疾病分类:中医学认识疾病的重要方法

分类在人类认识事物的过程中扮演着至关重要的角色。纵观古今中医界,疾病分类的思想广泛存在,表明古今医家能够在临床实践中发现疾病的规律。不同种类的疾病所需治疗方法存在着明显差别,医者在临床中若将不同的疾病相混淆极可能给患者的健康造成巨大的伤害。因此,古今医家都试图构建出完善的疾病分类框架。分类的思想亦有助于理解辨证论治概念的实质。中医界过往多从本质的角度解释辨证论治,然而中医学中不可检验的概念无法被认为是疾病本质的真实反映。中医学之辨证论治实际上是辨类论治。

Disease Classification: Fundamental Method of Traditional Chinese Medicine in Understanding Diseases

Classification plays an important role in the process of understanding the world. Throughout the history of Traditional Chinese Medicine(TCM), disease classification can widely be seen, which indicates that doctors of ancient and modern times have discovered numerous patterns during clinical practice. Treatments of different diseases differ greatly. Confusing different types of diseases can cause great harm to patients. Therefore, ancient and modern doctors have set up frameworks of disease classification. Disease classification can also contribute to the understanding of syndrome differentiation in TCM. TCM has widely used the notion of essence in the explanation of syndrome differentiation. However, TCM concepts that lack the support of empirical evidence cannot be regarded as representation of essence of diseases. Syndrome differentiation of TCM is in fact based on the types of diseases instead of the essence of diseases.