TCM (Traditional Chinese Medicine), a great treasure-house of culture, is an indispensable part of the splendid classic Chinese culture. In its long course of development, it has absorbed the quintessence of classical Chinese philosophy, culture and science, and summarized the experience of the Chinese people in fighting against disease, It is rich in theory and practical in treatment. Today modern medicine is quite advanced, however, TCM is still widely used because of its significant clinical curative effect.
With the rapid development of modern medicine, TCM now encounters another chance to develop. On the basis of the theoretical study and clinical practice made by the previous generations and with the adoption of modern scientific theory and technology, TCM will certainly develop into a new era.
| What are the basic characteristics of TCM?
Concept of holism and syndrome differentiation and treatment are the two basic characteristics of TCM in understanding human physiology and pathology as well as diagnosis, treatment and prevention of disease.
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Concept of holism: The concept of holism means that the human body is an organic whole and that human beings are interrelated with nature.
1) Organic wholeness of the body TCM believes that the human body is composed of various tissues and organs, including the viscera, the meridians, the five sensory organs, the nine orifices, the four limbs and all the skeletal parts. These different tissues and organs are united into an organic whole because they are closely related to each other in structure, physiology and pathology.
2) Correlation between man and nature Human beings live in nature and nature provides them with various necessities, such as sunlight, air and water. On the other hand, various changes taking place in nature may directly or indirectly affect the human body and bring on corresponding physiological or pathological responses.
Bianzheng lunzhi (Syndrome differentiation and treatment):
1) Implication of syndrome differentiation and treatment Syndrome differentiation and treatment means to analyze, induce, synthesize, judge and summarize the clinical data of symptoms and signs collected with the fur diagnostic methods (namely inspection, listening and smelling, inquiry, taking pulse and palpation) into certain syndrome. Then the therapeutic methods are decided according to the result of syndrome differentiation. Syndrome differentiation and treatment is a basic principle in TCM to understand and treat disease.
2) Differentiation of syndrome and differentiation of disease Clinically differentiation of syndrome and differentiation of disease are intrinsically interrelated on the one hand, and different on the other. It is generally thought that disease includes the whole pathological course while syndrome is just the summarization of disease at a certain stage of its development. For this reason one disease may display different syndromes while different diseases may demonstrate the same syndrome in their course of development. Therefore in TCM, the understanding and treatment of disease mainly focuses on differentiating syndrome and analyzing the common nature or difference of syndrome in the course of differentiating disease.It is clear that syndrome differentiation and treatment can truly reveal the relationship between disease and syndrome. It emphasizes the role of syndrome in treatment and advocates the idea of ¡°treating the same syndrome with the same method¡± and ¡°treating different syndromes with different methods.¡±
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