Middle Medicine

I am commonly asked why I look at a tongue and what it is I look for. The tongue, for some reason, shows a tremendous amount of variation which is consistently associated with the presenting signs and symptoms of a patient.
A tongue’s shape, coating, colour, salivary volume, inherent tissue moisture and movement will change according to the progression or remission of a state of illness.

Images from the Atlas of Lingual Coatings in Chinese Medicine

The above atlas features 300 different tongue presentations and states that “[i]t is axiomatic in Chinese Medicine that any part of the body may carry in it the traces of events occurring throughout the whole body”.