History of Traditional Chinese Medicine

In Chinese antiquity, religious believes were dominated by gods, demons and the spirits of ancestors. A more structured understanding of natural history arose through the development of Chinese philosophy in the Han period. Back then much like today, traditional Chinese medicine is a heterogenous combination of concepts and methods.

In modern days, traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) lost touch with its roots. However, in specific areas such as the treatment of chronic disease or acupuncture, it is increasingly appreciated in Western medicine.

Gods, Demons and Ancestor Spirits

The world view of antique China was dominated by gods, demons and ancestor spirits. The common believe was that demons and ancestor spirits can peril the human life. Whereas ancestor spirits can be dulcified with high morals and by abidance of conventions, demons had to be fought with magical rites. These conceptions still influence the modern Chinese society.

Dadao, the Great Path and the Law of Nature

Between 300 and 200 BC this archaic world view was replaced by the development of nature studies, and one hundered years later by the development of medicine. This development was forced by Chinese philosophers of the Han era and their thinking of a so called natural path (chin. dao), a higher principle of natural legality.

In the guide of the yellow Emperor, first part, is claimed: "The Dao whether knows demons nor spirits, the Dao always develops from the Dao", demonstrating the emanzipation from antique believes by the Daoist philosophers. And in archaelogical writtings from these times demanological topics are already companied by drug descriptions of estaunishing knowledge (Unschuld, 1997).

East meets West

The first reports on Chinese medicine came to Europe by Wilhelm von Rubruk (Journey to Mongolian Lands, 1253 to 1255) and Marco Polo (1254-1324). In the modern times (1500), mostly Portuguese missionaries confronted Chinese medicine with European medical concepts, which were mostly accepted by Chinese doctors.

TCM on its Way to Modern Times

In urban industrial Europe a standarised health care system developed which was forced by medical needs trough two World wars. This is the reason why the use of non standarised herbal remedies was proscriped and assigned to spinsters, charlatans and howdies.

The more pragmatical Chinese model of conjoining Western with traditional approaches however records considerable success. So was the death rate of 1949 at 25 per 1000, and in the year 1970 only at 6.2 per mill. At the same time the infant mortility declined from 200 to 12 per mill infants.

In the seventies of the last century, the World Health Organisation (WHO) recognised the tradtional medical health care systems in their meaning and importance in the primary health care, especially in underdeveloped countries.This recognition was an important impuls for scientific investigations of these traditional health care systems. Since the WHO started the program for encouragement and development of traditional remedies, physicians and biologists all over the world began to gather information on these drugs. Moreover, academic institutes for ethnobotany and ethnomedicine were founded and traditional drugs experienced a true renaissance (Lozoya, 1997).

According to Unschuld (1997) the popularity of TCM in China is ebbing in the same pace as it is gaining in the Western world. TCM of today certainly can not be compared to the TCM of ancient times, and even TCM in Western clinics is not comparable to the TCM in Chinese ones.

Following two examples shall illustrate how Western medicine infuenced TCM: A stroke in antique TCM is called zhangfeng, meaning "hit by the wind", and an physician of the Sung era therefor would try to banish the inner wind from the body. A doctor from the later Quing era however would use drugs to remedy a blood flow stasis. And whereas many Western TCM practitioners refuse to equate the Chinese term xue with the Western term blood, their Chinese colleague do exactly this, not without knowing that antique TCM had a different meaning of blood.

Looking into the Future of TCM

According to Professor Unschuld TCM has lost touch with its roots. However, in specific areas such as chronic, and according to Western medicine hardly curable, diseases TCM may still offer interesting therapeutical approaches, like acupuncture and Qigong. Additional there are about 13,000 to 15,000 existing, not yet avaluated, titels from Chinese practitioners from the years before 1911.

It seems still worthwhile to evaluate TCM according to modern state-of-the art methods to make TCM concepts accessible for the people and to integrate antique kowledge into modern medicine.

References

Xavier Lozoya. Pflanzliche Arzneimittel gestern und heute. In: Spektrum der Wissenschaft, Spezial 6: Pharmaforschung. Spektrum der Wissenschaften Verlagsgesellschaft mbH 1997.

Paul U. Unschuld. Chinesische Medizin. C.H. Becksche Verlagsbuchhandlung. München 1997.

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