The Venae The Ancient Literature

Collaterals are the branching portions of meridians. The collateral system is the important ingredient of the meridian system. But collateral has its distinct physiologic function and pathological change. Disease of collaterals is an important factor, which induces the occurrence, development and diversity of many miscellaneous disease and grave caused by internal injury and exogenous pathogenic factor. In history, most doctors think highly of meridians and despise collaterals, which made the doctrine of collateral loose its proper reconstruction and development. The theory of collaterals, which exists in numerous of ancient medical books, is lack of arrangement systematically. This condition impedes the application and research of collaterals. Using the era of collaterals'development as the clue, this research widely compiled and systematically arranged many ancient literatures, and systematically arranged the concept, the physiological feature, pathological diversity and clinic application of collaterals, to make it systematical. This research did upstanding groundwork for the further application and research of collaterals, especially in elevating the clinic curative effect of chronic diseases and diseases hard to cure, to bring it into full play.1. Concept and categorized research of collateralsInternal Classic introduced the concept of collaterals first. Miraculous Pivot (lingshu, mai du) pointed:"The channels lie deeply inside, and the branches separates from the channel which runs horizontally are the collaterals, and the branches from the collaterals are the minute collaterals."It first pointed out that collaterals were the branch of meridians and were the"branching and horizontal"part of meridians, which came from meridians. Miraculous Pivot (lingshu, jing mai) said:"The twelve channels lying concealed run deeply between the muscular layers which can hardly be seen. When the collaterals branched off from the channel they can be seen on the surface of the body."Internal Classic systematically established the correlative concept system of collaterals:In the developing process of the collaterals'theory, many...