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start. They are e.g. the heat that comes in winter instead of summer that then penetrates the body. “Proper evil” and “depletion evil” can cause differing diseases. The illness here generally takes on an ontic character. It is manifestly present, can be localized and even touched by the fingers and, by the means identified in the section on therapy, can be physically removed. “Depletion evil” and “proper evil” are opposites. “Depletion” and “repletion” are another. Again and again in the Ling shu, we find the command to fill a depletion and to empty a repletion. This partly does mean “too much” of something as opposed to “too little,” especially of qi. But it also has another meaning, when depletion is considered a lack of proper qi and repletion the presence of evil qi. Once wind and cold have entered the vessels, they can block the flow of blood and qi; such blockages are the most common cause of pain, swelling and also the aforementioned obstruction- and impediment-illnesses, which in turn can cause abscesses, carbuncles and other lesions.


The clash of evil qi and guard qi produces its own


effects. These are influenced by a seeming contradiction. Chinese medicine has a concept in which the blood and qi circulate through two separate systems of conduit vessels on both the left and right halves of the body. In both the Su wen and Ling shu, this idea competes with another one saying that the individual sections of the conduit vessels, which are assigned to the three different yin gradations (major yin, minor yin and receding yin) and the three different yang gradations (major yang, minor yang and yang brilliance), are filled with differing proportions of blood and qi. The dialogs often serve to explain general symptoms


of illness on the basis of these concepts. In doing so they refer back to the fundamental doctrines of the secular natural laws of systematic correspondences. These are the yin-yang and Five Phases doctrines. Neither is explicitly explained as such, the way they occasionally are in the Su wen. One example is the basic idea of a normality of force in both nature and the individual organism, of which chapter 69 of the Su wen has the following to say:


气相胜者和不相胜者病 qi xiang sheng zhe he, bu xiang sheng zhe bing, “When the qi subdue one another, this is harmony. If there is no mutual subduing, this is disease.”


In the Ling shu one finds hardly any such general statements about the nature of yin and yang. They become apparent, instead, in their application. The doctrine of the Five Periods and Six Qi, wu yun liu qi 五運六氣,14


Even more than the Su wen, therefore, the Ling shu gives the impression that its authors presumed familiarity among readers of the doctrines of systematic correspondences. Consequently, most of its explanations on illness and the physiological and pathological processes in the human organism consist of explanations obviously based on this presumption. Entire chapters are dedicated to these explanations. In


some dialogs, maladies identified in colloquial language and felt or observed by laypersons are directly subjected to theory, e.g. in portraying the spread of illness within the body. Often theory can be identified only indirectly in statements regarding therapy. The conduit segments or other body areas selected for acupuncture or bloodletting indicate what yin or yang regions were associated with an illness. One example s chapter 24 of the Ling shu. This chapter is one of the few written as a normal, narrative text instead of a dialog. The first part of the chapter consists of various elaborations on treating “headache” and then “pain in the heart” that arise from “receding qi.” How these symptoms come to be, or why qi recedes, is not explained. Headache that arises from “receding qi” may be accompanied by a “swollen face and vexed heart” or a “grievous heart” and “tendency to weep,” thereby requiring differing procedures that would show the specialist where the problem theoretically lies, e.g. in the “foot yang brilliance” or the “foot major yin conduit.” Headache resulting from receding qi may be associated with dizziness or forgetfulness or joint pain. All these variations of headaches are attributed in theory to the presence of evil qi in various parts of the vessels and require accordingly differentiated therapies. Numerous health problems are discussed, from discomfort in swallowing and deafness, from nosebleed and menstruation discomfort to


digestion problems a


segment of some 30,000 characters probably inserted into the Su wen by Wang Bing 王冰 in the 8th century, yet which we believe existed already during the Han period, is only marginally referred to in the Ling shu, e.g. in chapter 79.


and tapeworms, psychological problems and tumors. Explanations of illness symptoms distinguish between those sophisticated enough to be mentioned in specialized literature and those that were only passed on orally. In chapter 28 of the Ling shu these include explanations for everyday inconveniences such as “yawning,” “sneezing,” “deep breathing,” “noises in the ears” and others, including biting one’s tongue accidentally. For all these phenomena Huang Di asks about, theory in the words of Qi Bo offers an explanation. In chapter 32 Huang Di asks why a person who does not eat will die after seven days. Qi Bo then identifies the size and capacity of the stomach and intestines, calculates the amounts of daily intake and daily discharges and deduces when the supplies to the organism will be exhausted. Chapter 43 is dedicated to dreams, the various contents of which indicate where in the body abnormalities are occurring. Chapter 81 is devoted to the many abscesses and other skin problems caused by “obstruction- and impediment-illnesses.”


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