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A Quick Reference for Traditional Chinese Medicine

By Shing Lyu October 23, 2026

Disclaimer: This content reflects my personal opinions, not those of any organizations I am or have been affiliated with. Code samples are provided for illustration purposes only, use with caution and test thoroughly before deployment.

I’m studying Traditional Chinese Medicine in English, and I find it difficult to translate English terms back into Chinese. To help with that, I built a quick reference for Volume 1 of Essentials of Chinese Medicine. It maps the book’s terms to Traditional Chinese and cross-references selected terms in the WHO’s International Standard Terminologies on Traditional Chinese Medicine (2022). The WHO source presents its Chinese forms in Simplified Chinese.

The reference is based on Liu, Z., & Liu, L. (Eds.). (2010). Essentials of Chinese Medicine: Vol. 1. Foundations of Chinese Medicine. Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-84882-112-5.

You can also find it on the TCM landing page. If you spot an error, please use the email address shown at the bottom of this page.