Chinese Medicine and the Medicine of the Future
Deng Tietao
Western medicine is the mainstream of world medicine today; it is rooted in Western culture. Chinese medicine is the only medicine in the world with five thousand years of continuous history, independent of Western medicine; it is rooted in Chinese culture. Western medicine has been in China only some two hundred years. For five thousand years, the health-care of the Chinese people — 1.3 billion strong — has rested on Chinese medicine. The history of infectious disease in China is proof: from the Eastern Han onward, outbreaks were many; yet nothing like Europe's 14th- and 16th-century plague, or the 1918 Spanish flu's twenty-million-plus dead, has ever been seen in China. Why? The work of Chinese medicine. In the 2003 SARS outbreak, world statistics show the mainland-China mortality was the lowest; Guangzhou's lower still. The reason: Guangzhou brought TCM into treatment earliest.
On culture: over the last four or five hundred years, Western culture has developed quickly and benefited humankind — yet is not perfect. I estimate the 21st century will be the age of Western and Eastern cultural fusion. The many hard problems of the modern world will be solved with the help of Eastern culture. China is the representative of Eastern culture. As for future medicine — it will be the integration of Western medicine and Chinese medicine into a more perfect whole.
1. Humane heart, humane art is future medicine's highest spiritual realm
Humaneness is the Confucian core. The humane loves human beings. That a doctor loves the patient is the doctor's natural duty — hence humane heart. Chinese medicine has another saying: —— in the embrace — the doctor takes the patient's pain as his own, naturally working with whole heart for the patient. One must never, for the sake of research or a paper, or for money, run unnecessary tests on a patient, or do surgery for profit. Human-organ trafficking is criminal.
How does a doctor express that love? In humane art — a stern requirement. Modern medicine is a biomedicine; many treatments and techniques were honed on animals. Many treatments may solve one disease but leave a lifelong sorrow. For example: in a feverish child, antibiotics bring the fever down, but the ears go deaf. By reports, China produces 30,000 deaf-mute children a year. Or gastric ulcer with bleeding (++++) — when the bleeding cannot be stopped, much of the stomach is removed. Or diabetic foot — disease in a toe — but the foot is cut off; not cured, then the leg is cut. Such craft cannot be called humane art. However high modern surgery has gone in technique, the great direction is wrong. Chinese medicine can cure many acute abdominal cases by non-surgical treatment. By the test of humane art, that is the future. By the 3rd century, the Jinkui Yaolüe already used Dahuang Mudanpi Decoction orally to treat appendicitis. The method is still repeatable. Non-surgical treatment of ectopic pregnancy preserves reproductive organs; after cure, the patient can still have children. How fine. Humane art is the future medicine's important soul.
2. The medical model will move toward human-and-Heaven
The Western medical model was biological. Late in the 20th century this was admitted to be wrong, and the model became biopsychosocial. A step forward — but still not whole. While psychology and society are valued, the human has not been placed first. The great difference: Western medicine focuses on treating the disease; Chinese medicine focuses on treating the sick person. Chinese medicine puts the person first, by its macroscopic theory placing the person between Heaven, Earth, and human community for observation, diagnosis, and treatment. Under the Chinese-culture view Heaven and the human as one, if one must name a model, it is Heaven and the human in correspondence, or human-and-Heaven for short — observing health-care, prevention, and treatment by time, region, group, individual. Chinese medicine diagnosis and treatment do not chase only the disease: by time, place, person the whole environment and the whole individual are addressed in pattern-discernment and treatment. In 2003, Chinese medicine could not chase the "coronavirus" but, by climate and the patient's pattern, identified SARS as a damp-evil-dominant epidemic. Pattern-discernment-treatment and prevention followed — with good effect.
A specific example: I once treated an athlete with abdominal pain. A major Guangzhou hospital could not cure her; to confirm diagnosis, they opened the abdomen and examined every organ, found no root, sutured up — the pain remained. I diagnosed deficiency of qi-and-blood with qi-stagnation and blood-stasis, used qi- and blood-supplementing herbs with blood-quickening herbs, and cured her. The case shows: Western medicine seeks a disease-root in the abdomen; Chinese medicine adjusts the whole to treat the person.
3. Yangsheng matters more than treatment
Chinese medicine: the superior physician treats what has not yet become illness. This guiding thought includes prevent before disease, treat early when disease arises. The focus is prevention. Western medicine values prevention too — hygiene. But the West is passive; Chinese medicine is active. Western prevention is outer defense — absolute sterility, disinfection. Chinese medicine values the active role of the human, his resistance. Yangsheng has millennia of deposits, rich content. Future medicine must put yangsheng in first place. Even rich America cannot bear its skyrocketing medical bill. Under capitalism, large drug companies will not support cures — a hypertension patient must take the pill daily; with side effects, switch to a new drug, new price, ever higher. That is the way of profit. TCM's qigong both prevents and treats hypertension.
By modern productive capacity, under a reasonable system, an adult working 5 days/week, 8 months/year is enough. Split the year in two: half — 4 months of work and 2 months of yangsheng, recreation, sports, art, and other things one loves, with no worry or pressure. Health and longevity would be the better.
Desires are endless — so we must teach the self-indulgent sub-healthy with Chinese medicine's yangsheng theory.
4. The road of future medicine
Medicine is not only the microscopic Western kind; the macroscopic Chinese medicine is also science.
For SARS, Western medicine spent vast effort to catch the coronavirus under electron microscope, then sought how to kill it. Chinese medicine, by time, climate, evil's properties, individual difference, and pattern, did pattern-discernment-treatment, addressing the time-place-person macroscopic phenomenon for prevention and treatment. The facts show: TCM was better than the West in preventing and treating SARS. TCM's preventive-drug strength is clear.
Myasthenia gravis — Western research has run a hundred years on the microscopic, made animal models, and has many treatments. Removal of thymus is the trump card, but for most patients only remission, not cure, and relapse is common. Chinese medicine has researched the disease only for 40-plus years. We did not follow the nerve-theory road. By TCM theory we conclude spleen-and-stomach deficiency, the five storehouses interlinked. Our experience: cases with short course, no pyridostigmine, no steroids, no thymectomy — easiest to cure.
For coronary bypass perioperative care, we have collaborated only a few years — but already this method is superior to surgery alone. Our final aim is to use TCM comprehensive treatment to replace surgery.
Full and equal cooperation of Chinese and Western medicine — its future is bright; creating future medicine together for human health and happiness is achievable.
5. The hope of the 21st century
Future medicine advances by stages. Our hopes for the first half of the 21st century:
(1) Humankind frees itself from the side effects of chemical drugs, and from invasive diagnostic and treatment technologies' pain and sequelae. Medicine must speak humaneness — humane heart, humane art — the highest professional ethic.
(2) Practice the superior physician treats what has not yet become illness; medicine centers on yangsheng — life happier, more comfortable, more open.
(3) Medicine will progressively replace the hospital with health gardens as the main form; hospitals will become auxiliary.
(4) Medicine, beyond the scientific category, will reach into culture, aesthetics, and the arts — lifting medicine from bodily health into the beautiful realm of the inner life: medicine, literature, fine art, calligraphy, music, song-dance, fine food, medicinal cuisine, qigong, martial arts, healthful travel, simulated environments, dream worlds. Receiving health-care should be joy, not toil.
(5) The Third World must shake off poverty and backwardness to enter the future-medicine world together. The causes of Third-World poverty and backwardness are great-power politics, racial oppression, and predatory war. To save a dying patient is exhausting; to kill a person, only a finger on the trigger.
How are we to achieve the fine wish of future medicine? Will war and medicine, killing and saving, always go together? The human, spirit of the ten thousand things, will wake. The dawn of human suffering's relief rises in the East.
October 15, 2004