Traditional Chinese Medicine treats the body as a field of interdependent processes governed by qi, its vital energy; yin and yang, complementary and opposing qualities that must stay in balance; and the five phases, wood, fire, earth, metal, and water, which describe cycles of generation and control among the body's organ systems, or zang fu. Disease is read as a pattern, such as heat, damp, or qi deficiency, established from the pulse, the tongue's color and coating, and the patient's broader constitution, rather than as a single diagnosis matched to a single drug. Treatment then combines whichever of TCM's tools fit that pattern: multi-herb decoctions built from a pharmacopoeia of several thousand substances, acupuncture and moxibustion to move qi along the meridians, tuina manual therapy, dietary adjustment, and qigong breathing and movement practice.
This breadth is also what makes TCM hard to evaluate as a whole. Its herbal formulas are typically complex mixtures rather than single-compound drugs, and only a small fraction have been tested in the randomized trials modern medicine uses to establish efficacy and safety; artemisinin's isolation from Artemisia annua, guided by a fourth century recipe in Ge Hong's emergency handbook, is TCM's clearest lead compound validated to modern pharmacological standards, honored with a share of the 2015 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine. Other components carry documented harm rather than unproven benefit: herbs containing aristolochic acid have caused kidney failure and cancer in patients who took them. Any fair account of TCM has to hold these different pictures, real pharmacological leads, untested tradition, and specific documented toxicity, apart rather than averaging them into one verdict.