The Traditional Medicine of China
Traditional medicine of China has a long historical and cultural
background dating back about 2500 years. The ancient Chinese people were able
to reach a level of social stability that included the ability to treat disease
of emotional, physical, and spiritual origins. Although a belief in spirits as
the cause of disease has remained in China even to the present day, the view
that the body obeyed a natural order struck a chord in the intellectual elite of
ancient China. It was this elite class that refined and developed these ideas
over many centuries.(1)
The ideas that the ancient Chinese had about the organs of the body, and
their functions, as well as the causes and development of disease, show large
differences when compared with Western medicine.(2)
The Chinese do not think of theory, as we do in the West, as needing to
be proven to reach the highest degree of truth. A Chinese doctor can look at
the kidney as a machine and think of it as a reflection of universe.(2) He can
apply two different disease classification systems, cold damage or warm damage
where he feels it is appropriate, without being deterred by contradictions
between the two.(3)
One (Western) method of gaining knowledge is analysis. It is the method
of breaking things into component parts to understand the whole. This method
has been applied in China, but not to the same level as in the West. Analysis
is one of the important features of all western modern science and technology.
In fact, the analytical approach is the basis of western medicine, and it is
part of the Western mindset.(4)
Analysis is not as important to Chinese medicine as in the West. The
ancient Chinese did use analysis in their investigation of the human body, but
to a lesser degree. Analysis provided some important insights into the workings
of the human body. The ancient Chinese knew, for example, that the stomach and
intestines were organs of digestion, and that the lung drew air from the
environment.(5)
The origins of China's medical knowledge is not certain. They observed
phenomenon, and identified relationships and patterns. They compared whole
phenomena in the body, and watched how they related to each other.(6)
This is shown by "qi,'' an entity that Westerners find hard to
conceptualize, since it does not fit any known scientific category.(7) Qi is
thought to be the universal energy that runs everything, right down to the
... middle of paper ... ... We can trace the origins of modern scientific trends back to Greek primal establishment. From the simplistic Socratic approach of ‘Who am I?’
Osborne, Evan. "China's First Liberal." Independent Review 16.4 (2012): 533+. Academic OneFile. Web. 4 Apr. 2014.
My mom would always say, “American born Chinese students have it easy in America.” One key difference between the American education system and Chinese education system is the way they are taught. Being raised in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, I went to school to understand the idea of analyzing and understanding concepts. After reading Only Hope, I realized that their education is based on more memorizations. To Chinese students, understand the concept and apply it is not the most important, you must just memorize it for the exam. Many parents in China would say that going on vacation and relaxing is a waste of time because they need to focus on learning. In Greenspan’s article, it mentions that a student in China is the top of her class and is fluent in English, yet she cannot go on vacation because her mother wants her to spend time learning, many students in China
The Lancet. (2013). Towards better health for people in china. Lancet (London, England), 381(9882), 1959.
Sitting close to the edge of being a “developing” and a “developed” country, China is a difficult country to define neatly. It is a country with an ancient and traditional culture trying to position itself higher within the international community. Plus it is also a communist country that has come to embrace its own form of capitalism to fuel its economy. China’s economic boon has been beneficial to many people within the country. But not to all people within China evenly.
...erimental science, instead they relied on experience for their advancements. The Chinese did not have a scientific revolution because the governing body did not encourage intellectuals to invest the manpower and resources needed for scientific research.(8)
Ross defines and differentiates between the terms healing and curing. She recognizes the fact that healing and curing are very intertwined and it can be hard to distinguish between the two terms. There are differences between the definitions in scholarly and general settings. She references an ethnographic study of healing versus curing conducted by anthropologists Andrew Strathern and Pamela Stewart in 1999 with native groups in New Guinea. The results of the study looked at how energy used by the different types of tribal healers to either cure or heal a patient. Eastern medicine focuses on how energy interacts with the healing process in connection within the mind. Whereas Western medicine is focused on the mind and the body separately. The practice is considered a holistic approach to finding cures. According to Ross (2013), healing is more a therapeutic process targeting the whole body and specific illness including emotional, mental, and social aspects in the treatment. The act of curing is a pragmatic approach that focuses on removing the problem all together. The life experiences of a person playing into how well certain treatments will heal or cure what is ailing them. These aspects can not be defined with textbook definitions. The interaction that the healing process has with energy is a variable in the success rate. Uncontrolled emotions can have a greater impact on the inside the body than a person can realize. The exploration of energy interaction within the body can be used for greater analysis of health care systems. (21-22). Are Western healthcare facilities purposely “curing” patients just so that they return are few years later? Is Western Medicine built upon a negative feedback loop? The terminolo...
the Chinese see religion as a form of education. The purpose of Confucianism was mainly
Throughout history many different diseases have infected the world. Such diseases consist of measles, mumps, malaria, typhus and yellow fever. Many of these diseases are caused by different things and originated in different countries.
Risse, Guenter. Modern China and Traditional Chinese Medicine: A Symposium Held at the University of Wisconsin, Madison. Springfield, IL. 1973.
Merli, M. G., & Smith, H. L. (2002). Has the Chinese Family Planning Policy been
From the 1970s, there has been a wave of liberalization in China, which was introduced by Deng Xiaoping. This is one of the key reasons to the rise of China to be one of the economic giants in the world. In the last 25 years of the century, the Chinese economy has had massive economic growth, which has been 9.5 percent on a yearly basis. This has been of great significance of the country since it quadrupled the gross domestic product (GDP) of the country thus leading to saving of 400 million of their citizens from the threats of poverty. In the late 1970s, China was ranked twentieth in terms of trade volumes in the whole world as well as being predicted to be the world’s top nation concerning trading activities (Kaplan, 53). This further predicted the country to record the highest GDP growth in the whole world.
There are multifarious reasons for their resurgence. The health of the people are related with different direct facets such as use of foods, practices, medical care and indirect ones such as monetary cost, communication, international law, security, international relations etc. It is also important to know that these synthesize with each other. Food and business can be taken as an example. Today, because some of the largest multinational companies are heavily involved in the creation and marketing of unhealthy foods, the challenge to control diseases causing epidemics or pandemics has been quite formidable (Chopra, Galbraith, & Darnton, 2002). With changes in diet, particuaarly with the rise of people having processed food diabetes rates have of people having ...
Luo, Y. (1997), Pioneering in China: Risks and Benefits, Long Range Planning, 30(5), 768 - 776
Herbal products are medicinal agents obtained from the plants. It’s all started 100 years ago by ancient people. Since synthetic medicine are not yet invented by that time, ancient people had invented medicine out of the plants. Through generations the original herbal medicine had been modified due to the new knowledge discovered and technologies invented.