Similarities and Differences in Herb Use of YE Tianshi and XUE Shengbai for Treating Warm Diseases due to Damp-heat Pathogen

OBJECTIVE To compare the similarities and differences of YE Tianshi and XUE Shengbai in herb use for treating warm diseases caused by damp-heat pathogen as well as their medication characteristics. METHODS Based on the medical cases written by YE Tianshi and XUE Shengbai， we analyzed the similarities and differences of their herbal usage preferences， with the application of TCM inheritance assist platform， association rules and SymbolcA@ test. RESULTS Both of them tended to use poria， tangerine peel， officinal magnolia bark， almond， talc， rhizoma alismatis， pinellia ternata， coix seed， white atractylodes rhizome and rhizoma atractylodis， these top ten herbs for warm diseases due to damp-heat accumulation. Among which， YE Tianshi applied more often of almond， talc， rhizoma alismatis than XUE Shengbai， with significant differences(P<0.05). In terms of herb compatibility， they both had the habit of using the pairs of poria-tangerine peel-officinal magnolia bark. The differences lay in that the pairs of scutellaria baicalensis-coptis， agaric-rhizoma alismatis and talc-bamboo leaf-almond were mainly seen in YE Tianshi's prescriptions， while those pairs of almond-officinal magnolia bark-white round cardamom， tangerine peel-white atractylodes rhizome-poria and officinal magnolia bark-poria-tangerine peel-amomum tsaoko were preferred by XUE Shengbai. CONCLUSION Both Ye and Xue have followed the principles of eliminating dampness set in Internal Canon of Medicine. In addition， the commonly applied compatibility of Ye embodies the characteristics of treating damp-heat pathogen with bitter， cold and spicy herbs， whereas that of Xue demonstrates that damp-heat diseases are mainly induced by the disorder of yang-ming meridian and tai-yin meridian， with the treatment focusing on the middle energizer spleen and stomach.