This book intends to help modern medical students, especially students of western medicine, to truly understand, believe in, study and use traditional Chinese medicine (TCM). The previous TCM books illustrate the originally profound and obscure TCM theories by the approach of explaining the present using past examples. This book does not follow such approach. On the contrary, it adopts a modern and accessible storytelling and reasoning approach to elaborate and analyze the philosophies and methods embedded in ancient TCM theories such as vitality, yin and yang, the five elements, and the visceral manifestation, in the hope that readers of this book will have a new understanding of TCM.

Wen Yong is Deputy Director of Diannan Central Hospital of Honghe, Yunnan Province and a Chief Pediatrician.