Traditional Chinese medicine is system of medicine at least 23 centuries old that aims to prevent or heal disease by maintaining or restoring yinyang balance.
China has one of the world’s oldest medical systems.
Acupuncture and Chinese herbal remedies date back at least 2,200 years, although the earliest known written record of Chinese medicine is the Huangdi neijing (The Yellow Emperor’s Inner Classic) from the 3rd century BCE.
The history & development of traditional chinese medicine
1. M E M O O N A A R S H A D
G R O U P 1 1
6 T H S E M E S T E R
I S M - I U K
P R E S E N T E D T O : M A M R A H A T
The history of the development
of traditional Chinese medicine
2. Introduction
Traditional Chinese medicine is system of medicine
at least 23 centuries old that aims to prevent or heal
disease by maintaining or restoring yinyang balance.
China has one of the world’s oldest medical systems.
Acupuncture and Chinese herbal remedies date back
at least 2,200 years, although the earliest known
written record of Chinese medicine is the Huangdi
neijing (The Yellow Emperor’s Inner Classic) from
the 3rd century BCE.
3.
4. Introduction (Contd..)
That opus provided the theoretical concepts for TCM
that remain the basis of its practice today.
In essence, traditional Chinese healers seek to
restore a dynamic balance between two
complementary forces, yin (passive) and yang
(active), which pervade the human body as they do
the universe as a whole.
According to TCM, a person is healthy when
harmony exists between these two forces; illness, on
the other hand, results from a breakdown in
the equilibrium of yin and yang.
5. Introduction (Contd..)
A visit to a traditional Chinese pharmacy is like a
visit to a small natural history museum.
The hundreds of cabinet drawers, glass cases, and
jars in a typical pharmacy hold an enormous variety
of desiccated plant and animal material.
In 1578 Li Shizhen published his famous Bencao
gangmu (Compendium of Materia Medica), which
lists 1,892 drugs and some 11,000 formal
prescriptions for specific ailments.
7. The practice of Traditional Medicine
To restore harmony, the Chinese healer may use any
of a staggeringly large array of traditional remedies.
The patient may be treated with acupuncture or
acupressure, moxibustion (moxa treatment), or
cupping (in which hot glass cups are placed on the
patient to draw blood to the skin).
The Chinese healer may prescribe a brew prepared
with one (or some combination) of thousands of
medicinal plants or dried animal parts (e.g., snakes,
scorpions, insects, deer antlers) in the Chinese
pharmaceutical armamentarium.
10. The role of qi and meridians
An essential aspect of TCM is an understanding of the
body’s qi (life force; literally, “vital breath”), which flows
through invisible meridians (channels) of the body.
This energy network connects organs, tissues, veins,
nerves, cells, atoms, and consciousness itself.
Generally speaking, there are 12 major meridians, each of
which connects to one of the 12 major organs in TCM
theory.
Meridians are also related to a variety of phenomena,
including circadian rhythms, seasons, and planetary
movements, to create additional invisible networks.
In acupuncture thin needles are inserted into specific
points along the meridians.
11. The role of qi and meridians (Contd..)
The needles stimulate the meridians and readjust the
flow of qi to balance the body’s yin and yang.
In place of needles, massage (acupressure) can also
be used to stimulate the acupuncture points.
Acupuncture is sometimes accompanied by
moxibustion, the burning of small cones of an herb
(typically Artemisia moxa) at acupuncture points.
Not only can the meridian network be used
to alleviate symptoms; it can also endow TCM with
the ability to change consciousness in those who
receive treatment.
12.
13. The role of qi and meridians (Contd..)
A TCM practitioner uses smell, hearing, voice vibration,
touch, and pulse diagnosis to discover the source of an
unbalanced health condition, which organ it is related to,
and which meridians are affected.
In addition, the practitioner typically makes use of what
is known as the five agents, or five phases (wuxing).
By observing natural law in action, ancient healers
recognized five basic elements in the world—wood (mu),
fire (huo), earth (tu), metal (jin), and water (shui)—and
found that these elements have myriad correspondences,
both visible and invisible.
This framework helps skilled TCM practitioners to
identify unbalanced relationships.
14. The role of qi and meridians (Contd..)
This framework helps skilled TCM practitioners to identify
unbalanced relationships.
For instance, one key correspondence relates to time of day.
If an individual always gets a headache at 4 PM, this signals
that Bladder qi is unbalanced, since the Bladder (of the TCM
Kidney/Bladder organ pair) is in charge of maintaining the
body’s functions at that time.
Using the five-element theory, the practitioner can create a
healing plan that might contain such components as
acupuncture, herbs, lifestyle changes, and foods for healing.
It might also include Chinese psychology, which shows how
the energy of unbalanced emotions can affect proper organ
function.
15. Modern Developments
Various Western scientific disciplines have conducted
studies to learn how Chinese medicine works, but it is
difficult to use a Western yardstick to measure Eastern
medicine.
For example, many studies on acupuncture involve
research that attempts to prove that this modality can
eliminate or reduce pain or alleviate certain conditions.
However, this elementary approach ignores the deeper
insight and experience of Chinese medicine that
the human body has unlimited healing power and that
the complementary energies of health and disease reflect
the yinyang principle within the human body.
16.
17. Genetic research and drug development
The yinyang principle can be applied to a genetic
disease such as inherited breast cancer and its
associated genes BRCA1 and BRCA2.
According to this principle of natural law, if either of
these genes is activated, somewhere in another part of
the genetic code there also exists a gene to fix the action
of the cancer gene, because there is an opposite energy to
the one that produced the disease.
There must be complementary programs running—one
for developing the disease and one for healing it.
Nearly 200 modern medicines have been developed
either directly or indirectly from the 7,300 species of
plants used as medicines in China..
18. Genetic research and drug development (Contd..)
For example, ephedrine, an alkaloid used in
treating asthma, was first isolated from the Chinese
herb mahuang.
Today, scientists continue to identify compounds in
Chinese herbal remedies that may be useful in the
development of new therapeutic agents applicable in
Western medicine.
For example, an alkaloid called huperzine A was isolated
from the moss Huperzia serrata, which is widely used in
China to make the herbal medicine qian ceng ta.
Studies suggest that this agent may compare favorably
with manufactured anticholinesterase drugs such as
donepezil, which are used to treat Alzheimer disease.
19. Meditation & Health
The meditation exercises tai chi (taijiquan)
and qigong (“discipline of the vital breath”) are examples of
other integral features of traditional Chinese healing that have
been incorporated into health and fitness programs to
complement modern medicine.
Tai chi is characterized by deliberately slow, continuous, circular, well-
balanced, and rhythmic movements that were originally practiced as
a martial art.
Qigong, which was known in ancient China as “the method to repel
illness and prolong life,” contains elements of meditation, relaxation
training, martial-arts techniques, and breathing exercises that are
intended to cultivate qi and transmit it to all the bodily organs.
Today, many people worldwide regularly perform these
exercises to promote health and may indeed derive health
benefits from the exercise and relaxation.
23. The four major periods
Between the 29th century BCE and the 16th
century CE Chinese medicine passed through four
major periods.
The first, from the 29th to 27th centuries BCE, was
the time of the three emperors, primarily an era of
myth and legend with only approximate dating of
events.
The events of the next 2,000 years are obscure, but a
slow growth of medical knowledge and gradual
changes in medical practice can be assumed.
24. The four major periods (Contd..)
The second period was a mixture of legend and fact
centred on the career of Bian Qiao (Bian Que)—
about whom anecdotal material dates to the first half
of the 5th century BCE.
25. The four major periods (Contd..)
The third period was that of the great practitioners,
the physicians Zhang Zhongjing and Wang
Shuhe and the surgeon Hua Tuo, running from
about CE 150 to 300.
The individuals and events were real,
although legends have grown up around them.
26. The four major periods (Contd..)
The final 1,300 years, featuring the compilation of
encyclopedic works and the writing of commentaries
on earlier authors, produced little that was original.
In the second half of the 16th century, tenuous
communication began with medical
representativesfrom the West, and the character of
Chinese medicine began to change.
27. References
traditional Chinese medicine - Herbal therapy |
Britannica
A history of Chinese medicine | The Biomedical
Scientist Magazine of the IBMS
