Traditional Chinese Medicine- part 2

中醫學

Chinese Medicine: then and now (cont. from TCM part 1)
The earliest known traditions related to Chinese medicine date from the 17th to 11th centuries BC during the Shang dynasty and involved ancestral influences. It was believed that ancestors had influence over the living and were able to directly endanger and destroy human life. The focus of healing practice was directed at, not only the living, but the deceased.

Ancestral ritualistic healing practices were later supplanted by more generalized yet still identifiable entities such as demoniacal, magical, and supernatural beliefs. These forces were thought to be the cause of disease. For example, "swellings" were thought to be caused by possession and healing practices utilized instruments such as needles in an effort to purge the affected body of the demon.

The Han dynasty was a period of significant importance to historical Chinese Medicine and is described as being the most formative period of its development. During the 2nd century BC to the 2nd century AD, a Chinese intellectual elite attempted to categorize and explain the world and its phenomena to a reduced number of causes and effects. An attempt to supplant "demonological forces" with so called natural laws gained momentum.

During this period, there were varying attempts to systematize the natural world by creating grouped contexts or constructs associated with the natural environment. This led to the creation of systems and thought in which the practice of healing could be connected with these now categorized phenomena. Here there are glimpses of a more rational approach to medicine. Alas, the earlier magical influences would not be eliminated and eventually a hybrid version of naturalistic/magic Chinese medicine began to take root.

There erupted a plethora of different world views, healing practices, and methods. These approaches often contradicted each other in sometimes fundamental ways. Unfortunately, this intriguing period of inquiry and observation never led to further developments and refinements of Chinese medical theory. The bubbling pool of thought that could be considered a "pre-enlightenment" era never reached a point of general consensus and no method to move toward a reconciliation ever developed.

Concepts such as the ying/yang and the five elements were combined with healing practices creating a confusing litany of disarticulated therapies. During this era, practitioners created forms of "systematic correspondence" which were comprised of assumed links between a practitioner’s perception of the natural world and the human body.

There followed a period after the Han dynasty where two general schools of thought came to the fore. A traditional view of "systematic correspondence” continued creating often baroque and elaborate intuitive theories. Interestingly, it is at this point that acupuncture literature begins to frequently appear in the historical record. These worldviews supported the belief that all things were related through some unseen web of connection and the body for example, could be influenced by changes elsewhere in this system.

"If in winter one behaves as one would in summer, bad things might happen"

In some ways, these systems like many other ontologies – even today- have some empirical seed of truth to them but then proceed to commit the error of fallacious or magical thinking. One big fallacy at the time was confusing correlation and causation –“correspondence”- the results of which produced a realm of completely fictional medical paradigms.

The other area of thought concentrated on a more pharmaceutical approach to medical treatment exploring herbal medicine, and was initially more promising. Unfortunately, this early methodology continued to emphasize very basic and erroneous themes. Disparate and conflicting concepts such as qi, yin/yang, and the five elements are intermingled with the use of herbs and they loose therapeutic coherence and potential refinement as reason and observation give way to assumption and belief.

There was an attempt, especially between the 12th and 15th centuries to reconcile these two traditions but they were ultimately unsuccessful and the whole of Chinese medicine theory remained stagnant and irreconciled from that time on. Epler (CAVMC, ch2, pg 22) elucidates;

" In the history of Chinese Medicine, rather than progressing from a reasonable, although incomplete knowledge of the body to a more detailed one by systematic dissection, the medical writers go in the opposite direction, under the sway of the cosmologists, to a less accurate picture."

It is important to note that until recent times, Western and Eastern medicine had similar belief based origins. Ramey and Rollins note “It is only in modern times, with the development of science-based medicine in the West, and the subsequent discarding of metaphysical approaches to medicine, that Chinese (Eastern “traditional”) and Western practices have been brought into opposition.”

In fact, Chinese traditional medicine is actually beginning to fade in China as a primary practice with the country’s rapid progression towards modernization. Some estimates reveal that about 15-20% of people in China presently use only traditional therapies contradicting the claims of many alternative practitioners.

In Western countries, the Traditional Chinese Medicine actually observed and practiced is based on a westernized version of Zhongyi, or "modern Traditional Chinese Medicine". Zhongyi is in turn a distillation, a "best hits" version of the more rational parts of Chinese Medicines vast and disarticulated past. Much of Zhongyi was put together from the 1950's to the 1970's at which point the West eagerly received what they thought of as "ancient medicine".

According to Ramey and Rollins “…the transformation of Chinese traditional medicine into Traditional Chinese Medicine from the 1950s and 1970s did much to bring Chinese medicine closer to modern rationality…the vast heritage of Chinese traditional medicine that directly contradict modern science and rationality have been omitted from the many publications on zhongyi published in the People’s Republic of China since the mid-1970s. Hence, Westerners returning from China in the late 1970s and 1980s took home a “gift”, which they considered to represent two millennia of Chinese medicine while in fact it was a streamlined body of concepts adapted to modern rationality. It is this streamlined body, then, which was once more modified in the West to meet the expectations of Western audiences.”

Here the tale loops to the beginning of the West’s current fascination with Traditional Chinese Medicine or better said a twice removed, manipulated, and designer made Western version of Traditional Chinese Medicine.

Ref:

Complementary and Alternative Veterinary Medicine Considered (Ramey & Rollin)