The Internal Treatment of Traumatic Injury
THE INTERNAL TREATMENT OF TRAUMATIC INJURY The focus of this paper is the treatment of traumatic injury with internally ingested Chinese herbal formulas. Whereas the strategy for external treatment of traumatic injury is governed by clinical manifestation, internal treatment strategies are governed by proper identification of progressive stages. GENERAL SIGNS/SYMPTOMS OF ACUTE INJURY There are three distinct stages of traumatic injury, which are expressed by a limited number of clinical manifest- ations. The three primary manifestations of the early stages of trauma are heat, swelling, and pain. Western medicine, since the time of the great Roman physician, Galen, has specified five signs, but the differences, from our point of view, is negligible. The five signs discussed by Western medicine are: pain, swelling, redness, heat, and loss of function. Oriental medicine combines heat and redness into one sign, since both a sensation of warmth and the visible sign of redness are classified as heat. The “loss of function” sign is seen by Oriental medicine as a mechanical consequence of significant qi and blood stasis, and cannot be addressed separately from qi and blood stasis by internal treatments. Thus, both East and West are in basic agreement about the signs of early stage injury. If acute injury develops into a chronic issue, other signs can come into play, such as numbness/tingling, localized weakness, and aggravation by external evils such as cold. A WORD ABOUT BLEEDING Bleeding is a special manifestation of traumatic injury, and is a pattern unto itself. In most injuries where there is bleeding, it must be stopped before further assessment is made.
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