Using Modern Science Properly to Advance TCM's *bianzheng shizhi* (Excerpt)
TCM was gradually created by our ancestors in long struggle against disease in medical practice. In the development of our society, it secured the flourishing of the Chinese nation, was strictly tested by long clinical practice, and in that testing took firm root. It has a fairly complete theoretical system, richly varied therapeutic methods, abundant experience, reliable effect — truly a great treasure-house. TCM has the clear features of Eastern medicine; it is a precious cultural legacy left by our ancestors, the treasure of our nation.
Yet under the Nanjing-government Republican era, Yu Yan and other nationalist nihilists exhausted slander and attack on it. "Until the old medicine is gone, the popular thought will not change; the new medicine's enterprise will not rise; health administration cannot advance" — they were determined to wipe out TCM. In 1929, at the first Central Health Committee Conference under the Nanjing government, ignoring national interest, the so-called Proposal to Abolish the Old Medicine to Clear the Obstacle to Medical-and-Health Affairs by Yu Yan and others was passed, aiming to abolish TCM nationwide. People rose to oppose; TCM and herbal circles and forward-looking figures formed petitions. On March 17, 1929, joint representatives went to Nanjing to petition, forcing the government to rescind the bill of the Central Health Committee. TCM nationwide was preserved, winning a place to live on the 9.6 million square kilometers of our land. But the Nanjing government from then on ignored TCM, letting it live and die on its own. Yu Yan was unwilling to admit defeat; after the founding of the PRC, in the 1950 National Health Work Conference he changed tactics, putting forth the so-called Draft Plan for Steps in Remaking the Old Medicine, passed, planning to "eliminate the majority, retain the few, remake and turn them into medical assistants" — a 40-year plan to wipe out TCM. National TCM registration with Western-medicine examinations was then conducted.
On October 20, 1954, People's Daily published the editorial Carry Out the Correct Policy toward TCM; thereafter the chief leaders of the Ministry of Health were openly criticized for slighting, discriminating against, and excluding TCM. The error in TCM work was corrected. TCM teaching, research, and treatment institutions sprang up across the country; TCM had a stage on which to deploy its talent in serving people's health. TCM treated illness without carving the boat to find the sword: it held to the lively thought "disease changes ten thousand ways; medicine too changes ten thousand ways" (Lüshi Chunqiu · Shen Da Lan · Cha Jin) and cured "diseases the world's doctors could not cure" (see Jiankang Bao, Nov 18, 1955, p.2), pulling an aplastic-anemia patient back from the line of death. For many modern intractable diseases, TCM holds therapeutic advantages; especially in rehabilitation and delaying aging, its superiority is unmatched.
With the world's drug-iatrogenic disease rising, people seek to return to nature in care and treatment — and TCM is the first choice. By its reliable effect and safe character, it has reached 120+ countries and regions, sharing in the responsibility for world health.
Today we mark Guoyi Festival — to not forget history; to remember the forebears who defended right, would not bow to power, fought for reason, preserved TCM; to further inherit and develop TCM and push it forward. The Song physician Shi Song in the Lingshu Jing · Preface said: "To be a physician lies in reading medical books. There are those who read and cannot be physicians; there has been none who, not reading, can be a physician." TCM canon fills oxcarts when carried out, fills rafters when stored; the content is vast, the scholarship deep. National TCM colleagues must be diligent in reading, bold in practice, earnest in summing up, ceaseless in lifting — work hard to excavate the abundant treasure of this great treasure-house. While fully using TCM traditional strengths, actively absorb modern science: with modern science's instruments, extend our sense organs, expand the four diagnoses of inspection-listening-asking-palpation to know deep pathological change, accumulate large data in practice; do not be led by the nose by others' existing conclusions. Use TCM theory as guide; on existing data do careful research and find new regularities; bring them into bianzheng shizhi and so develop it. Not to develop TCM with modern science is foolish; but to mechanically apply modern science's knowledge and methods, without the creative TCM work, and be led by others' existing conclusions, is equally foolish.
In TCM's absorbing and using modern science and walking toward modernization, lessons must be drawn — guard against westernization; do not throw away one's own character and strengths, do not throw away the living soul. Remember: decades of experience prove that abolish-medicine, keep-the-herbs and TCM westernization harm others and oneself — absolutely no way out.