Abstract
Inspection is the crucial process to gain the physical condition of a patient before diagnosis and treatment in Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM). Unlike the completely objective description of a patient in Western Medicine, the subjective thinking of the medical practitioners is comprised of TCM inspection. What’s more, Master of Chinese medical practitioner (CMP) could make a diagnosis only with inspection and without self-ratiocinate and demonstrate the process. This article revealed how the knowledge and experiences instantly appear in a CMP’s mind when he/she makes an inspection with the methods and conclusions of phenomenological philosophy. When a CMP sees a patient, he/she can “see” the symptoms of a patient with the help of intentional intuition, which is synthesized of retention. On this basis, pathogenesis knowledge will be given by the way of passive association. This conclusion drawn from phenomenological philosophy offers a new road for many problems remained pendent in TCM diagnosis and treatment.
Highlights
Inspection means to collect information about diseases through visually observing the changes of the whole body and the local appearance of the patient (Deng, 2006)
Unlike the completely objective description of a patient in Western Medicine, the subjective thinking of the medical practitioners is comprised of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) inspection
Taking a spontaneous sweat patient with deficiency as an example, this paper makes a phenomenological reduction of the thinking process of the moment of inspection in TCM, and the pure phenomenological deduction is carried out by descriptive means (Deng, 2018)
Summary
Inspection means to collect information about diseases through visually observing the changes of the whole body and the local appearance of the patient (Deng, 2006). Conventional textbooks and papers of TCM focus on the study of patients, such as their appearance, body shape, various physical states, various representations and so on, while there is little research on the course of thinking consciousness of the CMP during the inspection. Phenomenology, a popular philosophical trend of thought in the West in the 20th century, which was founded by Husserl, the German philosopher, is a strict philosophical method based on direct intuition and essential understanding (Ni, 2000). Phenomenology founded by Husserl, as a philosophical method based on intuition and essential knowledge, adheres to the motto of “returning to things themselves”, which guides us back to the objective object of intention. This article aims to discuss a CMP’s course of thinking and consciousness during the inspection using some methods and conclusions of “phenomenology of occurrence” in the late stage of his academic career
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