Editing Traditional Chinese medicine (section)

===Disease entities===
In TCM, a disease has two aspects: "bìng" and "zhèng".<ref name="Clavey 1995">Clavey, Steven (1995): [https://books.google.com/books?id=2RQMLGcFe6kC&q=tcm+ba+gang+diagnosis&pg=PR30 "Fluid physiology and pathology in traditional Chinese medicine"]{{Dead link|date=February 2024 |bot=InternetArchiveBot |fix-attempted=yes }}. Elsevier. 2nd edition, 2003. {{ISBN|978-0-443-07194-2}}</ref> The former is often translated as "disease entity",<ref name="Ergil 2009" /> "disease category",<ref name="Flaws 1990" /> "illness",<ref name="Clavey 1995" /> or simply "diagnosis".<ref name="Clavey 1995" /> The latter, and more important one, is usually translated as "pattern"<ref name="Ergil 2009" /><ref name="Flaws 1990" /> (or sometimes also as "syndrome"<ref name="Clavey 1995" />). For example, the disease entity of a common cold might present with a pattern of [[#Six Excesses|wind-cold]] in one person, and with the pattern of [[#Six Excesses|wind-heat]] in another.<ref name="Ergil 2009" />

From a scientific point of view, most of the disease entities ({{zh|c=病|labels=no|p=bìng}}) listed by TCM constitute symptoms.<ref name="Ergil 2009" /> Examples include headache, cough, abdominal pain, constipation etc.<ref name="Ergil 2009" /><ref>{{cite journal | vauthors = Vickers AJ, Linde K | title = Acupuncture for chronic pain | journal = JAMA | volume = 311 | issue = 9 | pages = 955–6 | date = March 2014 | pmid = 24595780 | pmc = 4036643 | doi = 10.1001/jama.2013.285478 }}</ref>

Since therapy will not be chosen according to the disease entity but according to the pattern, two people with the same disease entity but different patterns will receive different therapy.<ref name="Flaws 1996" /> Vice versa, people with similar patterns might receive similar therapy even if their disease entities are different. This is called ''yì bìng tóng zhì, tóng bìng yì zhì'' ({{zh|p=|c=异病同治，同病异治|s=|t=|l=different diseases same treatment; same disease different treatments|labels=no}}).<ref name="Flaws 1996" />