Four Diagnostic Methods Discernment

Author: (Qing) Lin Zhihan
Publisher:
Publishing Date: 2002-03-01
Features: The Microcosm of the Four Diagnostic Methods is Lin Zhihan's representative work and is widely popular. The entire book consists of 8 volumes and is a specialized work on Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) diagnostics, primarily discussing the four diagnostic methods—inspection, auscultation and olfaction, inquiry, and palpation—as well as the main diseases. The author emphasizes that the four diagnostic methods in TCM should be given equal importance and none should be neglected. The Microcosm of the Four Diagnostic Methods was first published before 1723 and has numerous popular editions. Only in The Joint Catalogue of TCM Books are there 8 recorded versions. This edition is based on the Yuying Chang edition of 1726 (Bingwu year of the Yongzheng era in the Qing dynasty), with reference to other cited books such as Pinhu Pulse Studies and other authoritative texts. Due to the concise nature of The Ming-Qing TCM Clinical Series, obvious errors, variant characters, and traditional characters in the original text have been corrected to standardized simplified characters without annotations. All medicinal names in the book have been updated to standardized names. The book contains a large number of quotations, and those that do not affect the meaning of the text have been left unchanged. For directional terms, standard conventions have been applied without annotations.