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Historiography of Chinese Medicine
When reading the Chinese classics, it is important for scholars to examine these works from the Chinese perspective. Historians have noted two key aspects of Chinese medical history: understanding conceptual differences when translating the term "shén", and observing the history from the perspective of cosmology rather than biology.

In Chinese classical texts, the term shén is the closest historical translation to the English word "body" because it sometimes refers to the physical human body in terms of being weighed or measured, but the term is to be understood as an “ensemble of functions” encompassing both the human psyche and emotions. This concept of the human body is opposed to the European duality of a separate mind and body. It is critical for scholars to understand the fundamental differences in concepts of the body in order to connect the medical theory of the classics to the “human organism” it is explaining.

Chinese scholars established a correlation between the cosmos and the “human organism.” The basic components of cosmology, qi, yin yang and the Five Phase theory, were used to explain health and disease in texts such as Huangdi neijing. Yin and yang are the changing factors in cosmology, with qi as the vital force or energy of life. The Five phase theory Wu Xing of the Han dynasty contains the elements wood, fire, earth, metal, and water. By understanding medicine from a cosmology perspective, historians better understand Chinese medical and social classifications such as gender, which was defined by a domination or remission of yang in terms of yin.

These two distinctions are imperative when analyzing the history of traditional Chinese medical science.

A majority of Chinese medical history written after the classical canons comes in the form of primary source case studies where academic physicians record the illness of a particular person and the healing techniques used, as well as their effectiveness. Historians have noted that Chinese scholars wrote these studies instead of “books of prescriptions or advice manuals;” in their historical and environmental understanding, no two illnesses were alike so the healing strategies of the practitioner was unique every time to the specific diagnosis of the patient. Medical case studies existed throughout Chinese history, but “individually authored and published case history” was a prominent creation of the Ming Dynasty. An example such case studies would be the literati physician, Cheng Congzhou, collection of 93 cases published in 1644.