Disease entities

In TCM, a disease has two aspects: "bìng" and "zhèng".[79] The former is often translated as "disease entity",[80] "disease category",[81] "illness",[79] or simply "diagnosis".[79] The latter, and more important one, is usually translated as "pattern"[80][82] (or sometimes also as "syndrome"[79]). For example, the disease entity of a common cold might present with a pattern of wind-cold in one patient, and with the pattern of wind-heat in another.[83]

From a scientific point of view, most of the disease entitites (病, pinyin: bìng) listed by TCM constitute mere symptoms.[80] Examples include headache, cough, abdominal pain, constipation etc.[84]

Since therapy will not be chosen according to the disease entity but according to the pattern, two patients with the same disease entity but different patterns will receive different therapy. Vice versa, patients with similar patterns might receive similar therapy even if their disease entities are different. This is called 异病同治，同病异治 (pinyin: yì bìng tóng zhì, tóng bìng yì zhì,[74] "different diseases, same treatment; same disease, different treatments").