五行学说对中医学有深刻的影响，体现了传统医学重视联系、整体的特点，但五行学说本身有局限性，不能全面地反映事物间的普遍联系。中医以五脏配属五行，吸收了五行学说的精华；又根据脏腑学说的理论，在实践中超越了五行的限制。因此，中医的理论可名为“五脏相关学说”。在中医理论现代化中，可以将五脏之间的影响归纳为促进、抑制和协同3种关系，从多种角度来阐明中医的整体性与联系观。

The theory of five elements has had a profound influence on Chinese medicine. It manifests the holistic and comprehensive approach of traditional Chinese medici ne to treating diseases. However, it has its limitations in that it fails to tho roughly reflect the general relations between substances. To rectify this, Chine se medicine correlates five organs with five elements, which not only maintains the essence of the theory of five elements but in practice overcomes its limitat ions thanks to the introduction of Zangfu theory. Thus, Chinese medicine theor ies can be wound up to “the theory of five organs correlation”. To modernize t he Chinese medicine theories, we could categorize the mutual relations of five o rgans as those of generation, restriction and cooperation so as to explore the h olistic and comprehensive feature of Chinese medicine.

邓铁涛（1916－），男，广东开平县人，广州中医药大学终身教授，博导，著名老中医，内科专家，国家“九七三”计划中医基础理论项目首席科学家