Traditional Chinese medicine and Pharmacology

A rich treasure house created by ancient Chinese people in their long years of struggle against disease, traditional Chinese medicine and pharmacology forms an independent school within the healing arts, It has made outstanding achievements over its 2,ooo-year history during which it has improved continuously to remain widely practiced today.

Traditional Chinese medicine and pharmacology incorporates the yin (negative) and yang (positive) theory and the theory of the five elements (metal, wood, water, fire, and earth) , both containing naive dialectical ideas of ancient China. The former theory holds that everything has a yin and a yang side the struggle and interaction between which is the source of the ceaseless emergence and change of all things in the universe. The latter theory believes that things in the universe are composed of the five indispensable elements of daily life, which move and change constantly to promote and restrain each other.

Beyond theory, the physiological and pathological branches of traditional Chinese medicine focus on the internal organs, main and collateral "channels", "vital energy"("qi") and blood, excretions and discharhes. Diagnoses are made within a complete observational system in which the nature of a patient's disease is determined by the "four methods of diagnosis"---- observing the overall way the patient looks, listening to the voice and observing any odor asking questions, listening to the voice and feeling the patient's pulse. Treatment then proceeds to balance the "eight principal syndromes"---- yin and yang, exterior and interior, cold and heat, underactivity and overactivity.

Other Chinese therapies include acupuncture and moxibustion, which involve the study of "channels" and "points" on the human body and the methods of treatment by massage, and qigong.

Traditional Chinese medicine and pharmacology embodies a great many valuable ideas and views which have been proved through practice. One of the most important is that, instead of treating only the symptoms, traditional Chinese medicine takes into consideration every aspect of a patient's condition to form a unified idea of it under the theories of Yin and Yang and the five elements before deciding on its treatment. For example, in the case of a disease requiring surgery, Chinese medicine is concerned with the general physiological changes which may have brought about the condition and----beyond operating or applying some from of therapy----seeks to improve the patient's ability to resist the disease. Preventive medicine ----so highly acclaimed by people today----has always been stressed in traditional Chinese medicine. Included in its preventive measures are giving early treatment and developing immunities, or "combating evil with evil".

The particular approaches of traditional Chinese medicine and pharmacology have made important contributions to health protection and the development of medicine and pharmacology. Acupuncture and moxibustion treatment(which will be dealt with fully later), for example, is a unique Chinese method remarkably effective in curing many kinds of ailments.
The experience of traditional doctors in understanding, observing, analyzing and treating disease has been handed down mainly through medicine literature. According to an incomplete count, there about 8,000 pieces of such literature extant today, most of them dealing with clinical medicine.

The Yellow Emperor's Classic of Internal Medicine(Huang Di Nei Jing ), On Typhoid and Other disease (Shang Han Za Bing Lun)and The Herbal Canon of Shen Nong(Shen Nong Ben Cao Jing)are three representative medical works written before the third century B.C. The Yellow Emperor's Classic of Internal Medicine, the earliest existing Chinese medicine masterpiece, was completed during the Warring States Period(475-221 B.C.) and consists of 18 volumes and 162 chapters. It provided the theoretical basis for Chinese medicine by giving fairy scientific explanations of the physiological functions of the human body, symptoms of disease and the principles of diagnosis and treatment. The other two books were written in the Eastern Han Dynasty(AD. 25-220). On Typhoid and Other Diseases deals mainly with the dialectical method of diagnosis, methods of treatment and prescriptions, while the Herbal Canon of ShenNong, the earliest extant work of pharmacology listing 365 drugs, laid the ground work for Chinese pharmacology.

Altogether more than 5,000 types of Chinese medicinal herbs are in use now. According to traditional Chinese pharmacology, the properties of drugs are differentiated by their "four characteristics"(cold, cool, warm, and hot)and their "five tastes"(hot, sour, sweet, bitter, salty). Chinese medicine traditionally have been prepared in the forms of pills, power, pellets, tincture, drinks, syrup, lumps and gelatin. Now they are also prepare as injections, tablets, solvents, and sprays. Among the many nationally famous Chinese pharmaceutical works are Tong Ren Tang in Beijing, Da Ren Tang in Tianjing, HuQingyu Tang in Hangzhou and Lei Yunshang Tang in Suzhou.

Through Chinese medicine has its own system of theories, therapeutic principles and methods of treatment, the Chinese medicine workers have been called on to investigate whys and hows of traditional Chinese medicine from a modern scientific point of view and develop a new Chinese medicine which is combined with Western medicine. The result is the present co-existence and simultaneous development of the three branches of medicine in China-Chinese, Western and Chinese-Western.