Chinese Medicine
Western medicine focuses on defects, how to repair a torn ligament, excise a malignancy, reduce cholesterol or annihilate bacteria. It concentrates single-mindedly on pathology. Chinese medicine is also concerned with relieving pain and reversing disease, but not solely. It also has the capacity to reinforce optimal function by coaxing the kidneys to perform better, by activating the circulation of blood, by encouraging tranquility. Chinese medicine enhances the good in order to constrain the bad. It seeks to recreate a harmonious milieu.
Basic Concepts I:
Microcosm to Five Organ Networks
The concepts of Chinese medicine differ from Western pathological categories of disease, and a familiarity with its unique vocabulary is a stepping-stone to the theoretical framework within which health
and disease are understood. The human body is perceived as a microcosm, a universe in miniature. Just as Nature includes air, sea, and land, so the body is a matrix comprised of Qi, Moisture, Blood,
Jing, and Shen – the five body constituents. Five Organ Networks and the interplay of Qi and Yin-Yang are central concepts in Chinese traditional medicine.
Read Basic Concepts I
Basic Concepts II:
Adverse Climates to Diagnosis
Pathological conditions are adverse climates within the body's ecosystem. Toxins can degrade a healthy body constituent or turn less serious conditions into virulent pathogens. Neither health nor disease
is a static condition, and diagnosis is based on ever-changing relationships.
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History and Current Standards and Utilization
About two thousand years ago in China, disease ceased to be regarded as a natural cataclysm about which to seek supernatural aid – medicine became a human endeavor, and environmental and behavioral
vectors were seen as causes of disease. Although science and medicine arose simultaneously in both Greece and China, the unique social, economic, and political conditions within each culture generated unique
explanatory models. While the Greeks saw individuals, the Chinese saw interdependent networks. In the 1950s, Mao mandated that traditional medicine be “rehabilitated,” and Traditional Chinese
Medicine, or TCM, was manufactured. To restore a range of traditions that were stripped from TCM, many have adopted the broader term Chinese traditional medicine (CTM), or the traditional medicine of China
(TMC), or even China’s traditional medicine, rather than the politically charged TCM.
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