laoxinglin 老杏林

First Principles 基础

The Meridians 经络

“The map acupuncture is drawn on. Twelve main channels, named for organs, charted centuries before anatomy — best understood as the tradition's wiring diagram of function.” — Lao Xinglin

The map

The tradition describes a network — jing luo, warp-threads and net — carrying qi and blood through the body: twelve principal channels, each named for an organ (lung, large intestine, stomach, spleen, heart, small intestine, bladder, kidney, pericardium, triple burner, gallbladder, liver), running in mirrored pairs along arms and legs, plus eight "extraordinary vessels" of which the midline Ren and Du are the famous two[1]. Along the channels sit the acupuncture points — small named stations where the flow is said to surface and can be reached by needle, pressure, or moxa.

Why herbalists care

Open any page in the herb cabinet and you'll find "meridians" pills: chrysanthemum enters the lung and liver channels. This is the tradition's targeting language — a claim about where in the body's functional map an herb does its work, which is how a formula aims itself: throat herbs enter the lung channel, eye herbs the liver channel[1]. Channel-entry is pharmacological addressing, written centuries before receptor was a word.

An honest note on the science

Dissection does not find meridians — no vessels or threads correspond to the classical lines, and this site won't pretend otherwise[2]. What exists is a sophisticated pre-modern map of function and connection: observed patterns (where pain refers, where symptoms cluster, where stimulation seems to act) organized into geography. Acupuncture research proceeds mostly point-by-point and condition-by-condition, with the channel map as its traditional index rather than its proven mechanism. Hold the map as the tradition's coordinate system — indispensable for reading it, unverified as plumbing.

Where to next

The channels connect the organ systems the five phases organize — and the daily rhythm the tradition assigned them is its own story: the body clock.

References

  1. Kaptchuk, The Web That Has No Weaver: Understanding Chinese Medicine, 2nd ed., McGraw-Hill, 2000. ↩
  2. Unschuld, Medicine in China: A History of Ideas, University of California Press, 1985. ↩

Lao Xinglin seal Reviewed 2026-08-25