traditional chinese malpractice

[Guest guest]

I was musing over Karen's point that we couldn't suggest that the

confucian scholar doctors were more effective than the family tradition

doctors. There is certainly no way to know the truth of this, but one

thing is clear from the classical literature is that the scholar doctors

frequently wrote of the rampant medical malpractice in imperial china.

It was their perception that many unschooled herbalists were not using

bian zheng diagnosis, but merely using formula for diseases instead of

patterns.

 

This often resulted in hot patients receiving aconite and excess

patients getting large doses of ginseng or weak patients being purged

with rhubarb till they expired. Unlike modern doctors, the confucian

scholars did not usually earn a living from medicine. The itinerant

herbalists, as Unschuld called them, usually practiced for money,

though. I would argue that the confucians had no vested economic

interest in descrying the medical practices around them, that they were

acting out of social benevolence against what they perceived as medical

profiteering. The solution to the problem recommended was always the

same: more study of the classics.

 

todd