Chinese medicine has no anatomy? How can it be?

Chinese medicine has anatomy, and some early anatomy is earlier than western medicine. The anatomy of traditional Chinese medicine was first recorded in Huangdi Neijing and Huangdi Eleven Difficult Classics. The functions of human internal organs are mentioned in detail in Huangdi Neijing and Linglan Secret Book, and the physiological characteristics and functions of internal organs are explained by the ancient official system. In addition, the knowledge about the names and functions of zang-fu organs is mentioned in Su Wen's six Tibetan images, Su Wen's theory of five zang-fu organs and Su Wen's theory of Taiyin Yangming. The most detailed knowledge of anatomy is recorded in Eighty-one Difficulties in Huangdi's Internal Classic. In the morphology of viscera, the volume, size and weight of stomach, the length of large intestine and small intestine, and the shape, size and weight of lung, liver, bladder and throat are described in detail. "Forty-two Difficult Problems" said: The length of a person's belly depends on how much he is influenced by Shui Gu. Of course, the stomach is one foot five inches big, five inches in diameter and two feet six inches long, and it is horizontally curved. Shui Gu has three buckets and five liters, of which two buckets always stay in the valley and five liters are in the bucket. The small intestine is two and a half inches, eight points in diameter, less than half, and three feet two in length. Affected by two barrels of four liters of water, six liters of water add up to more than half. The ileum is four inches big, one and a half inches in diameter and two feet long. When the particles hit, the water was 7.5 liters. The broad intestine is eight inches big, the diameter is two and a half inches, and the length is two feet eight inches, which is one of the three-in-one and eight-in-one of Gu Jiusheng. So the intestines and stomach are five feet eight feet four inches long, which is one eighth of the eight buckets, seven liters and six rivers in Shui Gu. The length of the stomach depends on the number of Shui Gu ... "... In addition, the number, names and characteristics of the zang-fu organs are described in On Five Types of Internal Organs, Three Focuses and Five Types of Internal Organs.

In addition, in the biography of Wang Mang in Han Dynasty, it is recorded that Wang Mang ordered people to do human anatomy experiments. "The King of the Righteousness Party captured it, and he made too many doctors, so he cut it with Qiao Tu, measured the five internal organs, guided its pulse with a bamboo feast, and knew its end. Cloud can cure its disease." Wang Mang caught the queen and asked doctors and butchers in Taiji Hospital to cut Wang alive, dig out the five internal organs, check its position and shape, observe its function, and pierce the blood vessels with thin bamboo filaments to know the whole story of the meridians. This is to better treat diseases. This is the earliest example of human anatomy of traditional Chinese medicine in the medical history of China. Later, in the Song Dynasty, there was an anatomical work of Ou Xifan's five zang-organs map. Editors and related personnel dissected 50 corpses, observed their throats, chests, abdomen and viscera in detail, and drew an atlas by painter Song Jing. This is because during the Northern Song Dynasty (104 1- 1048) and the Qing Dynasty, 56 people including Guangxi uprising leader Ou Xifan were killed. During the execution, Wu Jian, a state official, ordered doctors and painters to carry out exploratory laparotomy and draw maps. Some are explanations of pathological problems. The objects of dissection are all insurgents arrested for resisting the ruling class in the Northern Song Dynasty, and Ou Xifan is their leader. The original book has been lost. Later, Wang Qingren wrote The Revision of Medical Forest. Although there are mistakes in the book, it is also a positive exploration of anatomy.

The above is some knowledge about the ancient anatomy of TCM, which shows that in ancient times, TCM had anatomy, and the earliest books from pre-Qin to Western Han Dynasty, Huangdi Neijing and Huangdi Eighty-one Difficult Classics, described the anatomy of TCM in detail. Then why does the theory of traditional Chinese medicine only use the name anatomy, but not describe or pay attention to the morphology of anatomy? This stems from two different angles: Chinese medicine and western medicine. Traditional Chinese medicine looks at diseases from a macro perspective, while early western medicine studies diseases from a micro perspective. It's different now. Secondly, the theory of traditional Chinese medicine emphasizes function over substance, and its structure is based on ancient philosophy. In addition, Chinese medicine attaches importance to function, so it does not attach importance to the essence of human anatomy like western medicine, which stems from different perspectives on diseases.