The Benefits of Medical Integration

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The Benefits of Medical Integration

William Collinge quotes Chuang Tzu in his American Holistic Health Association Complete Guide to Alternative Medicine saying, "Heaven, Earth and I are living together, and all things and I form an inseparable unity" (13). Tzu's comment contrasts the traditional American dream of individualistic power and solidarity, but no matter how ethnocentric or arrogant the Western society can be at times, the influence of the world is still present. The health care system is a prime example of how the unification between world cultures brings benefits to society. The Western culture has been developing and refining scientific methods of health care for centuries. Illnesses that were incurable in the past are now treatable with drug medications and by complex surgeries. But along with the absence of the old illnesses, come new ones. People are living longer and chronic and degenerative illnesses are more common. Due to the development of new illnesses, Western medicine has been consulting the traditions and treatments from other cultures for aid in diagnosis and health care. In The American Holistic Health Association Complete Guide to Alternative Medicine, William Collinge states that, "the joining together of conventional and alternative traditions may well permit us to have a more balanced quality of life. At the least, it has helped to bring the concept of health back to medicine" (Collinge xxi). Collinge's use the word "balance" in his description of the quality of life is interesting, because a form of alternative medicine whose central focus is on the balance of the body is Chinese medicine. Due to the onslaught of new chronic and degenerative illnesses, Western culture initiated the search for ...

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