Fundamentals of Chinese Medicine: Pattern Identification and Etiology

Comprehensive vocabulary flashcards covering the Eight Principles, Six Excesses, Seven Affects, Six Channels, Four Aspects, Triple Burner, and Qi, Blood, and Body Fluid patterns from Fundamentals of Chinese Medicine.

Pathomechanism

The biological processes and sequential transformation mechanism by which a disease develops and progresses; it explains 'how' the disease occurs between the underlying etiology and the resulting diagnosis.

Etiology

The root cause or origin of a disease, answering 'why' a pathological condition developed (such as external contraction of the six excesses, internal damage by the seven affects, dietary irregularities, or taxation).

Exterior Pattern

A pattern where disease evil is shallow and light in the skin, hair, and flesh, characterized clinically by fever, aversion to cold or wind, headache, body aches, a thin white tongue coating, and a floating pulse.

Interior Pattern

A pattern where disease evil is located deep in the viscera and bowels, caused by an unresolved exterior pattern entering inward, direct strike of external evils, or internal damage from emotions, diet, or taxation.

Half Exterior-Half Interior Pattern

A pattern occurring when pathogen struggle becomes stuck between the exterior and interior (associated with Shao Yang disease), clinically presenting with alternating aversion to cold and fever.

True Heat and False Cold

A severe pattern where extreme internal heat blocks yang qi from reaching the surface, presenting with cold limbs and a deep pulse (false cold) alongside high body heat, thirst for cold fluids, red tongue with yellow fur, and a rapid, forceful pulse (true heat).

True Cold and False Heat

A critical pattern where extreme internal yin exuberance repels yang to the exterior, manifesting as body heat, thirst, and a large pulse (false heat), while the patient desires covers and hot drinks, has cold limbs, clear urine, and a forceless pulse upon pressure (true cold).

Vacuity Pattern

A condition characterized by insufficiency of the body's right qi (zheng qi), including essence, qi, blood, or fluids, typically featuring listlessness, low voice, pain relieved by pressure, a tender tongue body, and a forceless pulse.

Repletion Pattern

A condition characterized by an exuberance of pathogenic evil (xie qi) or internal accumulation causing stagnation, presenting with aroused spirit, loud voice, pain aggravated by pressure, a withered tongue body, and a forceful pulse.

Yin Vacuity Pattern

A pattern caused by deficiency of yin fluids leading to unanchored vacuity heat, presenting with thin body, dry mouth and throat, five-center heat, tidal fever, night sweats, malar flush, a red peeled tongue, and a fine, rapid pulse.

Yang Vacuity Pattern

A pattern caused by deficiency of yang qi leading to lack of warming and transformation, presenting with a bright white complexion, physical cold with cold limbs, curled-up posture, spontaneous sweating, clear profuse urine, loose stools, a pale fat tender tongue, and a slow forceless pulse.

Collapse of Yin

A critical emergency resulting from sudden exhaustion of yin fluids, marked by copious hot sticky sweat, warm hands and feet, thirst for cold fluids, hasty breathing, a red dry tongue, and a rapid forceless pulse.

Collapse of Yang

A critical emergency resulting from severe exhaustion of yang qi, marked by profuse cold clear sweat, cool flesh, severe reversing cold of the limbs, faint breathing, pale dusky tongue, and a faint pulse verging on expiry.

Six Excesses

The six external pathogenic evils (Wind, Cold, Summerheat, Damp, Dryness, and Fire) transformed from the six seasonal qi that invade the body when right qi is weak or weather conditions are abnormal.

Wind Evil

A yang evil associated with spring characterized by opening and draining, upward and outward movement, wandering symptoms, and acting as the primary carrier for other pathogens ('the chief of the hundred diseases').

Summerheat Evil

A seasonal yang evil occurring exclusively in summer that flares upward and scatters, easily damages fluids, consumes qi, and frequently combines with dampness.

Damp Evil

A yin evil associated with long summer characterized by heaviness, turbidity, stickiness, and downward stagnation; it impairs yang qi, encumbers the spleen, and creates lingering, difficult-to-resolve illnesses.

Dryness Evil

A seasonal evil associated with autumn that consumes and desiccates body fluids, primarily injuring the delicate lung through either warm dryness (early autumn) or cool dryness (late autumn).

Cold Evil

A yin evil associated with winter that impairs yang qi, constricts channels, and congeals circulation; it manifests as cold damage when lodged in the exterior or cold strike when invading internal viscera directly.

Fire Evil

A yang evil representing extreme heat that flares upward, consumes body fluids, stirs internal wind, accelerates blood flow to cause reckless bleeding, and arises either from warm evils or when the other five excesses transform into heat.

Seven Affects

The seven normal emotional states (Joy, Anger, Anxiety, Thought, Sorrow, Fear, Fright) that cause internal disease and organ disharmony when experienced with sudden violence or over a prolonged, unremitting duration.

Food Damage Pattern

An acute middle burner disharmony caused by overindulgence in food or unclean intake, presenting with foul belching, sour rotten vomiting, abdominal distention, aversion to food, and foul diarrhea with a slippery replete pulse.

Food Accumulation Pattern

A disorder where impaired transformation and transportation cause food to bind and stagnate, presenting with epigastric hardness, abdominal glomus lumps, pain aggravated by pressure, bound stools, and a slippery rapid pulse.

Taxation Fatigue Damage

Internal depletion of viscera, qi, blood, yin, or yang caused by an enduring imbalance between physical exertion, mental overwork, or sexual excess relative to rest.

Tai Yang Wind Strike

An exterior Tai Yang channel repletion/vacuity pattern caused by exterior disharmony of defense and construction, presenting with simultaneous fever and aversion to wind, sweating, headache, stiff neck, and a floating, moderate pulse.

Tai Yang Cold Damage

An exterior Tai Yang channel repletion pattern caused by cold closing the pores, presenting with simultaneous fever and severe aversion to cold, absence of sweating, panting, severe head and neck stiffness, body aches, and a floating, tight pulse.

Tai Yang Bowel: Water Amassment

An interior progression of Tai Yang disease where the pathogen impairs Urinary Bladder qi transformation, presenting with fever, aversion to wind, sweating, lower abdominal distention, and inhibited urination.

Yang Ming Channel Pattern

A repletion heat pattern where intense interior heat steams outward without form, presenting with the four greats: great fever (aversion to heat, no aversion to cold), great sweating, great thirst with desire for cold drinks, and a surging, large pulse.

Yang Ming Bowel: Dryness Repletion

A pattern where interior heat binds with formed stool in the Large Intestine, presenting with steaming fever, abdominal fullness and pain refusing pressure, constipation, heart vexation, dry yellow tongue coating, and a slippery rapid pulse.

Shao Yang Disease Pattern

A half-exterior, half-interior pattern where evil binds in the Gallbladder and San Jiao, presenting with alternating chills and fever, hypochondriac fullness, bitter taste in the mouth, dry throat, dizziness, and a string-like pulse.

Tai Yin Vacuity Cold

An interior pattern involving damage to Spleen yang with cold accumulation, characterized by abdominal fullness, vomiting, inability to get food down, spontaneous abdominal pain relieved by warmth/pressure, diarrhea, absence of thirst, and a moderate, weak pulse.

Shao Yin: Yang Vacuity & Yin Exuberance

A severe debilitation of Heart and Kidney yang with exuberant yin cold, presenting with severe aversion to cold, lying curled up, listlessness, reversing cold of the four limbs, diarrhea with undigested food, clear urine, and a deep, faint pulse.

Shao Yin: Yin Exuberance Repelling Yang

A critical Shao Yin true cold, false heat pattern where internal yin exuberance forces weak yang to float outward, showing false exterior heat (red cheeks, no cold aversion) alongside cold limbs, diarrhea with undigested food, and a pulse about to expire.

Jue Yin: Mixed Cold & Heat Pattern

The final stage of six-channel disease featuring extreme exhaustion of right qi and chaotic regulation of yin and yang, presenting with wasting thirst, qi surging into the heart, hunger with inability to eat, and vomiting of roundworms.

Ye Tian Shi

Qing Dynasty physician ($1667\text{–}1746$) who authored the Wen Bing Lun (Discussion on Warm Diseases) and established the Four Aspect (Wei, Qi, Ying, Xue) diagnostic framework for febrile illnesses.

Four Aspects

A warm disease diagnostic framework tracking the depth and severity of febrile disease progression across four levels: Defense-Wei (exterior), Qi (interior organs), Construction-Ying (pericardium and yin fluids), and Blood-Xue (deepest level involving heat and bleeding).

Wu Ju Tong

Qing Dynasty physician ($1758\text{–}1836$) who expanded warm disease diagnosis by developing the Triple Burner (San Jiao) pattern identification system.

Triple Burner Pattern Identification

A warm disease framework describing pathogen movement from the Upper Burner (Lung and Pericardium) down to the Middle Burner (Spleen and Stomach), and finally into the Lower Burner (Liver and Kidney).

Qi Vacuity Pattern

A condition characterized by insufficient functional activity of qi, marked by fatigued spirit, physical weakness, quiet voice, shortness of breath, spontaneous sweating, pale fat tender tongue, and an empty, forceless pulse.

Qi Fall Pattern

A progression of qi deficiency where central qi fails to hold organs in place, presenting with fatigue, bearing-down abdominal sensation, chronic lumbar soreness, and prolapse of the rectum, uterus, or bladder.

Qi Stagnation Pattern

An impairment of the smooth flow and dynamic movement of qi, marked by wandering distention and pain (where distention is more pronounced than pain) that improves following sighing, belching, or flatulence.

Qi Counterflow Pattern

A condition where physiological downbearing of qi is reversed, producing organ-specific ascending symptoms such as cough and panting (Lung), nausea, vomiting, and belching (Stomach), or headache, dizziness, and hematemesis (Liver).

Blood-Xue Stasis Pattern

A pathological state where blood circulation slows or arrests, characterized by fixed, piercing pain aggravated by pressure, abdominal glomus masses, dusky skin, purplish lips and tongue with stasis macules, and a fine, rough, or choppy pulse.

Qi Deserting with the Blood Pattern

A critical emergency where sudden profuse hemorrhage causes qi to collapse and separate from blood, presenting with pale complexion, cold limbs, drenching sweat, clouded spirit, and a scallion-stalk or faint pulse verging on expiry.

Insufficiency of Body Fluids

A pathological pattern of body fluid depletion characterized by dry mouth, dry throat, parched skin, thirst, dry cough, scanty red urine, dry stools, and a fine, rapid pulse.

Wind Phlegm Pattern

A disorder where internal phlegm combines with wind movement in the channels, characterized by dizziness, throat rattling, limb numbness, facial paralysis, deviation of the mouth and eyes, slurred speech, or convulsions.

Suspended Rheum Pattern

A condition where pathogenic fluid collects in the chest and hypochondrium, presenting with fullness in the chest and rib-side, cough with spittle causing hypochondriac pain, dry throat, and a deep, wiry pulse.

Spillage Rheum Pattern

A fluid disorder where rheum overflows into the limbs and flesh, characterized by deep heaviness and aching in the extremities, puffy edema, cough with thin phlegm, fever, and aversion to cold without sweating.

Propping Rheum Pattern

A disorder where rheum collects in the chest and props against the diaphragm, presenting with severe chest fullness, cough, panting with inability to lie flat, copious white phlegm, and facial puffiness.