Navigating through the sea of medicine

In pre-modern China, outbreaks of infectious/communicable diseases such as typhoid, plague, influenza, smallpox etc. were terribly common and dangerously contagious. Therefore, during such times, taking the pulse, speaking with the patient and even using acupuncture would often be a reckless way to interact with the sick. For remedying this situation there was a great need for the development of a new approach in diagnosis, so physicians would be able to provide appropriate treatment while having minimal physical contact with the patient. The first systematic Tongue Diagnosis system first appeared during the Jin and Yuan Dynasties, as an alternative to the Pulse method. It derived from the works of Scholar Ao (real name and period unknown) who was perhaps the first doctor to produce an ensemble of 12 tongue illustrations, in which appeared the common ailments of his era. Along with every image he also suggested a formula which – in his opinion – would be sufficient to appropriately man...

These are a couple of photos from a conference held in Shenzhen between August 9-12, as part of Prof. Zhu Jian-ping’s training series. I was invited to deliver a key note speech on my new book the  “Gold Mirrors and Tongue Reflections” . Among other speakers was a dream team of famous scholars, including Prof. Li Zhao-guo, Prof. Wang Kui, Prof. Zheng Mei-feng, Prof. Fang Ting-yu etc.  After the end of the end of my speech I took a train to Guangzhou, where I am planning to move later in the year.  I was sent these photos through the email, after the event. 

My book “Gold Mirrors and Tongue Reflections” has been reviewed in the latest issue of the Journal of Chinese Medicine:  This is a translation of two important historical sources on tongue diagnosis. The first is the Ao Shi Shanghan Jin Jing Lu (Scholar Ao's Golden Mirror Records in Cold Damage), which originated in the Yuan dynasty (1260-1368) and became more detailed as subsequent editions were authored during the Ming dynasty. The second is the Shanghan She Jian (Tongue Reflections in Cold Damage), which was published near the start of the Qing dynasty. Living and working in Beijing for the last ten years has allowed Ioannis Solos to collaborate with some leading Chinese medical experts on this subject. Commencing with a concise history of tongue observation in early Chinese medicine, we come to realise that the method was quite perfunctory until the Song-Jin-Yuan era (960-1368 CE), with references to the tongue...

A while ago, I was having tea with an old colleague, discussing my plans about making the ancient tongue diagnosis texts available in English. His first reaction was quite negative and disapproving. His arguments were that “nobody in China reads these books, why would the ‘foreigners’ wish to study them?”, and also “the classics lack photographic illustrations”. The 1960 first edition of the "Chinese Medicine Tongue Diagnosis" Instead of answering these questions, in this entry I will briefly discuss about how the modern TCM tongue method managed to replace the old established classical tongue diagnosis system. Traditionally, since the Yuan Dynasty, tongue diagnosis was intimately intertwined with herbal medicine. Therefore, the “Gold Mirror Records”, the “Tongue Reflection in Cold Damage”, and all the monographs up until the late Min Guo period, such as the “Tongue Diagnosis in the National Medicine” (which I think was the last important tongue text published pre...

Modern books on Chinese Tongue Diagnosis typically contain photographs of various tongues as they manifest during the course of a variety of diseases.  This ability to r ecord and demonstrate was undeniably one of the most important contributions of modern technology to the field of medicine.     Today, modern tongue research tries to objectively standardize a variety of variables, including comparison of the tongue colours, testing the tongue pH, measuring the dry-wet state of the tongue surface, and even looking into such stuff as the incubation of bacteria and mildew on the surface of the tongue, among many others things. Researching the tongue colours and standardizing a variety of important aspects, in a way that they can be measured and examined objectively by many, may assist doctors to draw lines marking the beginning and the end of colours, so people will know for example where the red stops and the crimson begins. The idea behind this type of rese...