patterns

[Guest guest]

The discussion of anthrax was timely for me because I had been planning

to post on one of the issues that came up during this discussion.

Alon has made it clear that he is uncomfortable with treating an illness

with TCM just because we can find symptom sign complex that resembles the

manifestations of the disease in a given patient. Bob is concerned

whether we should go down this road because there is no reference to anthrax

in CM lit he has access to. Z'ev has sided with Alon in the past

when discussing the pattern differentiation of western diseases, such as

presented in many modern TCM texts. Yet Z'ev and Bob have also long

been advocates of treating presenting patterns even if no western diagnosis

is available. We merely study chinese bing that match one or more

of the chief manifestations and proceed from there. Now, I wouldn't

try and treat anthrax unless conventional therapy had no chance of success.

But pulmonary anthrax is almost always fatal, so it makes sense to consider

what we might do, at least for our families and friend if this happened.

But to me, the larger question is why is it wrong to treat new diseases

based upon symptom sign complexes they resemble? I mean the use of

formulas like xiao chai hu tang has been successfully expanded to treat

far more than the condition originally described by zhang zhong jing (whatever

it may have been). This expansion is based upon applying the formula

to the pattern it treats without regard for the named disease. thus,

it is used for mental disorders, menstrual complaints, prostate problems,

hepatitis, malaria, etc.

What is a disease from the TCM perspective other than its manifestations?

As long as one makes correct pattern dx, one should be able to improve

the patient's health. I think a lot of this debate uses the straw

man technique, in which one debates a point that no one is making and then

knocks down the straw man and claims victory. This came up

when Bob's TCM Psych book was released and will no doubt surface again

when BP releases their modern western diseases book. The straw man

is the equation of diseases one to one with patterns. We saw a lot

of this during the early days of treatment of AIDS with TCM. People

laid out competing theories that claimed AIDS was a form of Cold Damage

or a Hidden Warm Evil or Jing vacuity or yin vacuity or spleen vacuity,

each proponent insisting that their model was correct. Yet the actual

point that is made in well done books like those from BP is that NO textbook

pattern will FIT a real live patient. Textbooks basically plot points

on a continuum. They are static. Patients are dynamic.

We use the static info from books to guide us in creating unique formulas

for our dynamic patients. What is the difference between defining

the continuum of possibilities for a western disease in a textbook by analyzing

possible S/S complexes that resemble the typical manifestations or analyzing

the S/S complex of a given patient and choosing herbs to match the pattern.

I don't understand how you can argue for the latter and against the former.

Or should we just not treat diseases that have not been actually researched

in modern China? The purpose of a text is to provide an easily accessed

compilation of patterns that resemble a disease. It serves no other

purpose than to provide at one's fingertips what one would otherwise spend

hours doing on their own each time. So whether we are talking about

the similarity of anthrax to wen bing or lily disease to early stage parkinsons

in some cases, what other process do we have than pattern differentiation?

 

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