Traditional Chinese Medicine

     Before Western medicine came to China, traditional Chinese medicine, a unique Chinese system of medicine, had been the major guarantee for people's health in the country for several thousand years. In modern times it is still a major means of health care for Chinese, and its advantage is especially shown in its solutions to some serious odd diseases which modern medicine fails to solve. Traditional Chinese medicine has its own concepts, means of diagnosis and treatment, and composition of drugs and prescriptions, which are quite different from those of modem Western medicine. Its basic theory and practices were established as early as in the Spring and Autumn and Warring States periods. Its philosophical basis is the principle of integration of man and nature. It regards the human body as a whole and man and

nature as a whole, and believes any disorder of the human body reflects discord between man and nature, or the patient and the outside world.

    In the theory of traditional Chinese medicine, the human body contains five organs of zang (heart, liver, spleen, lungs, and kidneys) and six viscera of fu (gallbladder, stomach, small intestine, large intestine, san jiao, and bladder -san jiao refers to the three combinations: heart and lungs; spleen and stomach; and liver, kidneys, bladder, small intestine and large intestine). Each of the zang and fu has its own functions, and also controls a certain aspect of the normal operations of the human body. The jing luo (meridian) system connects various parts of the human body, and allows qi (a vital substance that flows throughout the body), blood and fluids to circulate. Unlike the nervous system in Western medicine, the jing luo system is invisible, yet the mysterious channels and collaterals function quite effectively in transmitting the vital substances. In traditional Chinese medicine, the various systems of the human body are closely and complexly related in a comprehensive life system, which functions as a whole. This is the basis of the physiology and pathology of traditional Chinese medicine.

    In diagnosis, traditional Chinese medicine relies on four methods: listening and smelling, inquiring, observing, and pulse-feeling. Listening and smelling: listen to the patient's voice, breathing and coughing, and smell order of the body and excretion products. Inquiring: ask about the patient's case history. Observing: observe the patient's mental state, facial expression, complexion, color of the tongue, fingers, and nails. Pulse-feeling: the doctor puts his index finger, middle finger and third finger on the wrist of the patient and feels the pulse to ascertain the symptoms and causes of the disorder according to the conditions of pulse: frequency, rhythm, fullness, evenness, and amplitude. Through the years Chinese doctors accumulated rich experience in pulse feeling. According to legend, a most experienced doctor could feel the pulse of a patient through a string.

In feudal times women of royal or noble families could not meet strange men face to face, let alone to be touched by a man. Therefore when such a woman fell ill, a string would be tied to her wrist for a doctor behind a screen to "feel" the pulse on the other end. The theory of yin and yang and the five elements, a complicated system of knowledge and methods, guides the diagnostic practice of traditional Chinese medicine. For instance, the symptoms of fever, extolment, quickened pulse, reddish skin and thirst belong to yang, while the symptoms of coldness in the hand and feet, pale skin, slowed pulse and weakness belong to yin. Yin and yang are interdependent and can also transform to the opposite. The patient's conditions are analyzed and differentiated in accordance with the eight principal syndromes: yin and yang, deficient and excessive, exterior and interior, and cold and heat. With the symptoms decided, medications are correspondingly prescribed to achieve best treatment. The five elements are wood, fire, metal, water and earth. They are inter-promoting: wood promotes fire, fire promotes earth, earth promotes metal, metal promote water, and water in turn promotes wood. The five organs of zang and six viscera of fu are also classified by the five elements, and they are believed to influence each other.

    The Chinese material medical classifies the properties of drugs into four groups: cold, heat, warm and cool; and drugs of five tastes (sour, sweet, bitter, pungent and salty) are used for different diseases. The Chinese material medical all comes from nature. Shennong Ben Cao Jing (Shennong's Herbal Classic), the earliest extant work on material medical in China, listed 365 kinds of drugs, including 252 from plants, 67 from animals, and 46 from minerals. The hardest and the most charming part of traditional Chinese medicine is diagnosis and treatment based on overall analysis of symptoms, signs, the cause, nature and location of the illness and the patient's physical conditions according to the basic theories. In prescribing drugs, combinations of drugs are different from patient to patient, illness to illness, and even phase to phase in the illness.

Well-known Chinese doctors in thousands of years have accumulated numerous proved recipes, which are treasures for not only China but also the world at large. In making prescriptions, the principle of combining the "monarch, minister, assistant and guide drugs" is followed. The monarch drug is the principal part of the recipe, which produces the leading action to treat the main cause and symptoms of a disease; the minister drug is secondary and helps the principal drug; the assistant drug serves to reduce the unwanted side effects of the principal and secondary drugs; and the guide drug directs the action of a prescription to the affected parts of the human body to reinforce the treatment. Also taken into consideration in selecting the ingredients of prescriptions are the seven different effects in compatibility, namely, using alone, mutual reinforcing, assisting, incompatibility, inhibition, detoxifying, and antagonism.

    There were a large number of great men of medical science and material medical in ancient China. The most famous doctors are Bian Que of the Spring and Autumn and Warring States periods, Hua Tuo and Zhang Zhongjing of the Eastern Han Dynasty, and Sun Simiao of the Tang Dynasty. Shany; Han Za Bing Lun (The Treatise on Febrile and Miscellaneous Diseases) by Zhang Zhongjing and Qian Jin Yao Fang (The Essential Prescriptions Worth of a Thousand Gold) by Sun Simiao are two must works for practitioners of traditional Chinese medicine. The most well-known man of Chinese materia medica is Li Shizhen of the Ming Dynasty, whose Bencao Gangmu (Compendium of Materia Medica) includes 1,892 medicinal substances, 11,000 prescriptions, and 1,100 illustrations. This authoritative work has been translated into various languages and circulated in many countries.