TCM Cognition of Life and Disease
01 · Historical Records
The knowledge of life and disease in Chinese medicine originated in the legendary era of the Yellow Emperor and Qibo in remote antiquity; the formation of the Chinese medicine system of knowledge about life and disease, marked by the Yellow Emperor's Inner Canon, has a history of more than two thousand years.
02 · Core Techniques & Process
The Chinese medicine understanding of life and disease is a body of medical knowledge, based on the traditional culture of the Chinese nation, for comprehending human life phenomena and the laws of disease. Chinese medicine knowledge of life and disease mainly includes yin and yang, the five phases, visceral manifestation, channels and collaterals, disease and syndromes, etiology and pathogenesis, pattern differentiation, principles and methods of treatment, and the five movements and six qi. Chinese medicine uses the concept of the opposition and unity of yin and yang to expound human life activities and the interdependent relationship between human beings and the external environment such as nature and society. The balance of yin and yang is the foundation for maintaining and ensuring human life activities; disharmony of yin and yang leads to the occurrence and change of disease. Chinese medicine uses the doctrine of the five phases to expound the connections between the human body and nature and among the parts of the human body, as well as the mechanism of the occurrence and development of disease, and uses it to guide the treatment of disease. Visceral manifestation is an important life phenomenon of the human body, mainly including the physiological functions and pathological changes of the five zang organs, the six fu organs, the extraordinary fu organs, and the essence, qi, blood, and body fluids. Channels and collaterals are the passages through which qi and blood move in the human body, serving to connect the whole body. The channel system includes the twelve regular channels, the eight extraordinary channels, and the collaterals; it is the foundation for Chinese medicine diagnosis and treatment, and also an important theoretical basis for therapies such as acupuncture and tuina. Pattern differentiation and treatment is the method of examining disease by inspection, listening and smelling, inquiry, and palpation, analyzing and synthesizing the results of examination to draw a conclusion, and establishing the principle of treatment. Principles and methods of treatment are the basic principles and methods that must be followed in treating disease; they are the laws of treatment summarized by Chinese medicine in long-term clinical practice, mainly including regulating yin and yang, supporting the healthy and dispelling the pathogenic, addressing the root and the branch according to urgency, and adapting to the individual, the season, and the locality. Chinese medicine has unique theories and methods for understanding disease and syndromes. Chinese medicine holds that the occurrence of disease is the waxing and waning of the healthy and the pathogenic. The Yellow Emperor's Inner Canon put forward the view of disease that "when the healthy qi remains within, the pathogenic qi cannot attack" and "wherever the pathogenic qi gathers, the qi must be deficient". Early literature such as the Treatise on Cold Damage and Miscellaneous Diseases records a great deal of understanding of disease; the Treatise on the Origins and Symptoms of Diseases of the Sui dynasty records 1,720 diseases and syndromes in 67 categories. The understanding of life and disease in Chinese medicine constitutes the core of Chinese medicine knowledge and plays a guiding role in all links of Chinese medicine health preservation, diagnostic methods, therapies, prescriptions, Chinese materia medica, acupuncture, and clinical practice.
The four examinations combined
Looking, listening, asking and palpating are run together so that scattered signs are corrected against one another into a single judgement.
Tracing disharmony of yin and yang
Reading illness through the waxing and waning of yin and yang, linking inner imbalance to season and place.
Computing the five movements and six qi
Astronomical, meteorological and phenological cycles are converted into a forecast of susceptibility and disease tendency.
Configuring a formula by rank
Drugs are assigned roles — chief, minister, assistant, envoy — so the formula has a clear purpose and predictable limits.
Adapting to season and place
The same syndrome calls for different drugs under different climates, places and constitutions.
03 · Regional Records & Related Items
This system of understanding life and disease has no rigid regional boundaries; it spread with the movements, writings, and teaching of physicians, while medical practitioners in different regions read the same language of visceral manifestation, channels and collaterals, and pattern differentiation into different clinical conclusions. The breadth of its coverage can be seen from the native places of the project's representative inheritors: Lu Zhizheng was born in Gaocheng, Hebei, with a focus on the spleen-stomach and damp pathogens; Wang Mianzhi came from Nantong, Jiangsu, and devoted his life to organizing the literature on prescriptions; Deng Tietao was born in Kaiping, Guangdong, and proposed the doctrine of the interrelation of the five zang organs; Zhou Zhongying came from Rudong, Jiangsu, and built the disciplinary framework for acute internal medicine in Chinese medicine. The four directions lie in North, East, and South China; their approaches differ, yet they share the basic vocabulary of the Yellow Emperor's Inner Canon. The project is protected by the Institute for the History of Medical Literature of the China Academy of Chinese Medical Sciences, while transmission is carried out on the ground with the support of local colleges and hospitals, giving this system a situation of parallel development across multiple regions and mutual corroboration of theories.
04 · Cultural Value & Contemporary Safeguarding
Etiology is the doctrine that studies the causes and conditions of disease, including the six excesses from external contraction, the seven emotions from internal injury, and diet and overexertion. The doctrine of pathogenesis is the doctrine that studies the laws of the occurrence and development of disease. The five movements and six qi is a systematic body of knowledge that studies and explores the influence of astronomical, meteorological, and phenological changes in nature on human health and disease. However, under the influence of Western medicine, the number of people able to understand and transmit this knowledge is declining day by day; it faces difficulties in preservation and development and urgently needs to be respected, protected, and developed. Lu Zhizheng (record of the associated inheritor's official archive): Male, Han ethnicity, born in 1921, native of Gaocheng, Hebei. Lu Zhizheng inherited family learning from childhood, successively studying under Meng Zhengji and Wang Buju, from whom he received the true transmission. Lu Zhizheng esteemed the spleen-stomach doctrine and the warm disease doctrine, inheriting and developing the Chinese medical theory that the spleen and stomach are the foundation of the acquired constitution, the source of the production and transformation of qi and blood, and the pivot of the ascending and descending of qi, and that human beings take stomach qi as their root. His prescriptions combine raising and lowering in appropriate measure while attending to moistening and dryness, and he had unique insights into diseases caused by damp pathogens. He proposed the thesis that damp pathogens are not confined to the south; the north also has much dampness. He identified damp patterns starting from the characteristics of heaviness of the head as if wrapped, fatigue of the limbs and body, a sticky mouth, a fat tongue with a greasy, watery-slippery coating, and a soggy, thin, and choppy pulse, treating them with the three methods of diffusing, resolving, and percolating. He insisted on giving full play to the important role of Chinese medicine in the prevention and treatment of acute infectious diseases; in the work of preventing and treating advanced schistosomiasis, he proposed treatment plans that gave play to the respective advantages of Chinese and Western medicine, contributing to accelerating the elimination of schistosomiasis. The book Treatise on the Diagnosis and Treatment of Damp Diseases in Chinese Medicine, which he edited as chief editor, introduced the theory of meteorological medicine — a pioneering act among Chinese medicine books. His other edited works include Emergency Internal Medicine of Chinese Medicine, Treatise on the Diagnosis and Treatment of Bi Disease, Lu Zhizheng's Medical Gleanings, and Practical New Studies of Chinese Medicine. He was a representative inheritor of the first batch of national-level intangible cultural heritage project "Methods of Understanding Life and Disease in Chinese Medicine", a senior researcher at the China Academy of Traditional Chinese Medicine, and an associate chief physician and professor. Wang Mianzhi (record of the associated inheritor's official archive): Doctoral supervisor and tenured professor at Beijing University of Chinese Medicine. In 1957, he was transferred to Beijing University of Chinese Medicine. After more than sixty years of research and practice, he systematically analyzed and organized the literature on prescriptions of successive dynasties, selected the content needed for modern higher education in Chinese medicine, categorized and compiled it into textbooks, prepared supporting teaching reference materials, and established a complete teaching syllabus. In clinical practice, he esteemed the "kingly way" and advocated "embedding prevention within treatment when composing prescriptions"; in light of the characteristics of modern society, he emphasized the viewpoint of treating the "social person", and cured many difficult and complicated diseases. He dared to innovate, applying Chinese medicine health care to the field of space engineering. Wang Mianzhi was repeatedly invited to *, Thailand, France, Singapore, and Hong Kong, Macao, and Taiwan for treatment and lecturing. His main representative works include Wang Mianzhi's Lectures on Prescriptions and Casual Talks on the Teaching of Prescriptions. Male, Han ethnicity, born in 1923, died in 2009, native of Nantong, Jiangsu. Representative inheritor of the first batch of national-level intangible cultural heritage project "Methods of Understanding Life and Disease in Chinese Medicine". In 2008, he received the title of "Famous National Medical Master" awarded by Beijing Municipality. In 2009, he received the title of "National Medical Master" awarded by the National Administration of Traditional Chinese Medicine.
05 · Associated Representative Bearers
Representative bearers recorded under this item, organized by national nomination batch:
- Lu Zhizheng 01-0198
- Wang Mianzhi 01-0199
- Yan Dexin 01-0200
- Cao Hongxin 01-0201
- Wu Xianzhong 01-0202
- Chen Keji 01-0203
- Tang Xudong
06 · Authoritative Sources & Bibliography
Sources
China Intangible Cultural Heritage Network (ihchina.cn)
This static English edition is rendered at the edge for search engines, AI crawlers and readers without JavaScript; it mirrors the bilingual dossier. 阅读中文版，或返回 英文名录。