Chinese medical vocabulary and jargon

Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) did not come up against the scientific approach until the last century when the Chinese government developed its policy of cohabitation of the two medicines (Western and traditional). Thus, TCM has still little adopted the technical language which accompanies the process of research and scientific validation, and which makes it possible to describe with precision the complex systems of the real - from the visible to the infinitely small - and to define the laws of Biochemistry.

TCM still retains an ordinary and concrete language today. It was originally a language perfectly adapted to account for multidisciplinary knowledge where all knowledge had to lead to a possibility of action. This language could not be dissociated from a way of life where the arts of cooking, healing, painting, calligraphy and doing health exercises ... It translates into a world in which the true man - One who desires balance and health for himself and others - must accept both public and family responsibilities while seeking to penetrate the deeper meaning of life. This is why medical texts are never purely technical or mechanical. Thus, even if they are essentially composed of recipes and pragmatic therapeutic processes, they are still imbued with strong philosophical connotations.

To account for abstract, invisible or partly hidden realities (a fever or a bacterial infection, for example), TCM employs an intuitive and speculative approach and uses terms that designate, symbolically or by analogy, quite real realities. Concrete.

Cold wind attacks Lung

We will say that a person with a cold is the victim of a Wind because this attack often occurs at the time of climate change accompanied by wind or by exposure to a draft. The Wind also symbolizes the power of the Air which transports a pathogenic factor and makes it penetrate. We will then qualify it as an external wind. A person who suffers from tremors will be said to be suffering from an Internal Wind because his symptoms look like what the wind causes: squalls, leaf shaking, etc. The Wind is therefore an image that serves as a concrete and analogical point of departure to designate a specific set of pathological symptoms, and which serves to classify them in a category or to associate them with a clinical portrait.

These images can be refined more and more: we will speak of an external or internal Wind, a direct attack of the Wind, a Wind-Heat which attacks the Lung or a Wind-Humidity which attacks the Surface, Each expression designating particular and different clinical realities, calling for a specific treatment. The language of TCM is old but practical. Being imaging has the advantage that it can be easily understood and used by people who have little medical knowledge.

However, we must make the effort not to interpret the terms from a scientific perspective, nor to take them literally. Being affected with Cold Heart does not mean that the heart is physically cold, but that it exhibits characteristics associated with Cold such as a certain lack of vigor, or that the functions it controls are affected in the same way, causing Symptoms such as a weak pulse, decreased appetite, fatigue, decreased libido, etc.

We must always remember that these are images and analogies, a bit like when we say that we have caught a cold (caught on the fly?) Or that we have heartache (when We suffer from digestive disorders). And if the Chinese terms seem too simplifying, we can remember that our medical terms sometimes go into the opposite excess: if you suffer from idiopathic alopecia, it means that you are losing your hair and the cause is unknown ...

Capital letters: lung or lung?

Many Chinese concepts have no equivalent in our vocabulary. For example, the word Fei designates a specific entity comprising the lungs and functions that biomedicine would attribute to other organic structures (such as the heart) which together make up an organic sphere that TCM holds responsible for respiration, synthesis Of the energy acquired, of the transmission of the defensive energy and of the diffusion of the organic liquids in the periphery of the body (sweat, nasal secretions, etc.). For lack of anything better, we call this entity the Lung (with a capital letter), even if it does not correspond to what the word lung designates in French.

Likewise, the Wind is a term which is used to designate, not only the meteorological phenomenon, but also a pathogenic factor and various types of affections; And Air includes the physical constituents of air (oxygen, nitrogen, water vapor, etc.), but also its energetic and vibratory constituents.