Abstract
In this work, we report the diagnostic relations among some primary pulse conditions such as the floating/sunken, deficient/forceful, large/fine, and the long/short pulses. For this purpose, we carried out a clinical test, in which 11 Oriental medical doctors had participated to diagnose the pulses for 1566 healthy subjects. The subjects were divided into 11 subgroups and each subgroup was allocated to an individual doctor. It resulted in that, for 847 subjects (54%), two or more than two pulse conditions were felt simultaneously, for which we counted the frequency of the pairs of the pulse conditions. For the statistical analysis, we used a Chi-square test. As a result, at high frequency, the forceful, large, and the long pulses were diagnosed in pairs or in their triplet, and a similar close relation was found between the deficient, fine, and the short pulses. The pairwise diagnoses of the pulse conditions between the forceful, large, and the long pulses, and between the deficient, fine, and the short pulses imply their close relatedness in clinics. This result is supported by the theory of deficiency/excess syndromes. Moreover, we show that the close relatedness among the pulse conditions can be understood in terms of the geometric features of the radial artery near the prominent bone. This is the first work which reports the relatedness between the primary pulses by an objective clinical test.
