The internal organs as they appear in the traditional medical systems: the zang-fu organs of Chinese medicine, each paired with a phase and a meridian; the organs of humoral medicine with their planetary rulers; and the Ayurvedic scheme. An organ in these systems is a functional category rather than only an anatomical structure, the Chinese spleen covers a set of digestive functions rather than the organ alone.
Facts
Overview
- Entries in the Atlas
- 13
- What Defines This Grouping
- Organs as three unrelated medical traditions classify them, where an organ is a functional category and not only an anatomical structure. They are collected here for comparison and share no single scheme. 1
- Peoples and Traditions Covered
- Chinese medicine: the zang-fu organs, each paired with a phase and a meridian. 1
- Peoples and Traditions Covered
- European humoral and astrological medicine: the organs under planetary rulership. 2
- Peoples and Traditions Covered
- Ayurveda: the organs of the classical Sanskrit medical compendia. 3
Structure
- Structure
- In the Chinese scheme, five zang (depots) and six fu (palaces). 1
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The Organs in Traditional Medicine
The internal organs appear in the traditional medical systems mapped to cosmic principles: the zang-fu organs of Chinese medicine, each paired with a phase of the wu xing, a meridian and an emotion; the organs of humoral medicine with their planetary rulers; and the organs of the Ayurvedic scheme. An organ in these systems is understood functionally and symbolically, not only anatomically.
In Chinese medicine especially, the "organs" are functional systems rather than the physical organs alone, the "spleen" or "kidney" of Chinese medicine covers a range of functions that do not map onto the Western organ of that name, and the atlas is careful about this difference.
Function and Correspondence
The traditional organ systems tie the body into the wider cosmology: the five zang organs to the five phases, the humoral organs to the planets, so that the organs are read in relation to season, emotion, element and star. The atlas presents these as historical and cultural frameworks rather than as modern physiology, since their categories do not correspond to those of biomedicine.
The atlas gives each organ its correspondences in the several systems (phase, meridian, planet), and its traditional functions. The meridians the organs are paired with, and the phases and planets that rule them, are treated in their own categories.
Enter a year to compare these entries as the atlas records them at that moment. Leave it empty for the present. A year before the common era is entered with a minus sign, so 44 BCE is minus 44.