TCM Tongue-Diagnosis Topography (舌診)
TCM Tongue-Diagnosis Topography (舌診) is a Chinese / TCM — tongue diagnosis body system as transmitted through the lineage Classical Chinese medicine treats the tongue as an observable sign of the zang-fu networks and assigns regional correspondences across its tip, center, sides, and root. The Huangdi Neijing supplies the canonical tongue-and-organ doctrine, while Ming-era medical compendia helped standardise the compact five-region chart used in later tongue-diagnosis teaching.. This page lists every point in the system with sourced placements and links to cross-tradition correspondences curated for The Body Spiritual.
Open in interactive explorerPrimary sources
- Huangdi Neijing (Huangdi Neijing Suwen and Lingshu) (transl. Paul U. Unschuld, Huang Di Nei Jing Su Wen, University of California Press 2011; Huang Di Nei Jing Ling Shu, University of California Press 2016) — Canonical Inner Classic discussions connect the tongue, Heart, and the visible signs of the organ networks; the corpus is the doctrinal foundation for tongue observation.
- Zhang Jiebin, Jingyue Quanshu (景岳全書) (Ming dynasty medical compendium, 1624) — Ming-era organ and diagnostic synthesis used here as the historical standardising layer for the regional tongue chart.
- Giovanni Maciocia, Tongue Diagnosis in Chinese Medicine (2nd ed., Eastland Press 1995) — Modern reference for the conventional tip, center, sides, and root organ correspondences and their common teaching diagram.
Known lineage variants
- The Huangdi Neijing establishes the tongue as diagnostically connected with the Heart and the zang-fu, while later compendia differ in the exact edges and organ pairings of each tongue region (Huangdi Neijing, Unschuld editions; Zhang Jiebin, Jingyue Quanshu; Maciocia 1995).
- This file follows the requested compact inset convention: an upright oval tongue schematic is drawn inside the mouth/head area of the front silhouette, approximately x 0.45–0.55 and y 0.135–0.215. Those coordinates are an editorial projection for legibility, not a body-sized tongue, an anatomical dissection map, or a set of acupuncture points; uncertainty therefore belongs to the inset boundary and organ-zone assignment.
- Front-view anatomical right is x < 0.5 under the corpus convention. The two side zones are split for display even though traditional charts commonly show a continuous side field or do not specify pixel-level laterality; the split must not be read as a claim that one organ occupies only one human side.
- The lower root band combines the Intestines for this seven-to-twelve-zone schematic. Later teaching charts vary in whether Bladder, Triple Burner, or both are also shown at the root, so those optional correspondences are intentionally not added here (Maciocia 1995).
Related systems
No other systems share this tradition label.