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Chinese Medicine (CM)
Chinese medicine(CM) is the oldest continuous organized system of healing man has known. Granted, there have been other systems that date as far back as CM such as India’s Ayurvedic system, and as quiet as it may be kept, African medicine predates all health system. But, as far as organization, cataloguing and systematizing, CM has set the record and has been practiced continuously in China for over 5000 years.
By way of metaphor, Chinese medicine has been likened to a tree with many branches. These include, herbal medicine, acupuncture, bodywork, meditation and exercise. In the West, acupuncture has been the aspect of CM that has gained most popularity since President Nixon’s visit to China. In China, however, herbal medicine is the main form of treatment and the branch of CM that requires the most study and understanding.
Chinese medicine as it is practiced in the West, is much different than how it is practiced in Asia. The contrast is by no means of such nature that delegates CM practice outside of China to an inferior position or of lesser quality. It’s just different; and the dissimilarities affects the mode of practice of both, Western CM practitioners and the practice style of native Chinese medicine doctors who were educated, interned and worked in China and that now practice abroad.
Why such differences?
While it would be beyond the scope of this article to go into a list of reasons for the contrast between CM in China and the style of CM practiced in the West, a brief look at cultural, education and economic factors may help shed some light on the seeming disparity.
Cultural differences are by far the primary reason for the divergence from CM as practiced in China to the style practiced in non Asian countries. First, we must consider the language. Naturally, students of CM in China learn CM in Chinese. And while there has been many translations of Chinese medicine classics into Western languages, there still remains a considerable large body of literature that remains unstranlated and thus unatainable unless one can read Chinese.