🌿 Folk Prescriptions

In long-term medical practice, TCM has developed four methods for diagnosing diseases: observation, auscultation, inquiry, and palpation. Observation involves doctors using vision to observe the patient’s overall or local changes in spirit, complexion, shape, and features; auscultation involves doctors using hearing and olfaction to discern changes in the patient’s voice and odor; inquiry involves doctors questioning the patient and family members to understand the onset, development, current symptoms, and other relevant aspects of the disease; palpation includes pulse-taking and physical examination—touching the patient’s pulse and skin, hands, abdomen, limbs, and other areas to diagnose disease.
TCM believes that qi and blood circulation, sensory transmission, can convey pathogens. The pathway reflecting disease is the meridians. Meridians connect internal organs and limbs, linking upper and lower, inside and outside—like a telephone network binding the body into a unified whole. Thus, local changes can affect the entire body, and internal organ diseases can manifest externally—“what exists internally inevitably appears externally.” Conversely, by examining external signs, one can infer internal changes. This forms the foundation and basis for TCM diagnosis.
Observation
Simply put, observation includes general observation and tongue diagnosis. General observation includes observing spirit, complexion, body shape, and facial features; tongue diagnosis includes observing the tongue body and tongue coating. Observation begins with spirit. Spirit reflects the vitality of life—clear mind, articulate speech, bright eyes, quick response—called "having spirit," indicating health or mild illness. If spirit is dull, expression indifferent, eyes dim, response slow, even unconsciousness—called "lacking spirit," indicating serious illness. Through observing spirit, one can estimate the patient’s condition and prognosis, achieving clarity.
Complexion assessment mainly observes facial color and luster. Different colors reveal the state of qi and blood and disease progression. Normal Chinese complexion is slightly yellow, rosy and lustrous. Abnormal colors are called "pathological colors." Common ones include: white—indicating deficiency, cold, or blood loss; yellow—indicating deficiency or dampness; blue-green—indicating cold, blood stasis, pain, or pediatric convulsions; red—indicating heat; black—indicating kidney deficiency.
Observing body shape and movement: for example, obesity with poor appetite suggests spleen deficiency with phlegm; thinness with constant hunger indicates stomach fire; lying still and preferring quietness suggests cold syndrome; restlessness and agitation suggest heat syndrome. Opening mouth and lifting shoulders with shortness of breath unable to lie flat indicates asthma; stiff neck and arching back indicate spasm. Persistent wandering hands and touching bedclothes or picking at threads indicate critical illness.
TCM experience holds that the five zang organs open to the five orifices, which correspond internally to the five zang organs. By observing the five orifices, one can detect internal organ diseases. For example, red and swollen eyes often indicate liver fire or wind-heat; upward rolling eyes, staring, or squinting indicate internal liver wind; dry, black earlobes indicate kidney essence depletion; flaring nostrils indicate heat in the lung; swollen gums or bleeding indicate excessive stomach heat.
Tongue diagnosis is a unique diagnostic tool developed through long-term TCM practice. It mainly observes the tongue body and coating. The tongue body is the muscular part of the tongue; the coating is the film-like substance on the tongue surface. The tongue body reflects the condition of the five zang organs—deficiency or excess; the coating indicates the depth of external pathogen invasion. A normal person has a pale red tongue with a thin white coating. A pale white tongue indicates deficiency or cold; a red tongue indicates heat; a purple tongue indicates blood stasis; a white coating indicates exterior or cold syndrome; a yellow coating indicates heat; thick yellow and greasy coating indicates damp-heat or phlegm-heat; thin coating indicates mild illness; thick coating indicates severe illness; thickening of the coating indicates disease progression; thinning indicates improvement. Clinically, tongue body and coating changes are usually combined for comprehensive judgment. TCM experience generally holds that acute diseases prioritize the tongue, while chronic diseases prioritize the pulse—because the tongue image accurately and promptly reflects the body’s physiological and pathological state. Mastering observation enables fast and accurate diagnosis—thus TCM says, "To know by sight is called divine."