Pathomechanisms of the Heart
Description:... The first section of this text discusses repletion conditions of the heart, including qi stagnation, phlegm obstruction, blood stasis, heart repletion cold, heart repletion heat, dampness encumbering the heart, and water assailing the heart. The second section details vacuity conditions, including vacuity of heart qi, heart yang, heart blood, and heart yin. Each subsection discusses the origins and development of ideas relevant to this pathology, then gives the various symptoms, treatment strategies, and specific formulas, often with modifications to address the particular symptoms more directly. It is here that the author offers a review of relevant literature, spanning the entire range of traditional medical literature beginning with the early classics. For each text, he gives the specific quotations and then paraphrases and explains it. This provides the reader a sense of the historical evolution as well as the various clinical perspectives on each pathomechanism. At the conclusion of each section, the author summarizes the information in a useful table that differentiates again by etiology and then lists specific symptoms in each case. The understanding of pathomechanisms of different organs is crucial to an understanding prognosis in TCM.
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