Traditional Chinese Medicine: Treating the Human System

By Mu Shan

Trans. by Lin Wei

As a culture, Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) is in fact considered far more than a medical science for people.

Modern medicine, represented by Western Medicine (WM), regards the human body as no more than an assemblage of anatomic organs in which pathological states exist in isolation from the overall well-being of the person who suffers from them. In its treatment, almost everything is dominated by western medications and instruments and essentially these objects, instead of the “person,” are the focus. In TCM, however, there is no such thing as a “partial disease”; instead, the person as a whole is taken into account, and medical materials and therapeutics are subject to specific human conditions based on its traditions and ideas.

In TCM, the human body, as a natural product, is also the quintessence and an extension of nature. In a way, both humans and nature are bound to follow the Dao (the rule of the universe) – the heavenly Dao begets as well as serves the human Dao, resulting in the core values and therapeutics of TCM, its conceptual holism and treatment based on syndrome differentiation.

It is thus difficult to define TCM in modern scientific terms, since what it treats are actually not diseases as such, but rather individual persons. A complex entity synchronizing natural and social sciences and philosophy, both physical and spiritual, objective and subjective, partial and integral, which requires comprehensive, multidimensional and dialectical consideration – that constitutes the kernel of TCM.

For a TCM practitioner, a disease is not merely pathology in cause lies in the person as a whole. For example, a person’s mood has some subtle and profound effects on his or her health and conditions – the phenomenon has increasingly been proved by the facts, but WM finds it hard to accept and explain.

From my experience as a natural therapist researcher abroad, I have witnessed the “stop-gap” and “removal of lesion” approach of WM being increasingly questioned by the public, who have started shifting their attention to TCM, where a headache may be cured from the foot, or an eye complaint treated in the liver, or a kidney deficiency supplemented by the spleen and so on. Fascinated by its remarkable curative effects, more and more people have tried and received TCM treatment.

Given the fact that the system builds in the nature of the universe extended to human bodies it produced, it should naturally be the focus of medicine, not the technology or facilities: no matter how advanced these are, they will never replace human factors. It is true that under a microscope one can find bacteria – but not the mentalities and emotions that may have caused the malady.

In this sense, TCM should never be regarded as “clinical medicine” only, but rather as systematic diagnosis and treatment for people based on a natural understanding of individual human conditions.