The concept of wholism is one of the most important principles in the theory of traditional Chinese medical science. A lot of clinical examples and pharmacological experiments have proved that the efficacy of one or some ingredients of a certain crude drug does not equate with the whole crude drug. Therefore, the quality control of traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) should reflect this holistic concept. The fingerprint of TCM fits for this roles and is proposed to being employed in the quality control of TC...