Guide to the Use of the Dictionary

The entries are arranged in 27 sections, which are grouped into five categories: fundamental theories, diagnostics, therapeutics, clinical medicine, and medical history. The arrangement is made basically in accordance with that in the modern series of textbooks of Chinese medicine, so that this book is not only easy to consult, but can also be taken as a mini-encyclopedia of Chinese medicine.

The entries contain technical terms and commonly used citations (including maxims). Since the citations are beyond the scope of terminology, they are separately arranged as attachments to relevant sections.

Each entry consists of the term or citation in Chinese characters, Chinese phonetic transcriptions (pinyin in square brackets), English translation (in boldface) and explanations, but for a few terms and most citations there is no explanation as the translation is self-explanatory.

Some terms may have two or more translations. In this case the translations are placed abreast and separated by semicolons.

If a term has two or more meanings, the different meanings are given separately and marked with numerals to distinguish one from the other(s).

If a term has two or more different meanings belonging to different branches of medicine, the same term will appear in different chapters.

In the original texts and translations, the word put in round brackets can be deleted if necessary and the word put in square brackets can be used to replace the word preceding the brackets.

In the translations, either of the words that precedes and follows a slash, i.e., “/”, can be used upon preference.

To date, no equivalents have been found for some terms of Chinese medicine, and only pinyin can be used for the time being. Chinese characters in pinyin are still Chinese language, so they are printed in italics as other foreign languages such as Latin. However, this does not include the words of foreign origin that have already been generally accepted as English.