GIOVANNI ON TWITTER

Giovanni has a new Twitter account which will be dedicated to short messages on all aspects of Chinese medicine, some with links. @gmaciocia.

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THE SHEN, YI AND ZHI AND NEEDLING IN THE NEI JING

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Chapter 8 of the Ling Shu (entitled Ben Shen 本 神) is quoted very frequently, especially its famous opening sentence. I would like to comment briefly on that sentence and propose a different translation of it. The opening sentence of chapter 8 of the Ling Shu is: Fan ci zhi fa, xian bi ben yu shen 凡 刺 之 法 先 必 本 于 神 and the words mean literally “ every needling’s method first must be rooted in Shen ”. This sentence is usually translated as: “ All treatment must be based on the Spirit ”. The implication of this sentence is that all treatment must be based on the Spirit (of the patient), whatever interpretation we give to the word “Spirit”. I propose an alternative translation with two important differences. Firstly, the text uses the word ci which means “to needle”, not “to treat”. If the text had meant to use the term “to treat”, it would have used the word zhi 治which does occur a lot in both the Su Wen and the Ling Shu. Thus, the first difference is that the first half of the sentenc...
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