Guest guest Posted August 30, 2004 Report Share Posted August 30, 2004 Jason said: " what are we supposed to do (as clinicians, not historians) with all of these non-recorded folk remedies. Many ancient remedies are completely bogus. " I would argue that there are many things in TCM that are no less bogus. They may justify them based on the texts, but the texts are quite open to interpretation, and, like the I Ching, can be used to justify just about any practice. In my experience, TCM overstates the importance of physical manipulation of needles, for example, and is piss poor when it comes to treating psychoemotional issues. I remember trying to sedate PC8 on an anxious woman, with a 32 gauge needle (small for the Chinese!), with plenty of twisting, when I was a student. It, needless to say, did not help her anxiety.... Benjamin Hawes, MAOM, Lic. Ac., CORTEZ FAMILY ACUPUNCTURE 1430 E. Main Street, Suite #4 Cortez, CO 81321 (970) 565-0230 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted September 10, 2004 Report Share Posted September 10, 2004 Hi It seems to concern a lot of people the term TCM and CM. IMO there is CM ( People who study in Schools) and Chinese traditional Medicine( People who have learned with a master). And well, I think there is a difference between before the communist and after. All books I have studied from BEFORE are using a simple language , explain functions , formulas and theories shortly and rather precise-evrything make sense. Well those books from AFTER (starting from after the CULTURAL REVOLUTION)getting more and more confusing , especially the teaching materials and text books. There is always an explanation in modern Chinese explaining chinese medicine in a modern " scientific " way. Lots of research results are included. A passage on MA HUANG TANG before maybe 10 lines have been blown up to 2 pages, and the more one reads the more confusing it gets. IMO there really is a difference now. Less and less authors stress the importance of the philosophical background(Yin Yang, Jin Ye Jing Qi Xue, 5 Elements etc.) . It seems writers now just chew on the old cut. That may be why our teachers always tell us to read the old books, like from the century before the last. End of last year this was an issue discussed by some Chinese Newspapers; headline: " Will there be in a hundred years? " Bottom Line: most likely not really. Why? Because the real doctors will have died away without passing on their knowledge. I know of some hospitals and schools which have tried and are still trying to keep these traditional doctors, and get them some disciples, but without any exception these granpas just have them sit there, copy prescriptions but don't even consider teaching anything to those. Which is understandable regarding the fact that the traditional way of keeping lifelong loyalty to the teacher has long been washed down the Yellow River. But what people have thought of once can still be rediscovered, IMO just reading and understanding the classics , practicing will be enough to get that knowledge back. And of course move even further. And here another one: I have seen some Westerners getting much better results with than their chinese colleagues, wonder why? Cheers Steve Get your free @.hk address at Mail. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted September 10, 2004 Report Share Posted September 10, 2004 Chinese Medicine , steve brinkop <littleprince_s> wrote: > >> But what people have thought of once can still be rediscovered, IMO just reading and understanding the classics , practicing Chinese Medicine will be enough to get that knowledge back. And of course move even further. And here another one: I have seen some Westerners getting much better results with than their chinese colleagues, wonder why? > > Cheers > > Steve > > Why? Wouldn't Westerners raised in a Western Medicine background be even more " scientific " ? Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest guest Posted September 10, 2004 Report Share Posted September 10, 2004 An interesting post, Steve. I've been thinking about this for some time, in my studies of medical Chinese, both classical and modern. I started out with a modern Chinese language TCM textbook, and even though the characters were simplified, I found it very difficult to read the combinations of characters and long-winded sentences. The journals were even more difficult, with their mixture of classical and modern Chinese sentence structures, along with WM data in Chinese, which is very difficult to read. So, I decided to concentrate on the classical literature, especially the Nan Jing, Shang Han Lun and Wen bing tiao bian/Systematic Classic of Warm Disease. I found it much easier to read, and easier to penetrate. I have a small Nan Jing study group as part of a book project, and in retranslating the Chinese characters recently, I found something very interesting; there was knowledge in the spaces between the words. In other words, the text was written to encourage mental pictures about the concepts being taught. The Unschuld Nan Jing text includes a series of diagrams illustrating the 81 difficult issues by Zhang Shi-xian, (16th century), which further reinforce the visualization process. This method of writing peculiar to the Han dynasty literature allow a very condensed amount of information to be stored in a minimum number of words. I hope this will in some small way illustrate what you are talking about below. On Sep 10, 2004, at 3:02 AM, steve brinkop wrote: Well those books from AFTER (starting from after the CULTURAL REVOLUTION)getting more and more confusing , especially the teaching materials and text books. There is always an explanation in modern Chinese explaining chinese medicine in a modern " scientific " way. Lots of research results are included. A passage on MA HUANG TANG before maybe 10 lines have been blown up to 2 pages, and the more one reads the more confusing it gets. IMO there really is a difference now. Less and less authors stress the importance of the philosophical background(Yin Yang, Jin Ye Jing Qi Xue, 5 Elements etc.) . It seems writers now just chew on the old cut. > But what people have thought of once can still be rediscovered, IMO > just reading and understanding the classics , practicing Chinese > Medicine will be enough to get that knowledge back. And of course move > even further. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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