Let the Spring of Sweet Dew Moisten the Four Quarters (Excerpts)
China Ethnic Medicine Association · Zhu Guoben
(18 August 2001)
Mongolian medicine is, first of all, the crystal of the Mongolian people's long life and medical practice. A Mongolian proverb: "Illness begins in poor digestion; medicine begins in boiled water." Simple-sounding, this names the truth of every traditional medicine's making — a key to learning and grasping any traditional medicine. Medicine is the lifelong exploration of life from groan to grave: born of groan, made in suffering, gathered between life-and-death, developed by inheritance — over long ages, surveying countless life-phenomena, mobilizing the most advanced philosophical thought and scientific means of the time, step by step probing the laws of human life-and-death. The Mongolian people long lived in cold, damp, snowy northern China; their hunting, herding, water-and-grass-following horseback life; their facing of cold-patterns, bone-injuries, gut-and-stomach trouble — these common conditions; their use of food, moxa, herbs and the simple-valid-convenient-inexpensive methods — these were the soil and base of Mongolian medicine.
In the 13th century, the Mongol nation rose in the East. After Genghis Khan's unification of the Mongol regions, eastern and western expeditions built a Eurasian empire — favorable conditions for East-West cultural exchange and fusion. From Liao, Jin, and Southern Song to Western Asia and the Arabian peninsula — Chinese medicine, Khitan medicine, Hui medicine, ancient Indian medicine, Arabic medicine, ancient Greek medicine — naturally met. The Mongol empire actively drew them in and synthesized them, giving its early Mongolian medicine new life. That is Mongolian medicine's second factor of formation.
After the 16th century, Tibetan Buddhism reached the Mongol regions; Buddhist culture became the mainstream Mongol culture, and Tibetan medicine took its place there. This is the great moment of Mongolian medicine's full forming. From then, on the rich practice of the Mongol people, Mongolian medicine drew in ancient Indian and Tibetan medicine — the three roots, seven essences on yin-yang and five-element theory; and Mongol scholars like Yixibalazhu'er developed it. Yixibalazhu'er (1704–1788) — across Kangxi, Yongzheng, Qianlong — knew philosophy, history, literature, Buddhism, medicine, astronomy, calendar. His Four Sweet-Dew series enriched Mongolian medicine theoretically. "His Spring of Sweet Dew is a classic of Mongolian medical basic theory — on physiology, pathology, diagnosis, treatment principles and methods, formulas — refined." Especially his theory of cold-patterns and six basic patterns — filling in earlier gaps, opening what predecessors had not — was decisive for the founding of Mongolian medicine's theoretical system. Hence Mongolian medicine has two features: first, the unity of human-with-nature and the body's stable inner balance are physiological-and-pathological base, with Tibetan medicine's Four Medical Tantras as the scholarly frame and the tool of theoretical exposition; second, in practice, a disease-spectrum unlike South Asia's or the Tibetan plateau's — focused on the common Mongolian-grassland illnesses, a clinical medicine of distinct character. An example of take in broadly, inherit and innovate in world-cultural-exchange history.
Like every science, Mongolian medicine's life is in innovation. It has not forgotten its source in the broad grassland's sweet-dew spring; it keeps its freshness; on full inheritance, holds its own character and strength, raises capacity in prevention-and-treatment, opens forward by its own laws. Its openness and inclusivity give it room — to fit the time's needs, to use advanced science and modern means. Modern science here is broad and deep — not to be reduced to Westernizing or scientizing in place of traditional Mongolian medicine, nor to a simple mix of Mongolian and Western. Inevitably Mongolian medicine, as it goes forward, will face renewal and discard. We take such renewal as a normal metabolism — unavoidable, no need to evade.
To rightly treat traditional Chinese and Mongolian medicine is not just a medical-health issue — it touches our country's whole cultural, academic-freedom, and ethnic policy. Respect and recognition of ethnic cultures is the premise for inheriting and developing ethnic medicine; awareness needs further raising. Western modern-medicine authorities have said "alternative medicine does not exist. There is one medicine in the world: that which is scientifically proved by objective data and that which lacks scientific basis and is unproved." They fully deny traditional medicine's excellent results, deny humanity's medical creation before modern medicine. A cultural prejudice, an ignorance. Western scientists themselves now propose high tech, high thought; high thought includes artistic creation and alternative medicine. All world-class traditional medicine shares a feature: integral observation of the human and active regulation, with attention to natural-drug use and the cleverness of hand — the essence of traditional medicine. In Qing-era Mongol Korqin grassland there was Narenab (1770–1855), a bonesetter of superb skill, called the divine doctor with the hands of a fairy maid. After his death the Qing government built a tomb and a white-stone stele. Before his death he told his son: "A bonesetter's two hands are the cleverest of all bonesetting tools." Today we seek such hands. Either find them again, or create even cleverer ones by wisdom. But those clever hands should belong to Mongolian medicine.