On Internal Toxin

This book is the first specialized academic research work exploring the inheritance and innovation of Chinese medicine through a monograph on internal toxin disease. Its main content first systematically expounds the internal toxin theory created by Professor Wu Shentao and the academic thought of various detoxification methods and formulas for diagnosing and treating internal toxin disease, and discusses in detail the diagnostic and treatment characteristics, pathogenesis understanding, specific treatment principles, treatment methods, and care of his pioneering qi-blood-vessel pattern differentiation method for diagnosing and treating various difficult and complicated conditions; the relevant principles and methods may become a way of thinking for Chinese medicine to understand and diagnose and treat diseases. The book centers on the fact that in the modern disease spectrum, various endogenous toxins gradually accumulate in the body and cause disease due to environmental pollution toxins and today's unhealthy lifestyles, and that internal toxin causing disease has become the main reason for the continuous increase of refractory chronic diseases and difficult and complicated cases today. Through years of exploration, after clarifying the definition, nature, manifestations, classification, and generation mechanisms of internal toxin, as well as the major diagnostic and treatment methods and formulas, it points out that "internal toxin accumulation and damage" has gradually become one of the core pathogeneses of modern diseases and patterns, and that "internal toxin is not only toxin attached to pathogenic qi such as fire, phlegm, dampness, and stasis, but also an independently and objectively existing pathogenic qi." Internal toxin is divided according to different toxin sources into "attached toxin" and "original toxin," and according to disease nature into yin and yang toxins. It holds that internal toxin is not only an etiological concept but also an objectively existing pathological product, and emphasizes that original toxin is the basis for today's internal toxin disease spectrum shifting from acute, critical, and severe conditions to chronic diseases and patterns; its pathogenesis evolution follows the transmission rule of from turbidity to toxin, from inside to outside, and along qi-blood-vessels, and it summarizes a treatment system based on qi-blood-vessel pattern differentiation combined with zang-fu pattern differentiation.