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The basic content of this Clinical Essentials of Contemporary Series Chinese Medine initiallycame from my lecture notes on Traditional Chinese Medicine prepared for Gero Missoni, an Aus-trian physician, and other doctors in 1989. The notes were supplemented during the next twoyears when I lectured at the Toulouse University in France. Later, this material was enhancedand became especially valuable when I began to work with the Goto College of Medical Arts andSciences in Japan in 1996 to train postgraduate students in a master' s degree course in TCM.Since then, the material has been continually revised in my annuallectures in Japan and has grad-ually been put into book form and translated into Japanese and English. This series consists of three books: the Chinese Herbal Medicine, Fundamentals of Formulasof Chinese Medicine and Clinical Chinese Medicine. They are not alike the basic textbooks ofTCM nor the general books of clinical treatment. The aim of compiling this series is to integratethe knowledge of the ancient and the present, emphasize the main points, use succinct languageand retain the essence and depth of TCM simply and easily. When reading, the readers may movefrom one subject to the other and from the rudimentary to the advanced to guide their clinicalpractice. This series is designed mainly for clinical physicians and foreign scholars who have someunderstanding of TCM. The Fundamentals of Formulas of Chinese Medicine includes two volumes. Volume One ismainly comprised of representative or classic prescriptions and those that are of guiding signifi-cance in the establishment of therapy and designing of formulas. Volume Two mainly consists ofthe famous prescriptions handed down from physicians in the successive dynasties. Besides, it alsoincludes the kanpo created by the Japanese physicians. Thus, Volume One may be regarded asthe basis of formula-ology of Traditional Chinese Medicine and Volume Two as the elaboration ofit. There are ten chapters altogether in Volume One, which includes the formulas for six channelsyndromes of exogenous febrile disease and those for syndromes of Weifen, Qifen, Yingfen andXuefen in epidemic febrile diseases. These are placed first as the formulas for six channel syn-dromes of exogenous febrile diseases designed by Zhang Zhongjing, a famous physician in the HanDynasty who was honored by later physicians as the father of classic formulas. When they are in-tegrated with the formulas for syndrome of Weifen, Qifen, Yingfen and Xuefen in epidemic dis-eases, a general idea can be easily given in the treatment of febrile diseases. The other formulasare sorted out according to the theory of five zang-organs of the heart, liver, spleen, lung andkidney. In addition, formulas for women diseases, external diseases and other diseases are alsoembodied in it. By doing so, it is hoped that readers can gain a thorough understanding of theprescriptions through mastery of basic theory and therapy of TCM. The contents of these tenchapters are indispensable knowledge in learning the formulas of TCM.
Formula is a combination of certain herbs. Its constitution is the proper selection of herbs in thelight of formula-designing principle rather than a random collection of herbs. The design of a for-mula must be based on therapy. It is known that "the determination of formulas depends on estab-lishment of therapy". Establishment of therapy is the theoretic basis for designing a formula. Theformula, in turn, gives a concrete expression to the establishment of therapy, which is the keylink for the determination of treatment based on differentiation of syndromes in TCM. In ancient times, for the application of formulas, there existed eight therapeutic methods whichincluded diaphoresis, emesis, purgation, mediation, warming, heat-reducing, tonification and e-limination （or resolving）. However, in the clinic, since diseases were complicated and volatile, itwas inconvenient to treat the various diseases with these eight therapeutic methods. In order toadapt to the varied and complicated diseases, people, in the course of medical practice, have grad-ually visualized and detailed the eight therapeutic methods. In this book, 64 types of therapieshave been drawn and classified out of the eight therapeutic methods. Today, the formulas passed down from ancient times number over severn ten thousand. Andthe number of the formulas recorded only in Prescriptions for Universal ReliefinMing Dynasty reaches as high as twenty thousand, of which over 300 formulas are the requiredcontents of the study of forrnula-ology for the students. These are recorded in Treatise on Exoge-nous Febrile Diseasesand Synopsis of the Golden Chambe, which arehonored by later physicians as the "father of the formula books." In the clinic, the application of formulas is not immutable. It should be appropriately modifiedaccording to the different condition, institution and age of the patients.
