This article is based on a series of lectures given at ELAF 93 on the description of low-energy hadronic systems in and out of hadronic medium. The focus is put on identifying, with the help of a Cheshire Cat philosophy, the effective degrees of freedom relevant for the strong interactions from a certain number of generic symmetry properties of QCD. The matters treated are the ground-state and excited-state properties of light-and heavy-quark baryons and applications to nuclei and nuclear matter under normal as well as extreme conditions.