Hongkong CM doctors wants hospital access to SAR...

[Guest guest]

Rory -

 

As you might imagine, it is a great topic of inquiry amongst our Chinese faculty. They consider it to be winter and spring warm disease. One of the criteria is the timing of arrival, especially the spread as the warm winds of spring and the humid weather allow proliferation of the virus. They accordingly nod yes at my inquiry about pestilential disease - but - the death rates are very low compared to infections according to the last CDC Power Point presentation I saw. [Rey, I appreciate your view of the pleuralistic east-west approach as applied throughout much of the mainland to be a hodge podge. And - I especially appreciate the reading of your posts. However, I find the discussion of Wen Bing and Shang Han Lun theory relative to viral theory useful as do our mainland faculty.]

 

Will

 

 

At the early stages of

the SARS epidemic , they have seen the epidemic as 'Spring

Warm Febrile diseases ' or Chun Wen ; Wind-Heat ' or Feng Re

which are sub-categories under the broad classification under

Wen Bing. It is very different from the hodge-podge mainland

perspective which is always straining to see the Ming Dynasty

Wu You Xing's notion of 'pestilential Qi' or Li Qi as modernistic

virus, bacteria and microorganisms.

--

 

 

Rey,

 

 

According to my reading, (which is probably the same as others on this list), Wu developed the theory of li qi in response to epidemics for which the wen bing methods of the time (1600s AD) were inadequate, and people were dying in droves. So, while current biases in hospital based practice in China may show a preference for li qi theory in the SARS epidemic, there is good historic justification for this choice as well.

 

From what we've seen described, it seems to me that the wind-warmth category fits better than the spring-warmth. However, it may be better that these categories should be used flexibly, rather than assuming that it has to be one or another.