对症下药
- Literal
- to prescribe the medicine that fits the ailment
- Figurative
- To find the real cause first and only then act: work out what the trouble actually is and apply exactly what it calls for, instead of trying fixes at random.
Where does 对症下药 come from?
The image comes from medicine, and the episode attached to it is that of the physician Hua Tuo, of the late Han dynasty, recorded in his biography in the 《三国志》 (Records of the Three Kingdoms). Two officials, Ni Xun and Li Yan, came to him with the same complaints: headache and fever. Hua Tuo gave one a purgative and the other a medicine to make him sweat. Asked why he treated identical symptoms so differently, he explained that in one man the trouble lay on the outside and in the other on the inside, so the treatment had to differ. By the next morning both were up and well.
Source (出处): 《三国志·华佗传》
How is 对症下药 used? Two examples
- 空调不制冷，得先查清楚原因，对症下药才有用。
The air conditioning isn't cooling; first you have to find out why, because a fix only works if it goes after the real fault.
- 先找出真正的原因，才能对症下药。
First find the real cause; only then can you apply the right remedy.
In Wanyu, all 400 chengyu have audio on every sentence, and you can save them to your decks and review them with spaced repetition. Free.
