Semiology of Gastric Diseases in Traditional Iranian Medicine

In the Traditional Iranian Medicine (TIM)، several symptoms have been mentioned under the topic of gastric diseases، which shows the special attention of the TIM physicians to semiology of the diseases. Symptoms such as color، smell، and uniformity of the stool; the sound of gas passing and severity of its smell; evaluation of the severity of thirst and its satisfaction with warm or non-warm water; color and characteristics of the tongue، belching and its types، inclination for particular types of food، and amount and type of saliva are all symptoms that are not evaluated in modern semiology and history taking or little information is obtained on them. The preciseness of physicians such as Avicenna in history taking and physical examination of patients could be used to improve the method of history taking in modern medicine. It seems that some items that received attention in the TIM were eliminated from the medical knowledge in an unknown era of history. As a result، the natural trend of science evolution، which includes upgrade and modification of the knowledge of a generation by the next generation، was not passed. In this respect، further experimental studies are required to review the major TIM textbooks to determine the changes occurred in the gastric signs and symptoms in these textbooks، compared with those mentioned in the modern semiology and history taking at the clinical setting. In the next step، analysis of pathophysiological basis of the existing differences in clinical studies would be helpful. Furthermore، some comparisons between these topics in the TIM and traditional Chinese medicine were addressed in this paper.