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Huangdi Neijing · The Yellow Emperor’s Inner Canon
Suwen 60 · Bone Hollows
Read in English. Switch to Original for word notes, or select text to ask a question.
The Yellow Emperor asked: “I have heard that Wind begins the hundred illnesses. How is it treated with needles?”
Qi Bo replied: “Wind enters from outside and causes shivering cold, sweat, headache, heaviness and aversion to cold. Treat at Fengfu and regulate yin and yang. Supplement insufficiency; drain excess.”
For great Wind with pain in neck and nape, needle Fengfu, at the upper vertebra. For great Wind with sweat, apply moxa at Yixi. Yixi lies on the lower back beside the spine, about three cun to the side. Press so the patient cries ‘yixi’; the site responds beneath the hand. For Wind followed by aversion to wind, needle the brow heads.
For a stiff neck after sleep, the site is between the transverse bones above the shoulders. Bend and bring the arms level at the elbows, then apply moxa directly at the spine’s center. For the flank networks drawing painfully and distendingly into the lower abdomen, needle Yixi.
For waist pain preventing turning or swaying, urgently drawing into the private parts and testicles, needle the eight liao hollows and above the painful region. The eight liao lie between waist and buttocks.
Reading note: The supplied arm-position and flank-network wording is irregular. Its general sequence is retained without inventing a precise modern manipulation or vertebral target.
For fistulous swellings with cold and heat, needle around the Cold Palace, which lies by the knee’s outer joint division at the ying region. To treat the outer region above the knee, have the patient bow; to treat the sole, have the patient kneel.
The Ren vessel begins below Zhongji, rises to the pubic hairline, follows inside the abdomen, passes above Guanyuan to the throat, rises to the chin, follows the face and enters the eyes. The Chong vessel begins at the Qi Street, runs alongside Shaoyin’s channel, rises beside the navel and disperses within the chest. Ren illness produces internal binding and seven hernia forms in men; discharge and gathered masses in women. Chong illness produces counterflow qi and internal urgency.
Du illness makes the spine stiff and arched backward. Du begins below the lower abdomen at the center of the lower bone. In women it enters and connects with the ting opening, the end of the urinary opening. Its networks follow the private parts, meet in the perineal region, circle behind it and branch around the buttocks, reaching Shaoyin and joining the central networks of Greater Yang. Shaoyin rises along the inner rear border of the thigh, passes through the spine and belongs to Kidney.
With Taiyang it begins at the inner eye corners, rises over the forehead to meet at the crown, enters and networks with the brain, returns and branches down the nape, follows inside the shoulders, runs beside the spine into the waist, then enters along the spinal muscles and networks with Kidney. In men it follows the penis down to the perineal region, then is the same as in women.
Its branch rising directly from the lower abdomen passes through the navel’s center, upward through Heart, into the throat and to the chin, circles the lips and connects above to the central region beneath both eyes. Illness from this rushes from the lower abdomen against Heart with pain and prevents passage from front and rear: rushing hernia. In women there may be infertility, retention, hemorrhoidal illness, involuntary urination and dry throat.
Treat Du illness at Du, above the bone; in severe cases, at the ying region below the navel. For upward qi with sound, treat the throat’s center in the Quepen region. For illness rushing up to the throat, treat its jian region, meaning above beside the chin.
Reading note: The source’s linked Ren/Chong/Du routes and the ting, ying and jian designations remain historical descriptions; no modern anatomical rerouting or numbered points are supplied.
When a stiff knee extends but will not bend, treat its jian bar. For knee pain while sitting, treat its ji pivot. For heatlike loosening on standing, treat the skeletal joint. For knee pain reaching the great toe, treat the knee hollow. For knee pain while sitting as though something were concealed within, treat its guan joint. For knee pain preventing bending and extension, treat inside its back.
For a connected shinbone feeling broken, treat Yangming’s central transport hollow. If it feels separated, treat the ying-spring sites of Greater Yang and Shaoyin. For spreading lassitude and aching shins preventing prolonged standing, treat Shaoyang’s linking vessel five cun above the outer ankle.
Reading note: The supplied 暑解 retains the heat/loosening wording, rather than silently adopting the alternative bone-loosening graph. The component form 骨行 is read as the shinbone. Jian, ji and guan remain the structural names explained next.
Above the supporting bone and below the transverse bone is the jian bar. Beside the hip is the ji pivot. The knee articulation is the skeletal joint. Bones beside the knee are the linked skeletal region. Below the knee bone is the supporting bone; above that is the knee hollow; above the hollow is the guan joint. The head’s transverse bone is the occipital pillow.
The fifty-seven Water transport sites are: above the buttocks, five rows of five; above the Futu thigh regions, two rows of five, with one row of five to left and right; above each ankle, one row of six sites.
Marrow hollows: three fen behind the brain, below the pointed bone at the skull boundary; one below the gum base; one in the middle behind the nape below the overlapping bone; one in the upper spinal hollow above Fengfu. Below the spine is a hollow below the buttock bone. Several marrow hollows lie on the face beside the nose; some bone hollows lie below the mouth, corresponding to the two shoulders.
The two shoulder-bone hollows lie in the yang region of the shoulders. Arm bone hollows lie in the arm’s yang region, four cun from the joint prominence between two bone hollows. The upper thigh-bone hollow lies on the thigh’s yang region, emerging five cun above the knee. The shinbone hollow lies at the upper end of the supporting bone. The bone hollow at the thigh boundary lies within the hair, below the pulsation. Buttock-bone hollows lie behind the hip bones, four cun apart.
Flat bones have permeable interstices but no marrow holes; exchange of marrow has no hollow.
Reading note: Fen and cun remain historical measures. The source’s sequence, the compressed mouth/shoulder relation and its final marrow statement are preserved without converting them into modern anatomical openings.
For moxa treatment of cold and heat, first treat the great vertebra at the nape, taking the number of years of age as the number of moxa cones. Next treat the jue bone, again using age as the cone count.
Apply moxa to sunken back transport sites; to shoulder hollows when the arm is raised; between the two lower flanks; at Juegu’s end above the outer ankle; between the little toe and its neighbor; at the sunken vessel below the calf; behind the outer ankle; above the Quepen bone where pressure finds hardness and pain like a sinew; between the sunken bones of the breast; beneath the palm’s bound bone; at Guanyuan three cun below the navel; at the beating vessel of the pubic hairline; in the division three cun below the knee; at Foot Yangming’s beating vessel on the instep; and at one site on the crown.
Apply three cones where a dog has bitten, using the moxa method for dog wounds. In all, twenty-nine places should be treated. For injury from eating, apply moxa. If it does not end, inspect which channel has excess in yang, repeatedly needle its transport sites and give medicinals.
Reading note: The historical age-based cone counts, three cones, twenty-nine places and stated locations are preserved; the source does not supply a complete modern point list.
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