Chinese medicine is characterized by its unique method of classifying diseases and then differentiating patterns for such disease classifications. Because most Chinese disease classifications originated before the introduction of Western medicine into China and because Chinese medicine regards the body as a microcosm in which internal changes will affect and manifest as symptoms that can be recognized without looking into or extracting fluids from the body, Chinese disease names are mostly based on symptomatology and never on blood or laboratory values. For example, a case of aplastic anemia may be diagnosed as vacuity taxation at one point and as bleeding condition at another. Having said all this, I must add that in the hematology departments in modern-day China, such disease classifications are no longer recorded into the patients medical charts by Chinese doctors. However, and this is where the strength and uniqueness of Chinese medicine sets in, all diseases are then differentiated into patterns, and the administration of Chinese herbal medicine is based on these patterns and not on the diseases.
Symptoms vary according to pattern.
For example, pattern one is characterized by spleen and stomach vacuity signs such as loose stools, reduced appetite, lack of strength in the limbs, etc. Herbal prescriptions for all of the seven patterns vary greatly, ranging from relatively slimy yin nourishing formulas to strongly spleen fortifying decoctions. Professionally administered Chinese herbal medicine bases its treatment on treatment principles derived from a pattern discrimination which itself is based on the patient s individual symptom complex, not his or her disease. To illustrate this more clearly, it should be considered that the most common symptoms of anemia, fatigue and shortness of breath, are signs of qi vacuity, not blood vacuity. Chinese herbal medicine is so uniquely effective exactly because it discriminates and treats different patterns of a disease rather than the disease itself.