The Treatment of Skin Diseases with Chinese Herbal Medicine

In the current practice of Chinese medicine, herbal therapy is the method of choice for the treatment of skin diseases. For the correct and reliable application of this therapeutic modality, an exact differentiation of the present pattern of manifestation ("syndrome" -zheng) is needed in addition to a careful disease diagnosis. In this process, the systems of differential diagnosis pertaining to disease evils ("pathogenic factors" - bing xie bian zheng) and to qi and blood (qi xue bian zheng) are given priority. They are primarily used to interpret the local findings, i.e. the efflorescence. By comparison, the evaluation of general symptoms is only of secondary importance. Subsequently, the most important diagnostic patterns and the most important Chinese medicinals for their treatment are presented and the composition of prescriptions is outlined by means of case histories.