Vomiting (and retching)

Ejection of food through the mouth. The Chinese term is composed of two characters, 呕 ǒu, meaning retching (sound without matter), and 吐 tù, meaning ejection (matter without sound). However, the combined term, as the English vomiting, tends to exclude retching. While retching denotes a relative absence of expelled matter, dry retching gān ǒu denotes its complete absence. Vomiting and retching are the manifestations of stomach qì ascending counterflow, and like nausea may occur in almost any stomach pattern—stomach heat or cold, insufficiency of stomach yīn, liver-stomach disharmony, or food damage, etc. Vomiting of ingested food that has remained for several hours without undergoing transformation is called stomach reflux. Very often this assumes a pattern of vomiting in the morning of foods ingested in the evening, or vomiting in the evening of foods ingested in the morning. Not only food but also clear water, bitter water, phlegm-drool, and roundworm may be vomited. See entries listed below. See also vomitus.