Classification of Late Yin Stage Pattern

Abstract

“Shanghanlun” describes 6 stages patterns of disease. Among them, late yin stage pattern is the most difficult to understand including its pathology, symptoms, and treatment. In other words, late yin stage pattern manifests as various symptoms, such as alternating heat and cold symptoms (tangled cold and heat), heat symptoms in the upper body and cold symptoms in the lower body (upper heat and lower cold), or cold symptoms alone. Therefore, its pathology may not have been clearly understood. In this paper, I tried to classify late yin stage pattern into several disease types based on these symptoms and to explain these disease types from the texts and formulas of “Shanghanlun.”