Medicine and Public Health Should Lead People Toward a Disease-Free, Healthy, Long-Lived Path
Chinese medicine and pharmacy are the great and excellent cultural science of the Chinese nation; in theory and in technique they deserve vigorous research and development, to be brought forth and made splendid, for a greater contribution to humankind. This is the glorious duty of the sons and daughters of China.
Chinese medicine is developed on the theoretical base of Heaven-Earth-Human as one whole, in accord with the integral law of nature. Western astronomy and medicine fall far short.
The Gregorian calendar in worldwide use today, with its 365 days, only marks the date in a simple way; it serves no further purpose.
Our Chinese calendar — now called the agricultural or Xia calendar — derives the year of four seasons and twelve months and the corresponding time-regularities from the motions of the sun, earth, moon, and stars, and is regulated by intercalary months and large-and-small months.
A year has four seasons, twelve months, spring-summer-autumn-winter, twenty-four solar terms — Beginning of Spring, Beginning of Summer, Beginning of Autumn, Beginning of Winter, Pure Brightness, Summer Solstice, Autumn Equinox, Winter Solstice, and so on. Take Beginning of Spring: it is the start of spring. At the exact minute of Beginning of Spring each year, a fresh egg can stand upright on a level table or floor and not fall — over that moment, it falls. The motions of sun, moon, stars also rotate the yolk inside the eggshell; at the moment of Beginning of Spring the yolk sits in the center of the egg's broad end, so the egg stands. Again: before Beginning of Summer, a crab's yellow is still yellow; pass that moment, and it transforms into eggs. After Awakening of Insects, insects emerge from their holes; at Beginning of Summer, the cuckoo arrives; at Beginning of Autumn the cricket sings. The West does not pay the moon its due: not knowing the lunar motion, they do not know the rule of tides — and so they print a year's ebb and flow on a big table, looking up where and when each tide rises and falls. Absurd.
The Chinese astronomy is high and complete, bound to daily life. On the 18th of the 8th lunar month, the Qiantang River is famous for the largest tide of the year — a wonder, a natural law. On lunar New Year's Eve there is also a great tide, but at night unseen.
The Chinese say: human life depends on one breath of qi; lose the qi and one dies.
Without qi, no life on earth — neither grasses, trees, fish, shrimp, insects, ants; and the seas and rivers would be without water, for water and qi mutually depend, neither standing alone.
Human physiology, in TCM, begins from qi moves, blood moves — the motion of qi and blood — that lets the five zang and six fu function.
Westerners hold that human life depends on the beating of the heart, which moves all body functions; they do not speak of qi. So they do not understand human physiology. Anatomy alone cannot grasp physiology, because physiology is not separable from the body; once separated, qi-and-blood motion cannot be seen.
What stands out: TCM, apart from the zang-fu organs, also has the twelve channels, the eight extraordinary channels, the fifteen collaterals — and hundreds of acupoints on the body surface. These channels are, as I see them, like electrical current; the points are like switches — press a point and the symptom yields. Westerners have not yet found the channels and points. This whole functional system and the zang-fu form one system; inner-organ function and surface function form one integral function. Acupuncture's ziwu liuzhu (midnight-noon ebb-flow) is from this same principle. Growth, mind, intelligence, health, illness, life-and-death — all are the workings of this physiology's flourishing and decline.
Practice shows: with normal physiology, the person does not fall ill; with weakened physiology, illness comes. By the right technique — acupuncture, manipulation, tuina — at the right place, the function is regulated and recovered, and the illness goes. From this one sees: TCM treatment and prescription work not by directly removing illness but by helping the function recover. No drug is brought into the body by hand-treatment, and the illness goes. This is certain. This poses a new scientific problem for modern physiology-and-pathology; I urge it be studied.
We must give heart to fully grasp the theoretical system of body-function and its specific actions, train people in it, spread it widely, apply it to clinical treatment and health-keeping, into daily life — and at the same time encourage every kind of exercise. I believe in the future, people will entirely be able to reach the realm of disease-free, healthy, long-lived.