| Abstract |
In common sense, disease and syndrome are regarded as "one medical condition" which can be treated or cured, however, in TCM, they are different. Different from Western Medicine(WM), in TCM, disease is defined as disorders of various life activities, which may cause the abnormal changes of body, qi, spirit and other aspects; while syndrome is defined as the patients a series of abnormality, which doesnt conform to normal physiological generalization, such as fever, aversion to cold and so on. Some common symptoms, such as sweating, vomiting and diarrhea, are regarded as the indifferent details in WM. In TCM, however, each symptom may be "the major symptom", which could be the breakthrough to diagnose and treat miscellaneous diseases.Obviously, TCM doesnt reject to obtain an overall understanding of the patients conditions by all kinds of advanced diagnostic methods. For example, a cardiac disease, with the help of modern medical technologies, can be diagnosed as the coronary angina. While, in TCM, on the basis of syndrome differentiation, pathogenesis of the same disease can also be identified as qi stagnation with blood stasis and heart vessels obstruction. So the medicinal herbs of opening the orifices with aroma and activating blood are mainly used to regulate qi, unlock meridian and alleviate pain. So it is true that the disease-syndrome theory is a unique feature in TCM. The method of both diagnosis and treatment based on syndrome differentiation has been the most fundamental and effective in TCM for thousands of years.
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