Atlas of Chinese Tongue Diagnosis

Book excerpt: Tongue diagnosis is a vital instrument used in Chinese medicine both to assess the current health of a patient and to provide a basis for prognosis. It also informs the practitioner about the underlying strength or weakness of the patient's constitution.This new (2nd) edition of Atlas of Chinese Tongue Diagnosis contains over two hundred color photographs of tongues seen in a Western clinic. The photos provide a graphic representation of a wide variety of common disorders. Each photograph is accompanied by a description of the significant features of the tongue, the corresponding Chinese diagnosis for each feature, accompanying symptoms, Western diagnosis, and pertinent background information. The sequence of the photos within a chapter shows the increasing degree of imbalance among the body's energies.The presentation of the tongues is organized according to the nature of the underlying organ disharmony: Lungs, Spleen, Stomach, Kidney, Heart, Liver. Other chapters focus on particular aspects of the tongue such as pale tongues, cracked tongues, special coatings, as well as those associated with heat disorders and blood stasis. A final chapter surveys several cases that reflect how the tongue changed over the course of treatment, with before and after photographs. This systematic presentation provides the student and practitioner with a much deeper understanding of the methodology of tongue diagnosis in Chinese medicine.This second edition of the Atlas combines and reconfigures the content of the two volumes in the original edition into one new, integrated volume. The new edition retains most of the photos from the first volume and a number of case histories from the second. A few new photos that are particularly good examples of specific tongue colors or other signs have also been added. At the same time, some of the photos and case histories in the original volumes have been discarded to enhance the readability of the book and thus make it more useful as a single volume reference work.An extensive and detailed index provides access to virtually every aspect of the hundreds of tongues presented in this atlas, and their interrelationships.