Cough is a common symptom in the clinical work of pediatrics. In our outpatient medical work, we often encounter children who request to take Chinese herbal medicine because they are not treated or mis-treated. The result is that the medicine is used once, the money is not spent, and the effect is not significant. The ancients called pediatrics a dumb department and said, “It is better to treat ten men than one woman; it is better to treat ten women than one child” because coughs can be caused by many factors, including upper sensation, pharyngitis, tonsillitis, laryngitis, bronchitis, pneumonia, postnasal drip syndrome, reflux gastritis, whooping cough, tuberculosis, and so on.
Chinese medicine also classifies coughs into “cough with external sensation” and “cough with internal injury”; coughs with external sensation are classified as cold or hot; coughs with internal injury are classified as phlegm-heat, phlegm-dampness, food accumulation, yin deficiency and lung deficiency.
In Chinese medicine, it is said that “all five viscera and six internal organs cause cough”. In clinical work, there are different treatments for the same disease and different diseases. The same cough, accompanied by different symptoms, is treated differently; therefore, parents are advised to visit the hospital promptly after giving the child ineffective treatment for 3 days. In our clinical work, we have summarized a set of effective methods for treating cough by “smelling sounds and recognizing medicines”. After the parents describe their condition, we listen carefully to the sounds of various coughs to identify the lesions, and combine them with the child’s tongue and pulse to identify the cold and heat deficiencies in the medication, all with good results.