Diagnostics

In Chinese medicine, there are five diagnostic methods: inspection, auscultation, olfaction, inquiry, and palpation.

  • Inspection focuses on the face and particularly on the tongue, including analysis of the tongue size, shape, tension, color and coating, and the absence or presence of teeth marks around the edge.
  • Auscultation refers to listening for particular sounds (such as wheezing).
  • Olfaction refers to attending to body odor.
  • Inquiry focuses on the “seven inquiries”, which involve asking the person about the regularity, severity, or other characteristics of: chills, fever, perspiration, appetite, thirst, taste, defecation, urination, pain, sleep, menses, leukorrhea, and palpation which includes feeling the body for tender A-shi points, and the palpation of the wrist pulses as well as various other pulses, and palpation of the abdomen.
  • Tongue and pulse: Examination of the tongue and the pulse are among the principal diagnostic methods in Chinese medicine. Certain sectors of the tongue’s surface are believed to correspond to the zang-fu. For example, teeth marks on one part of the tongue might indicate a problem with the Heart, while teeth marks on another part of the tongue might indicate a problem with the Liver.  Pulse palpation involves measuring the pulse both at a superficial and at a deep level at three different locations on the radial artery (Cun, Guan, Chi, located two fingerbreadths from the wrist crease, one fingerbreadth from the wrist crease, and right at the wrist crease, respectively, usually palpated with the index, middle and ring finger) of each arm, for a total of twelve pulses, all of which are thought to correspond with certain zang-fu. The pulse is examined for several characteristics including rhythm, strength and volume, and described with qualities like “floating, slippery, bolstering-like, feeble, thready and quick”; each of these qualities indicates certain disease patterns.