It is the fourth diagnostic method, including pulse-taking and, on the other, palpation of different parts of the body. The former is a diagnostic procedure by which the physician may feel the patient's radial arteries with the finger-tips to judge pulse condition, thus learning and inferring the condition of illneas. The latter is also a procedure by which the physician may touch, feel, push and press certain parts of the body to detect local abnormal changes, thereby determining the location and nature of the disease.
The location for feeling the pulse at present tine is the patient's "cunkou", also named "qikou" or "maikou". Cunkou refers to obvious puisative place of the radial artery on both sides of the wrist, and is divided into three regions: cun, guan and chi (inch, bar and cubit), which, on the left hand, reflect respectively the conditions of the heart, liver and kidney and, on the right hand, the conditions of the lung, the spleen, the stomach and the kidney. TCM holds that each of the six regions for pulse-feeling corresponds to one of the internal organs and reveals the pathologic changes of the relevant organ. For this reason, cunkou pulse-taking is commonly accepted by practitioners through the ages and still used today. The pulse is differentiated in terms of depth (superficial or deep), speed (rapid or slow), strength (forceful or weak), shape (thick or thready, soft or hard) and rhythm. Different pulse conditions indicate different syndromes. For example, superficial pulse (fu mai), which is easily felt with gentle touch, indicates exterior syndromes and is present at the early stage of exogenous diseases; while deep pulse (chen mai), which is felt only by heavy pressure, indicates interior syndromes, and so on.
Palpation may be conducted in three procedures: touching, stroking and pressing. Touching is used to feel a certain part of the body, like the forehead or limbs with the fingers of palms, thereby detecting the body temperature, dampness or dryness; stroking refers to examining the patient's some parts of the body with the hands, e. g., a swelling, to learn the shape, size and sensation of the swelling; pressing means pushing and pressing over some parts of the body with the hands, e. g., the chest or abdomen, to make sure if they are tenderness, or have any cakings when pressed.
Inspection, auscultation and olfaction, inquiry and pulse-taking and palpation are the four diagnostic methods to understand the pathological conditions. They can not be separated, but are related to and complement one another. In clinical practice, only by combining the four can a comprehensive and systematic understanding of the condition of a disease be gained, thereby, making a correct diagnosis.
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