Traditional Chinese Medicine and Anatomy

The concepts of the five viscera, six hollow organs, five senses, and nine orifices in traditional Chinese medicine should be said to have been formed on the basis of anatomical observation. The Inner Canon contains a wealth of anatomical knowledge. At that time, anatomy was a conscious behavior in the development of medical science, and there were not many signs of being strictly prohibited due to religious or other influences like in the West. It can be considered that it was carried out entirely for the needs of medical development. In the "Ling Shu Jing Shui", it is recorded that "... a person of eight feet, whose skin and flesh are here, can be measured, cut, and followed externally, and their death can be dissected and observed.". The crunchness of its organs, the size of its mansion, the number of valleys, the length of its veins, the clarity of its blood, and the abundance of its qi all have significant numbers. It reflects that during the era of the Inner Canon, there was a certain understanding of the external and internal morphology of the human body. Anatomy has become one of the indispensable methods for people to understand the internal structure and function of the human body at that time. Moreover, according to records on the length of the human digestive tract, its anatomical level has reached a considerable height. By comparing Eastern and Western medicine, it can be seen that the anatomical achievements of the Inner Canon era were at the forefront of world medicine at that time.

For the theory of Renal Visceral Manifestation, the anatomical significance lies in its discovery of the kidney, which led to the first proposal of the concept of "kidney". Although the ultimately established theory of Renal Visceral Manifestation was not based on the anatomical morphology of renal organs, the construction of the theory of Renal Visceral Manifestation began with this initial anatomical concept. Without this, everything will be unimaginable.