Section 3　Range and Classification of Warm Disease

1.Range of Warm Disease

In Neijing and Nanjing there is a narrow meaning of “warm disease”, referring to only one type of many exogenous diseases. Afterwards, its meaning becomes broader and broader. When the School of Warm Disease had been completed in the Qing Dynasty, the term “warm disease”has an extensive meaning, that is all of the exogenously acute febrile diseases excepting the exogenous disease caused only by invasion of wind-cold pathogen.

At present, warm disease includes many kinds of concrete warm diseases, which are caused by different warm pathogens, thus named with their specific warm pathogens, seasons of occurrence and pathological features, such and wind-warm, summer-warm, damp-warm,latent summer-heat and autumn-dryness.

According to modern clinical researches, warm disease in TCM may include majority of acutely infectious diseases in Western medicine, such as viral infections of influenza, measles,mumps, type B of epidemic encephalitis, epidemic hemorrhagic fever and dengue fever,bacterial infection of typhoid, paratyphoid, salmonellosis, cholera, scarlet fever, epidemic cerebrospinal meningitis, diphtheria, suppurative tonsillitis, lobar pneumonia and septicemia,and infections of the other pathogenic microorganisms, such as epidemic typhus, leptospirosis,malaria and schistosomiasis. Meanwhile, such non-infectious diseases as sunstroke, heatstroke,infant heat stroke syndrome and acute leukemia, belong to the warm disease.

2.Classification of Warm Disease

Clinically, the warm disease can be classified in two ways.

First, the warm disease is divided into two categories, dry-heat warm disease and damp-heat warm disease, according to the warm pathogen whether containing damp or not. Damp-warm（Shiwen 湿温）, summer heat-damp（Shushi 暑湿）, latent summer（Fushu 伏暑）and damp-heat pestilence（Shire Yi 湿热疫）, belong to damp-heat warm disease; however, the other warm diseases, such as wind-warm（Fengwen 风温）, spring-warm（Chunwen 春温）, summer-warm（Shuwen 暑温）, autumn-dryness（Qiuzao 秋燥）, enlarged head warm（Datou Wen 大头温）, scarlet fever（Lanhou Sha 烂喉痧）and summer-dryness pestilence（Shuzao Yi 暑燥疫）.

Second, the warm disease is also divided into two categories based on two different types of its occurrence, i.e., newly affected warm disease and latent pathogen warm disease. The former implies that there is an exterior syndrome in the early stage, and then deeply invades into the interior body gradually, thus is considered as a currently seasonal warm pathogen newly intruding into patient’s exterior body and leading to an occurrence of the warm disease in time; however, the latter signifies that there is a severe interior heat syndrome in the initial stage without obvious exterior syndrome, and then transfers outward or deeper intrudes and becomes deteriorated, thus is inferred as an exogenous pathogen invaded and hid in a patient’s body in the last season, and was changed into a warm pathogen, then suddenly occurs from the interior body in the current season, and presenting a serious interior syndrome with excessive heat symptoms and easy transference. Among the various warm diseases, only spring-warm and latent-summer belong to the latent pathogen warm disease, the others all belong to the newly affected warm disease.