An Interpretation of the Attributes of Pulmonary Hemorrhage in Traditional Chinese Medicine

Pulmonary hemorrhage is known as hemoptysis in traditional Chinese medicine. Regarding bleeding, there are many terms in traditional Chinese medicine; for example, bleeding from the nose is called nasal hemorrhage, or epistaxis. Hemoptysis in traditional Chinese medicine arises from pulmonary tuberculosis, which is what traditional Chinese medicine calls consumptive lung disease, as well as from lung atrophy and lung abscess. Lung abscess is an excess pattern, with hemoptysis, mainly characterized by coughing up purulent blood-streaked sputum; lung atrophy is a deficiency pattern, with bleeding manifesting as blood-streaked sputum. Tuberculosis is called consumptive disease in traditional Chinese medicine and is classified among deficiency damage and consumptive fatigue patterns.

Whether it is consumptive diseases such as consumptive lung disease, or lung abscess and lung atrophy, all are internal injury diseases in traditional Chinese medicine, and at their source, most arise because exterior patterns such as externally contracted wind-cold or wind-heat (cold damage in traditional Chinese medicine) were not treated or cured in time, and the pathogenic qi entered the interior to cause an interior pattern. Therefore, pulmonary hemorrhage in traditional Chinese medicine is always an internal injury interior pattern, but with differences in yin and yang, cold and heat, deficiency and excess, and in lung abscess and consumptive lung disease, there is generally a mixture of deficiency and excess.

Diseases such as lung atrophy, lung abscess and consumptive lung disease that have developed into interior patterns already have a profound overall influence on the various organs and the yin and yang of the whole body, and are also deeply affected by the continuous struggle and transformation between pathogenic qi such as wind, heat, dryness, cold and dampness, and the healthy qi, as well as deficiency damage such as one's own qi deficiency and blood deficiency. From the perspective of pathogenic qi invading the lung in traditional Chinese medicine, there are respectively patterns such as wind-heat invading the lung, dryness pathogen invading the lung, liver fire invading the lung, blazing lung heat, yin deficiency with fire hyperactivity, and qi failing to contain blood.

Cough and phlegm fluid all appear in diseases such as lung abscess, lung atrophy and consumptive lung disease. For example, in lung abscess with phlegm-heat and chronic cough, body fluids will be scorched; chronic cough in consumptive lung disease will also generate internal deficiency heat, consume and damage body fluids, and pathogenic heat damages fluids, causing severe depletion of body fluids, so that heat congeststhe upper burner, scorches and consumes lung fluids, transforms into frothy saliva, the lung becomes dry and yin is exhausted, the lung loses nourishment, and gradually withers. Therefore, in excess patterns such as lung abscess, as the illness persists, lung qi is increasingly consumed and yang is gradually damaged, and all will develop into lung atrophy, and the nature of the bleeding will also change.