Chapter 3　Tongue Examination

Tongue examination is considered today to be an important part of the inspection examination. Holroyde-Downing (2005)1 outlines the development of tongue diagnosis, from a method to distinguish specific conditions, to how it came to be considered more primary in diagnosis, through epidemic plagues, new methodologies and consistencies with biomedical understanding. This chapter discusses the principles, methods and interpretations of the tongue examination. A practitioner needs to grasp four important perspectives during the study of tongue diagnosis. Firstly, during inspection of the tongue in clinic a practitioner must be able to distinguish between the normal tongue manifestation and pathological tongue manifestation. Also, there are particular changes of the tongue image in severe stages of disease, which should be noticed immediately. Secondly, if the tongue coating quality is not in agreement with the state of the illness, or the tongue coating suddenly changes, the practitioner should inquire about the patient's drinking, eating and living habits; it is essential to differentiate effects caused by specific actions to avoid misdiagnosis, e.g. sucking red sweets can give the tongue a red colour etc. Thirdly, pay attention to the relationship of the tongue body and tongue coating with reference to the changes of each other. Lastly, although tongue diagnosis can be very useful it must always be taken in relation to other diagnostic findings before conclusions are reached.

1 Holroyde-Downing, N., (2005) IASTAM. 1 (2): 400 www.brill.com