• Journal of the Korean Institute of Oriental Medical Informatics
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• v.16 no.2
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• pp.163-187
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• 2010

The concept of latent-gi(伏氣) was first mentioned in Yellow Emperor's Canon of Internal Medicine. For example, Elementary Questions states, "Damage by cold in winter necessarily engenders warm disease in the spring." Zhang Zhong-Jing of Han Dynasty in On Cold Damage and Miscellaneous Diseases mentions warm disease, stating, for example, "Greater yang disease with heat effusion and cough and without aversion to cold is warm disease. If sweating is applied, and there is generalized heat, this is wind warmth." However, the concept of warm disease was not central to his systematic presentation of externally contracted disease which placed the emphasis on wind and cold as the major causes of these diseases. Zhang Zhong-Jing's theories centuries after in the Sung Dynasty were to become the focus of the cold damage school, whereas the concept of warm disease was to become the focus of a rival school, the warm disease school. In the Sui-Tang Period, The Origin and Indications of Disease mentions warm diseases, their causes, patterns, and major principles of treatment. Successive generations of doctors wrote about warm disease, and in the Ming Dynasty writings on the subject become more prolific. This development is attributable on the one hand to the opening up of the south of China where febrile diseases tended to be of a different nature than in the north, and on the other to pestilences arising as a result of wars. In this period, Wu You-Xing in On Warm Epidemics explained in detail the laws governing the origin, development and pattern identification of warm epidemics. Notably, he posed the etiological notion of a contagious perverse gi.

• Journal of the Korean Institute of Oriental Medical Informatics
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• v.16 no.1
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• pp.9-73
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• 2010

This study is to focus on Ye Tian-Shi's Treatise on Externally Contracted Heat Disease Pattern Identification of warm disease as viewed through the concept of the various warm diseases characterized by rapid onset and shifts, pronounced heat signs, and a tendency to form dryness and damage eum. Finally, when it reaches blood and causes depletion and frenetic movement, treatment involves cooling and dissipating the blood." These lines represent the general outline of the four-aspect pattern identification and treatment system of the doctrine of warm diseases.