Recognition Method Recognition Process Treatment Focus

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TCM | > Logical Reasoning | > From Symptom to Cause | > Suppressing the Pathogen by Adjusting the Body's Reactivity Western Medicine | > Experimental Research | > From Cause to Symptom | > Directly Suppressing the Pathogen Given the above differences in how TCM and Western medicine recognize diseases, each inevitably develops certain biases and shortcomings. Western medicine's experimental research method, with its progression from cause to symptom and focus on directly suppressing the pathogen, often emphasizes the local manifestations of the pathogen while neglecting the overall condition of the body and its own disease resistance. TCM's logical reasoning method, with its progression from symptom to cause (diagnosing the cause through symptom analysis) and suppression of the pathogen by adjusting the body's reactivity, often focuses solely on the overall condition of the body while overlooking the specific characteristics of the affected area. Let's take pleurisy as an example to illustrate this issue. Western medicine's understanding of this disease focuses on examining, palpating, percussing, and auscultating the chest, while also using radiology and laboratory tests to determine the amount and nature of pleural effusion as key diagnostic criteria. TCM's understanding of this disease, on the other hand, focuses on systemic symptoms such as alternating chills and fever, fullness and discomfort in the chest and flanks, irritability, nausea, and reluctance to eat, combined with pulse and tongue diagnosis to identify the presence of pathogenic factors in the Shaoyang meridian as key diagnostic criteria. In diagnosing this disease, Western medicine only emphasizes the local manifestations of pleurisy while ignoring the systemic response symptoms; TCM, however, focuses on the whole body.

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