Cough is a protective reflex of the organism that has a positive effect on purging respiratory secretions and harmless factors and is the most common symptom of respiratory diseases in childhood. In adults, cough can usually be classified according to its duration as acute (duration <3 weeks), subacute (3-8 weeks) and chronic cough (>8 weeks). In pediatrics, only guideline documents have been issued for chronic cough in children at home and abroad, such as the American College of Chest Physicians (ACCP) Clinical Evidence-Based Practice Guidelines for Chronic Cough in Children (2006) and the Guidelines for the Diagnosis and Treatment of Chronic Cough in Children (2007) by the Respiratory Group of the Pediatric Branch of the Chinese Medical Association, both of which define cough symptoms lasting longer than 4 weeks as chronic cough. It can be seen that the current definition of chronic cough in children actually includes most of the so-called subacute (prolonged) cough in adults, while acute cough, in childhood, is still usually diagnosed as common cold or acute tracheobronchitis disease. The most common causes of pediatric cough are infectious respiratory diseases such as the common cold and acute tracheobronchitis. In children with chronic cough, the Guidelines refer to cough with other symptoms or signs that suggest an atopic cause, i.e., cough as a symptom of one of these clearly diagnosed diseases, as atopic cough, while chronic cough in which cough is the main or only manifestation and no abnormalities are seen on chest X-ray is referred to as non-atopic cough. At present, chronic cough in clinical practice is mainly non-specific cough, also known as “chronic cough in the narrow sense”. The causes include respiratory infection and post-infectious cough (PIC), cough variant asthma (CVA), upper airway cough syndrome (UACS), gastroesophageal reflux cough (GERC), eosinophilic bronchitis (EB), congenital respiratory disease, cardiac cough, as well as foreign body inhalation, drug-induced cough, and otogenic cough. In addition, for children, infectious diseases such as pertussis and tuberculosis, are also causes of cough. In view of the complex etiology of cough, there is a wide variety of western drugs used in clinical treatment of cough. The main ones are cough suppressants, expectorants, H1 and H2 receptor antagonists, antibacterial drugs, and wheezing and anti-inflammatory drugs (e.g., inhaled glucocorticoids, β2 agonists, M receptor blockers, leukotriene receptor antagonists, theophylline). In recent years, the understanding of cough in Western medicine has become increasingly close to that of TCM concepts. According to Chinese medicine, the pathogenesis of cough is always based on the feeling of wind evil, often combined with cold, heat, summer, humidity and dryness, etc. There are also cases in which the lungs lose publicity and purification due to the feeling of epidemic poison. Clinical evidence is generally divided into wind-cold attacking the lung, wind-heat offending the lung, phlegm-heat congestion of the lung, phlegm-dampness containing the lung, deficiency of lung qi and deficiency of lung yin.