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Huangdi Neijing · The Yellow Emperor’s Inner Canon
Suwen 7 · Distinguishing Yin and Yang
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The Yellow Emperor asked: “People have four governing channels and twelve followers. What does this mean?”
Qi Bo replied: “The four governing channels correspond to the four seasons; the twelve followers to the twelve months; the twelve months to the twelve vessels. Pulses have yin and yang. Knowing yang reveals yin, and knowing yin reveals yang. Yang has five forms: five times five gives twenty-five yang.
What is called yin is the true zang pulse. Its appearance means failure, and failure means death. What is called yang is the yang of the stomach region. Distinguishing yang reveals the illness’s location; distinguishing yin reveals the time of life or death. Three yang is at the head and three yin at the hands: they are called one. Distinguishing yang reveals the times unfavorable to illness; distinguishing yin reveals the time of life or death. Study yin and yang carefully and thoroughly; do not deliberate with the multitude.
In yin and yang, departure is yin and arrival yang; stillness is yin and movement yang; slowness is yin and rapidity yang.
When a true zang pulse is held: Liver arriving suspended, severed and urgent means death in eighteen days; Heart suspended and severed, in nine days; Lung suspended and severed, in twelve; Kidney suspended and severed, in seven; Spleen suspended and severed, in four.
It is said: illness of second yang arises in Heart and Spleen, with inability to fulfill intimate functions and absence of menstruation in women. Transmission becomes wind wasting; transmission becoming xi ben, obstructed breathing, is fatal and untreatable.
Reading note: Numerical yin–yang labels are retained as the text’s channel classifications. Second yang is traditionally read as Yangming; they are not counts of modern anatomical structures.
It is said: illness of third yang produces cold and heat, abscesses and swelling below, wilting weakness and counterflow, and aching calves. Transmission becomes loss of luster; further transmission becomes descending hernia.
It is said: first yang illness brings scant qi, frequent cough and diarrhea. Transmission becomes pulling pain at the Heart, and further transmission obstruction.
Second yang with first yin brings fright, back pain, frequent belching and yawning: this is wind counterflow.
Second yin with first yang brings recurrent distention, fullness at the Heart and frequent qi disturbance.
Third yang with third yin brings one-sided wasting, disabling weakness and inability to lift the four limbs.
A pulsation of one yang is called hook; a pulsation of one yin, hairlike. A yang pulsation prevailing with urgency is called stringlike; yang arriving and breaking off is called stone. Yin and yang passing one another is called flowing.
Yin contends inside and yang disturbs outside. Sweat of the bodily exterior has not been contained, and the four counterflows rise. Rising, they fume against the Lung and cause wheezing. What yin generates, when harmonized with its root, is called harmony.
Hard meeting hard breaks and scatters yang qi and consumes yin qi. When softness leads hard and soft to disharmony, channel qi is exhausted. The dying-yin category brings death within three days; the living-yang category within four.
What is called living yang and dying yin is this: Liver transmitting to Heart is living yang; Heart to Lung dying yin; Lung to Kidney repeated yin; Kidney to Spleen displaced yin, fatal and untreatable.
Binding yang swells the four limbs. Binding yin brings one sheng of blood in the stool; binding again two sheng, and a third time three sheng. Yin and yang binding obliquely, with much yin and little yang, is called stone Water, with swelling of the lower abdomen.
Binding of second yang is called wasting; third yang obstruction; third yin Water; first yin with first yang throat obstruction.
Yin pulsating and yang distinctly differentiated indicates pregnancy. Deficient yin and yang with intestinal flux is fatal. Yang added to yin is called sweating. Yin deficient and yang pulsating is called flooding.
Three yin pulsating together means death at midnight in twenty days.
Two yin pulsating together means death in the evening in thirteen days.
One yin pulsating together means death in ten days.
Three yang pulsating together and beating means death in three days.
Three yin and three yang pulsating together brings fullness in Heart and abdomen. Exhausted activity with failure of intimate function means death in five days.
Two yang pulsating together brings warm illness, fatal and untreatable, with death within ten days.”
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