Untitled Essay, Research Paper

Chinese Medicine

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 smallest

molecule. Pain is often thought of as blocked Qi.(8) An example of qi would

be that the ancient Chinese could see that when we are healthy, food is carried

down the alimentary canal. They also saw that throwing up involves a rising

movement that ejects food from the stomach along with heaving.(9) They saw

this activity in terms of two movements: a normal descending force and an

abnormal ascending force. What we call a movement, the Chinese call qi.(10)

Stomach qi goes down, carrying food in the digestive tract to the small

intestine. The concept of stomach qi was inferred directly from visible events.

Qi does not coincide with the Western notion of energy. Western medicine

explains the normal downward movement of qi in terms of peristalsis (wave

like contractions that pass along the alimentary canal, pushing the contents

downward). Energy is consumed in the contraction of the muscles. It is not

ascending or descending energy. (11)

The Chinese developed a medicine of systematic correspondences in which yin-yang

and five-phase theory provided a good foundation for understanding the body.

These have been the key elements of Chinese medicine to the present day.(12)

The five phases: wood, fire, earth, metal, and water are the main factors

in human life: wood for construction; fire for warmth; metal for tools; the

earth that produces the crops necessary to our survival; and water on which

all life depends.(13) The ancient Chinese observed that these entities,

all-important for the support of human life, reflected important aspects

of nature as a whole. Wood has the qualities of plants; fire has heat qualities

and so so on. The five phases also correspond to organs in the body. These

five entities also relate to each other in specific ways such as anything

that burns is derived from plants, wood was said to engender fire; fire by

reducing what it consumed to ashes, is said to engender earth, etc.(14)

Yin and yang constitute a binary system of correspondence that is logically

matching to the five phases. All yin phenomena are the same in nature and

relate to their yang opposites in like fashion. Examples of this would be

day is to night as heat is to cold, as summer is to winter, as high is to

low, as activity is to rest.(15)

The ideas of yin and yang became universally applicable categories of quality

and relationship. Cold and dark has something qualitative in common, and

their relationship is counterpart to yin and yang. Each pole of a yin-yang

pair is dependent on the other and each complements the other. There is no

light without darkness; cold cannot be known without heat. When cold increases,

heat lowers, and when dawn breaks, darkness fades.(16)

In medicine, yin and yang are used to explain relationships between parts

of the body, organs, and disease patterns.(17) Making a correspondence between

dark-light and interior-exterior, medical theoreticians were able to see

that the interior of the body corresponds to dark as the exterior corresponds

to light; so, interior would be yin and the exterior is yang. By the principle

of divisibility, they determined that within the interior of the body, some

aspects were yin, while others were yang. The organs having greatest contact

with the outside (the digestive tract, for example) are seen to be yang within

yin, whereas the organs that dealt with things produced by the body (blood,

qi, and essence) were seen as yin within yang.(18)

There are four major treatments within these two key elements of Chinese

medicine. The first that will be covered is Tui Na or massage. It contains

elements and techniques that are very different from the common (western)

ideas of massage. In these massage techniques the practitioner tries to affect

the physiology and energetics of the body and the mind of the patient.(19)

Tui Na is practiced slowly with an emphasis on the practitioner and the client

being in a meditative state. Stretching and extending the range of motion

of the body is an important part of Chinese massage. (19)

A central part of Chinese medicine is the importance of the abdominal region.

According to Chinese medicine, all the major energy pathways of the body

have their origin around the navel. The abdominal massage is crucial to the

healing benefit of this medicine.(19)

The second treatment is Herbology or minerals and animal parts. Herbs are

a variety of naturally found products that have medicinal properties. Herbal

formulas can be taken in many ways. A doctor of Chinese herbal medicine could

prescribe raw herbs which would be taken home and made into a “tea”. It is

believed that certain animal parts, when ingested, will contribute to the

health of the same part in the patient. Many practitioners offer herbs in

pill or capsule form. Herbal treatments are created for specific patients

and their specific disharmony.(20)

The third treatment is nutrition therapy. The only difference between nutrition

and herbal therapy is that nutrition tends to be more appetizing than the

herbal tea formulas.(21)

The fourth treatment is Acupuncture. It is the gentle insertion of hair-fine

needles into specific points on the body to stimulate the flow of Qi or the

natural healing energy.(22)

Chinese medicine views human health and disease in terms of functional entities

and disease-causing influences that are observed with just the senses. Its

sophistication lies in its observation of correspondences between whole

phenomena, and its organization of these observations through the holistic

systems of yin-yang and five phases.(23)

In view of the somewhat barbaric treatments in western medicine – cancer

therapy, for example – many people in western society are becoming interested

in Chinese medicine as an alternative form of treatment for certain ailments.

This is an encouraging trend.

Endnotes

1 Nigel Boss,The Introduction To Chinese Medicine (Brookline, 1988)., p2-15.

2 Ibid., p17.

3 Ibid., p18.

4 Ibid., p37.

5 Ibid., p38.

6 Ibid., p40.

7 Ibid., p56.

8 (Class lecture on Chinese Medicine)

9 Nigel Boss,The Introduction To Chinese Medicine.(Brookline,1988).,p57.

10 Ibid., p58.

11 Ibid., p58.

12 Ibid., p102.

13 Ibid., p103.

14 Ibid., p105.

15 Ibid., p150.

16 Ibid., p151.

17 Ibid., p159.

18 Ibid., p160.

19 John J. Chan,Conditions Successfully Treated with Oriental Medicine. (Chicago,

1984)., p20. (Class notes)

20 Ibid., p27. (Class notes)

21 Ibid., p34. (Class notes)

22 Ibid., p42. (Class notes)

23 Nigel Boss,The Introduction to Chinese Medicine.(Brookline, 1988)., p92.

Bibliography

Boss, Nigel. The Introduction To Chinese Medicine.

Brookline, Massachusetts:Paradigm Publications, 1988.

Chan, John J. Conditions Successfully Treated with Oriental

Medicine. Chicago, Illinois: Lynne Reiner Publishers,1984.

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