Clinical Records

Clinical Records is a collection of clinical experience by Yang Zuomei, a modern practitioner of internal medicine in traditional Chinese medicine (TCM), published by Gansu People's Publishing House in 1980. The book was compiled from the author's medical manuscripts accumulated over many years of diagnosis and treatment, arranged in the chronological order in which the medical essays were written, and contains twenty-two clinical research articles totaling roughly 76,500 characters. The contents follow the internal medicine conditions the author personally diagnosed and treated, covering such topics as the therapeutic formulas for liver-stomach qi pain and heart pain, the common pattern types of impotence and their differentiation and treatment, and the clinical understanding and treatment experience of myasthenia gravis; most are insights repeatedly verified in the author's long years of practice. The writing takes the form of case records and physician's talks, first describing the manifestations of the illness and the reasoning of pattern differentiation, then giving the formulas and modifications, with little elaboration of abstract theory and no elaborate academic commentary, the emphasis being on preserving the clinical records in their original flavor. Because the book was produced early and the print run was limited, few copies survive; it now circulates mainly as photocopied and scanned editions, running to about 110 pages. For readers studying the face of TCM internal medicine practice in northwest China in the mid-to-late twentieth century, or examining an individual physician's prescribing habits, this book is plain and direct first-hand material.