The Organs in Traditional Medicine

The internal organs appear in the traditional medical systems mapped to cosmic principles: the zang-fu organs of Chinese medicine, each paired with a phase of the wu xing, a meridian and an emotion; the organs of humoral medicine with their planetary rulers; and the organs of the Ayurvedic scheme. An organ in these systems is understood functionally and symbolically, not only anatomically.

In Chinese medicine especially, the "organs" are functional systems rather than the physical organs alone, the "spleen" or "kidney" of Chinese medicine covers a range of functions that do not map onto the Western organ of that name, and the atlas is careful about this difference.