|
Constitutional Pulse Taking
Lee Jema in the chapter about organ theory in Dongyi Soose
Bowon mentions:
"Teumin's pulse is long and tense, while soumin's is
relaxed and weak."
But this information is too concise and simple for determining constitutions.
Later, practitioners of constitutional medicine have done a lot of research on
determining constitutions from the pulse.
This chapter's explanation of pulse
taking is different from that of Lee Jema and is used as the most important way
of determining a person's constitution by combining the organ theory with
traditional pulse taking.
Traditional pulse taking
In oriental medicine, taking the pulse is the main element of
diagnosis, because the health and illness of a patient are judged by his pulse.
In western medicine, too, doctors and nurses take a patient's pulse and use its
strength, size or frequency to diagnose illness, but they don't link the pulse
to a specific disease or organ illness as in oriental medicine. Some
practitioners of western medicine don't want to accept the fact that in
oriental medicine illness of a person is diagnosed by taking the pulse, and
even write it off as being baseless.
It is neither rational, nor wise to deny outright the value of pulse taking,
which in oriental medicine during thousands of years is recognized as the most
important diagnostic tool, simply because it isn't understandable from the
point of view of western medicine. The wisdom of the ancients is amazing. They
tried to determine the state and cause of illness from the patient's changing
pulse beat at a time when the physio-chemical diagnostic tools of today weren't
available.
Even though joy, anger, sadness or pleasure in a person are not measured by any
mechanical apparatus, they are easily recognizable by simply observing the
expression on his face. In the same way, illness of a person is always
accompanied by changes in his internal body. Maybe with that kind of naive
supposition scrupulous pulse taking was repeated and the pulse was persistently
studied.
If a person's pulse is taken very precisely, it will be found to be different
in health than in sickness, in consternation than in pleasure, before eating
than after eating. It is this fact that the pulse doesn't beat always equally,
but varies according to the state, that is the basis for inducing the state of
a person's health by taking his pulse. The state of an illness is reflected in
the pulse and inversely by taking the pulse it is possible to understand the
state of illness. This isn't baseless; it's an evident fact.
Nevertheless, there is a question whether it is possible to understand the
state and cause of all illness through taking the pulse, as written in the
classics of oriental medicine. Even for me, a specialist in oriental medicine,
it is difficult to accept everything written in the classics. For me it is
important that in oriental medicine, pulse taking is not the only factor in
diagnosis, but, as generally known, is only part of the picture.
In ancient times, without scientific diagnostic equipment, doctors tried to
find the state and cause of illness from bodily changes in the patient. They
first observed by eye his looks, facial expression and color of his tongue;
secondly they listened to his voice and manner of speech and to the abnormal
sounds from his belly and neck; thirdly they asked him about his syndromes, and
lastly took his pulse. In that way they put together the various results of
their diagnoses to come to a definite judgement about his illness.
That is the method and procedure of traditional oriental medicine's diagnosis,
from which we can see that pulse taking is indeed not the whole thing, but a
part of the diagnosis. In spite of that, pulse taking came to be thought of as
the whole procedure for oriental medicine's diagnoses, because simple observing
by eye and listening by ear weren't recognized as diagnostic tools; only the
direct taking of a patient's pulse was recognized.
From the beginning wanting to completely understand
the state and cause of each illness only through pulse taking, one of four
traditional diagnostic methods of oriental medicine, has a clear limit.
|
