Chinese/Japanese Pulse Image chart: Soup Fat Pulse

Illustration of Soup Fat Pulse (gengshangfei mai) from Renyuan maiying guizhi tushuo (Pictorial Handbook of Pulse Images Based on the Person). This is a specialist text on pulse diagnosis attributed to the third-century master Shuhe, edited and revised by Shen Jifen in the Ming period (1368-1644). It discusses various pulse images and the medical conditions to which they relate, and contains 48 pulse image diagrams. This undated edition was engraved and published in Japan.

The text states: Soup Fat Pulse is one of the Sixteen Weird Pulses (guai mai). It is also known as Floating Corpse pulse (fu shi mai) or Bubbling Cauldron pulse (fu feimai). Its pulse image is like fat globules floating on the surface of soup or like bubbles swirling in a cauldron of boiling water. It is faint as it arrives, and feeble as it departs. There are twelve occurences to one sequence of exhalation and inhalation. When this pulse is felt at the guan (Pass) pulse sector of the wrist, death will ensue within three days.