Kingsley Leung, Public Health in China, Summer 2013
Traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) is something that has been part of my life for as long as I remember. Ever since I was little, terminology and theories regarding traditional medicine were used in my household as easily as families in America will talk about the common cold or aspirin. When I had a cough I would drink soup made from ginseng. When I had canker sores in my mouth it was because I had too much yang. I applied special Chinese medicine made by my grandfather if I had a bruise. I had drank many bitter medicine and boiled cola for a variety of sicknesses. All of these may seem very bizarre to my friends in America, but to me they were a very simple part of my culture. It was what I did when I was sick, even when I knew I had modern medicine. In fact, often times when I felt like one type of medicine would not work, I would just switch to the other type. One was never more effective than the other for me – it just depended on the circumstances.
That was why I had wanted to take a class on TCM. I wanted to be able to explain what exactly it was about certain herbs that made them effective for certain situations. Why did my mom ask my sisters to perform “gua sha” on her when she felt sick? What was it about sticking a needle into specific points in the body that helped ease a person’s pain, when it seemed like that very action would cause pain? Especially since I had grown up in the American culture, surrounded by Western medicine, and I was learning about the scientific method in school, I needed to understand the theory behind TCM. Surely, trial and error produce the knowledge that it held, but has it ever undergone extensive peer review or experimentation? This and more I had hoped to find out here in Beijing. This class was personally important.
I loved the field trips we went on for this class. We got first-hand experience on many of the methods that we were studying in class. One of my favorite field trips was a trip to take a lesson on the massage method “tuina.” After a brief introduction, the professor jumped right into the different ways to massage and why they were done, and then allowed us to experiment on each other. While it was very fun and occasionally silly, it also felt very authentic and real. I understood the methods so much more when I was applying it on others than when I was just simply reading it out of a book. What better way to learn about TCM than to actually practice it?
At the end of the course, I felt like I had a much firmer grasp on the theory behind TCM. However, I wasn’t sure if this knowledge had led me to put any more or less faith in the power of TCM. On the one hand, there is evidence suggesting that this sort of treatment does work, in terms of its healing effects on patients. However, the theory in which they based the medicine on is extremely abstract, and very difficult to prove scientifically. This shows, of course, a very sharp cultural difference between more traditional times, where methods were questioned less, and modern times, when all theories must undergo the scientific method in order to be deemed legitimate. While I believe cultural integrity is important, I also think it is important for cultures to change and adapt with time. If it does not do that, modern medicine will eventually sweep traditional medicine away from the world, and a great part of the Chinese culture will be wiped away. Hopefully traditional medicine will adapt along with the modern world so it can achieve a new age.
Some of us stayed behind class to have our teacher give us a TCM check-up!
This is where you insert a needle for shoulder problems…
TCM class in the hospital