All Organs

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.

The traditional organ systems tie the body into the wider cosmology: the five zang organs to the five phases, the humoral organs to the planets, so that the organs are read in relation to season, emotion, element and star. The atlas presents these as historical and cultural frameworks rather than as modern physiology, since their categories do not correspond to those of biomedicine.

The atlas gives each organ its correspondences in the several systems (phase, meridian, planet), and its traditional functions. The meridians the organs are paired with, and the phases and planets that rule them, are treated in their own categories.