Term Papers on Chinese Medicine

Term Paper Title	Chinese Medicine
# of Words	1455
# of Pages (250 words per page double spaced)	5.82

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 imp...

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