Flesh

1. The soft parts of the body other than the viscera and skin.

Biomedical correspondence: muscle and exterior layers of fat. The flesh is governed by the spleen and reflects the state of the spleen. Emaciation, whatever disease it occurs in, is attributed to spleen vacuity.

See spleen governs the flesh. Diseases associated with the flesh include flesh wilting and flesh impediment.

2. The soft parts of the body other than viscera, including the skin. For example, parts of the body such as the back of the hands and arms that easily tan are called the red flesh in contradistinction to the inner surface, which is called the white flesh.

Etymology

Chinese: 肉 ròu originally portrayed meating hanging from a rack, suggesting that the word was first applied to animal flesh as meat for human consumption. 肌 ròu, which has 肉 (月) as its signifier, denotes flesh as an anatomical entity. In the context of the human body, the two characters are identical in meaning, and often occur together in the compound 肌肉 jī ròu, also denoting flesh. This combination is now used in Western medicine in the specific sense of muscle (red flesh).