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.Interestingly, vessel di-agnosis is applied to trace ailments that one might think could be detectedthrough visual inspection or anamnesis much more easily.For example,swollen feet and shins are, in today s perspective, not among the health prob-lems one might want to find out about through pulse feeling.No explicitstatement has been received as to why a physician would be motivated to ex-Unschuld,Huang Di nei jing 12/2/02 1:34 PM Page 261survey of the contents of the su wen 261amine the movement in the vessels of his patient to find out whether his feetare swollen.One can only speculate whether asking such questions was con-sidered indecent or whether in the absence of any qualifying examinationsor quality control a physician could prove his expertise by announcing, af-ter feeling the movement in the vessels, facts that could be verified by thepatient or the patient s family.Two examples of what might be tentativelycalled self-qualifying examinations are the following:If the [movement in the] vessels at the Inch Opening strikes the hand as a short[movement],that is called:  headache.If the [movement in the] vessels at the Inch Opening strikes the hand as anextended [movement],that is called:  foot and shin pain. 652In general, vessel diagnosis served to identify either a disease or the sta-tus of the patient.One major block of advice in the Su wen helps to assessthe movement in the vessels in general.Presumably the authors presentingsuch information in their texts did not distinguish between separate move-ments in the vessels revealing the status of qi in the individual conduits ordepots.For them, a single movement passed through the vessels and thismovement could assume different qualities, which in turn could be felt atthe  Inch[-long] Opening at the wrists and were interpreted as manifesta-tions of certain rather general health problems.For example,If the [movement in the] vessels at the Inch Opening is in the depth and firm,that is called:  disease in the center.If the [movement in the] vessels at the Inch Opening is at the surface andabundant,that is called:  the disease in the outer [regions].If the [movement in the] vessels at the Inch Opening is in the depth and weak,that is called:  cold and heat and elevation conglomeration ill, with pain in the lower abdomen.If the [movement in the] vessels at the Inch Opening is in the depth,with transverse [knottings],that is called:  accumulations below the flanks. 653Movement qualities such as  in the depth,  at the surface,  weak, abundant, and  hard, as well as nosological entities such as  disease inthe center,  accumulations below the flanks, and  cold and heat, did notrequire any understanding of a conceptualized relationship between thestatus of a conduit or depot and a specific movement in the vessels.How-ever, elsewhere in the Su wen, quite similar data are given together withsome rudimentary theoretical information.The discrepancies betweenthese two sets of data may be signs of different stages reached in a histori-Unschuld,Huang Di nei jing 12/2/02 1:34 PM Page 262262 survey of the contents of the su wencal development, or they may document different schools of thought co-existing contemporaneously.When [the movement in the vessels] is rough and big,the yin is insufficient and the yang has surplus.This is a heated center.When [the movement in the vessels] comes hastily and leaves slowly,with repletion above and depletion below,this is recession with peak illness.When [the movement in the vessels] comes slowly and leaves hastily,with depletion above and repletion below,this is [being struck by] bad wind.654As in the paragraph quoted before, this passage does not refer to associ-ations between specific movements in the vessels and the status of individualconduits or depots.Yin insufficiency, yang surplus, repletion, and deple-tion are rather general status descriptions added here to explain the pres-ence or generation of diseases such as heated center, reversal with peak dis-ease, or being struck by bad wind.A heated center signals a surplus of yangqi; a reversal with peak disease is the sign of a movement of qi from thelower parts to the upper parts of the body, leading to a repletion above anda depletion below.A depletion above, finally, allows bad wind to strike andenter the organism.Another set of instructions aims at assessing the status of qi in individualdepots by identifying certain movements whose qualities are described byrather elaborate comparisons with phenomena known from everyone s en-vironment [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]