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Traditional Chinese Medicine
- Updated:
- Nov 09, 2009;
- by:
- China Highlights;
- Clicks:
- 547;
Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM, though many will recognize this acronym as belonging for the cable TV film channel, Turner Classic Movies) is more than just a collection of roots and herbs that are believed to have healing powers: it embraces a number of other health-related concepts, in the broadest, well-being sense, concepts such as animism (the notion that all things possess a spirit), the yin and the yang (the notion of opposing forces in nature and of striking the right balance between the two), qigongand feng shui (both are based on the mind-over-matter notion that there exist exogenous forces in nature that can and should be harnessed in order to provide well-being, and that where these are not properly harnessed, or are ignored, they can in fact do harm... echoes, perhaps, of the novels of Carlos Casteneda (eg., The Teachings of Don Juan)?), and even a cosmic dimension, since, according to Chinese religious philosophy (viz., Taoism), all things in nature, both on this planet and beyond, are interrelated.
TCM also embraces practices such as acupuncture, moxibustion (the incense-like burning of the dried mugwort herb (though not specifically mentioned by the author, mugwort was possibly used at the Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry :)), tui na (a form of massage therapy), tai chi chuan (the yoga-like "internal" martial art that relieves stress and fosters well-being through specific movement and posture routines), and cupping, or fire cupping, which involves placing cups (transparent glasses are generally used today) that have had the oxygen removed from the air inside via a flame, creating a suction effect when the cup/ glass is placed on the skin). And this is only a partial list of the centuries-old TCM practices that have survived down the ages.
A separate branch of TCM is Chinese Medicinal Food, where herbs, roots and animal parts that are believed to be beneficial to health and well-being are consumed as part of the daily diet. Unfortunately, this practice is not unambiguously positive for the world as a whole, since the body parts of certain animals that are now threatened species have traditionally been the most popular when it comes to "medicinal food" that is believed to have an aphrodisiacal effect (nor is the fixation on sushi in other countries, for that matter, unambiguously positive for the world as a whole if it leads to the depletion of, or even a serious reduction in, the stocks of, say, blue fin tuna).
TCM inarguably has a very long history. It is supposed to have existed since the time of the mythical Yellow Emperor, who reigned over China for 100 years (!), from BC 2697-2597 (itself perhaps a powerful argument for the health-giving powers of TCM ). The Yellow Emperor is supposed to have compiled a treatise on the subject, the Neijing Suwen (Inner Canon: Basic Questions), though historians believe the treatise to have been compiled, perhaps by various authors, during the Han (BCE 206 – CE 220) Dynasty. The Inner Canon was mentioned by the father of Chinese medicine, Zhang Zhongjing (CE 150-219), during the Eastern Han (CE 25-220) Dynasty. Several other famous personages in the decades and centuries that followed wrote works that employed TCM methods practiced today, and some of these individuals also made reference to the Inner Canon.
During the Tang (CE 618-907) Dynasty, TCM came on better footing with the compilation of Materia Medica in CE 657, a scholarly work that was commissioned by Emperor Gaozong (CE 650-683) and which documented over 800 substances with measurable medicinal effect, including substances derived from metals, minerals, stones, animals, herbs and other plants, including cereals and fruits. The use of cannabis (aka marijuana) as an anesthetizing agent has been recorded as early as the Eastern Han Dynasty, where a physician by the name of Hua Tuo (CE 140(circa)-208) used it in a wine mixture during surgery. Modern-day TCM was systemitized in the 1950s by the PRC, under the instructions of Mao Zedung, Chairman of the Chinese Communist Party.
In spite of TCM's long historical record, during the course of which TCM gradually placed itself on better scientific footing, Western medical practice tends to look askance on most of its claims, labelling it at best as "alternative medicine" in an attempt to at least remain somewhat neutral. Acupuncture, on the other hand, has won wide acceptance within the medical profession in the West, and even the US military has experimented with qigong in an attempt to bring relief to soldiers suffering from post traumatic stress syndrome (PTSD).
Future research into the pharmacology of the substances common to TCM may eventually place the practice on yet better scientific footing. In this context it should be noted that the overwhelming majority of the medical preparations that one buys in the pharmacies of the West actually stem from the plant world – their active ingredients generally represent synthesized versions of the naturally-occurring substances, albeit, oftentimes altered such that potential negative side effects are eliminated.
Moreover, the German scientist and TCM scholar, Manfred Porkert, whose book, The Theoretical Foundations of Chinese Medicine: Systems of Correspondence, was published in 1974 by MIT Press, believes that part of the problem with the Western medical profession's difficulty in accepting TCM rests on East-West cognition differences, where Westerners tend to rely almost exclusively on the concept of causality, which involves a strictly temporal relationship (A came before B and caused B), whereas "Easterners", in addition to accepting causality, also entertain the concept of inductivity, which also involves spatial relationships (A & B exist simultaneously in time though in separate spatial spheres, yet are interrelated).
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