Gate Points & guan -- more study

[Guest guest]

In the process of trying to understand these namings (St-7 and GB-3), I've

gotten to know more about the complexities of the naming issues, and about

book Grasping the Wind (GTW)).

 

Curious are the DaCheng/Great Compendium texts on the point location. They

involve more extensive anatomical information than just above/below the

zygomatic arch. Apparently Chinese anatomy (at least in the DaCheng) didn't

have a specific name for what we call the zygomatic arch. They rather key

off on " the pulsating vessel " , and mouth open/closed differences. Also

interesting is the St-7 location " Below Guest-Host " using an alternate name

for GB-3. Both locations acknowledge the vertical alignment of the two

points, but here they use a GB-3 name without the above/below characters.

According to information I found in a modern Chinese point book, both these

points are first mentioned in the NeiJing (both in the SuWen, one also in

the LingShu). I don't have the time to search that out right now, but it

would be interesting to see which names are used there.

 

That other point book appeared to me to be a response to the English FCA,

in that it was much more elaborate than, say, the CAM, and included point

" functions, " which is one of the major strengths of FCA. " Functions " ,

however, in this other book are a modern sort of rationalization keying off

the indications and anatomy, not classical therapeutic actions (like

" release wind " , " benefit the Spleen " , or " bank the essence " ). Most of the

Chinese books, and the opinion of Chinese teachers I worked with here,

indicate that traditional therapeutic functions are being dumped in recent

people told me " they are standardized enough. " The other feature that

lead me to suspect some relation to FCA was that the drawings there closely

resembled those in FCA, which, according to the FCA intro, were original to

the FCA.

 

One notable feature of the Chinese book (Chinese authorship, but in

English) is inclusion of reference for every point to an original classical

source where the point is first mentioned. (Which is why I took the time to

copy all those references into my copy of FCA, making it an even more

complete tool.

 

Back to Grasping the Wind (GTW). My copy is first edition, so may contain

numerous errors (as did initial versions of Fundamentals of Chinese

Medicine (FCM), and FCA). For instance, in explaining the name of GB-3, the

text states " Guan in the alternate names for GB-1 and GB-2…, " where the

names given for GB-1, on the opposite page, don't include the character

guan. First edition of FCA had numerous errors, mostly misplaced text, but

the book is so well organized and useful that I worked around them. The

FCM, on the other hand, I found not usable at the time. One glaring error

that sticks out in memory is that the index lists the point LI-24, which

really stands out as you see the index list LI-1 through 20, and then

LI-24. Apparently there was a typo in the text mentioning LI-24, and they

generated the index by computer, or by people with no inkling of TCM, and

then no-one proof-read it! The only reason I kept the FCM around was for

Ted Kapchuk's provoking introduction.

 

Also virtues of GTW: indeces by English and Pinyin, a glossary of all the

single characters, and an appendix of special point groupings and their

meanings. Perusing these can reveal curious issues, for instance, of some

22 names beginning with xia4 (below, under, lower), all but one are

rendered with English " lower " ; the one using " below " is ST-7.

 

The systematization in these books (FCA, GTW, and later culminating in the

PD) is a very welcome trend, especially as Chinese/official English text

production has been slow to catch on to the usefulness of good

cross-reference and indexing tools. This brings to mind a quotation I

recently came across in Elizabeth Hsu's " The Transmission of Chinese

Medicine " ; to paraphrase: while CM is soundly systemic in character, it is

rarely rigorously systematic. (She's referring, as I take it, to CM broadly

and historically, as opposed to recent TCM.)