This text is distinguished by its authority, authenticity, and completeness. Most diagnostic information in English is abstracted rather than translated from Chinese sources and is typically abbreviated to fit the limits of general survey texts for beginners. Practical Diagnosis differs from these presentations as it is an English presentation of the entire Chinese language work compiled by one of China's most respected living physicians. The English edition is a complete translation of the text used in China with neither abstraction nor simplification.

The book is in six major sections with information presented from the general to the specific allowing the reader to understand the many details in context. The first section describes the four examinations. The second covers eight principle; disease cause; six channel; four aspect; qi, blood and fluid; viscera and bowel, and channel and network vessel patterns. The third section concentrates on the application of these patterns in practice, including a small but unique chapters giving a step-by-step approach to determining treatment from the pattern and the differentiation of various conditions that are treated as fixed-entity diseases. The fourth section describes the application of traditional diagnostic principles in the gynecology, pediatrics, external medicine, traumatology, opthamology, and EENT clinics. This is followed in section five with an explanation of 25 commonly-seen clinical symptoms and, in section six, an explanation of the standard in- and out-patient medical record and how to prepare one. Several pages are devoted to clinical observations in external medicine, and there are chapter-ending tables that review differentiations in useful detail. In each chapter there are differentiations of what may and what must be clinically observed before a pattern can be identified with confidence. Throughout, the book is distinguished by the both the extent and depth of its detail.