• Journal of Sasang Constitutional Medicine
• /
• v.10 no.1
• /
• pp.81-99
• /
• 1998

1. Background : Sasang Constitutional Medicine divides mankind into Taeyangin(太陽人), Taeumin(太陰人), Soyangin(少陽人) and Soeumin(少陰人) according to appearance, moral nature and characteristic of constitutional symptoms, and it is a medical science to study about different treatment for each constitution. In Sasang Constitutional Medicine, diagnosis of constitution was so important that we had the necessity of studying constitutional diagnostic method which had presented wholly and intuitively in Dongyi Soose Bowon(東醫壽世保元) with objective and analytic thinking. There were several attempts to classify Sasang Constitutional Types through morphological investigation of each parts of body. The one of them was to use measuring the body. In this study, we purposed to make clear whether the analysis of fingerprints and palm, one of the physical anthropologic methods would be helpful to classify Sasang Constitution. 2. Method : After practicing Questionnaire I and QSCC(Questionnaire of Sasang Constitution) II from 347 healthy Korean adults(242 males and 106 females), we analyzed fingerprints and palm prints of 208 people(142 males and 66 females) who were classified same constitution from two questionnaires. We analyzed the types of fingerprints according to the number of triradius and counted the number of dermal ridges from fingerprint center to triradius. We found triradius in the lower part of each finger and analyzed the courses of dermal ridges and counted the number of dermal ridges between each triradius. We mesured angle atd, and then researched relationship between fingerprints, palm prints and Sasang Constitution. 3. Result and Conclusion : The results of Sasang Constitution analysis of 208 Korean adults showed 76 Taeumin(36.5%), 81 Soeumin(39.0%) and 51 Soyangin(24.5%). The analytic results of fingerprints and palm prints are as follows : The types of fingerprints were helpful to sort Taeumin and the types of palm prints were helpful to sort Soyangin and Soeumin especially. In addition, the number of dermal ridges in fingerprints and palm prints were helpful to sort Soyangin. Fingerprints and palm prints have characteristic in each constitutions, so the investigation of fingerprints and palm prints seems to helpful to classify Sasang Constitution. We are planning to report fingerprints and palm prints of more subjects.