The 'seven feelings' (qi qing) — more accurately translated as seven kinds of combination — is the classical vocabulary for how two herbs behave when used together. The list comes from the preface of the Shennong Bencao Jing (Divine Farmer's Classic of Materia Medica, compiled roughly in the Han dynasty), which names them: single action (dan xing), mutual reinforcement (xiang xu), mutual assistance (xiang shi), mutual restraint (xiang wei), mutual aversion (xiang wu), mutual antagonism (xiang fan), and mutual counteraction (xiang sha).
The categories describe relationships, not ingredients. Two herbs with similar actions used together may reinforce each other (xiang xu); a secondary herb may assist the action of a chief herb (xiang shi); the toxicity of one may be held in check by another (xiang wei and xiang sha, which later writers read as a positive pairing); while some pairings were recorded as diminishing each other (xiang wu) or as conflicting outright (xiang fan). The last category is the root of the later 'eighteen incompatibilities and nineteen fears' (shi ba fan, shi jiu wei) lists found in later formulary literature, which tabulate pairs traditionally considered incompatible.
How to read this: the seven combinations are a descriptive grammar, not a rulebook with numbers. The classical text records how paired herbs were observed to behave; it does not and cannot certify that any particular pairing is safe for any particular person. Modern pharmacology has found that some of these traditional pairings correspond to measurable interactions and others do not, and the question is still studied. What the framework contributes today is a precise, shared language for talking about herb-to-herb interaction — and a reminder that combination, not the single herb, was always the unit of classical practice.
「七情」是描述两味药同用时相互关系的传统词汇，出自《神农本草经》序录，原文列举：单行、相须、相使、相畏、相恶、相反、相杀。它说的是「关系」而不是「成分」：功效相似的同用可能互相增强（相须），辅药可助主药（相使），一味药的毒性可被另一味牵制（相畏、相杀，后世多读作良性搭配），也有记载彼此削弱（相恶）或直接冲突（相反）的配对。最后一类是后世方书「十八反、十九畏」名录的源头，用于罗列传统上认为不宜同用的药对。
怎么读这一条：七情是一套描述性的语法，不是带数字的规则手册。古籍记录的是配伍被观察到的行为，它不能为任何具体的人担保任何具体搭配的安全性。现代药理研究发现其中一些传统记载与可测量的相互作用对应，另一些则不然，问题仍在研究中。这套框架今天的价值，是一套谈论「药与药相互作用」的精确公共语言——以及一个提醒：经典实践的基本单位从来是配伍，而不是单味药。
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