Guest guest Posted February 7, 2004 Report Share Posted February 7, 2004 chapter 8 in paradigm's SHL is on yin yang exchange. this is described as the transmission of the cold pathogen from one sex to another during intercourse in the main commentary. However an alternate commentary faults this idea and says the clause actually refers to the pathogen moving between yin and yang channels. I surveyed several of the more knowledgeable chinese professors at PCOM about this and they all agreed with the latter commentary, dismissing the idea that the ancient chinese understood sexual transmission at all. So I wonder why the paradigm text gives primacy to the idea of this phrase meaning sexual transmission. Which idea is actually consensus, if either. Also, note the symptoms of this pattern do not resemble any acute STD. Finally, just to be clear, I am not claiming the chinese could not have guessed about sexual transmission of acute diseases with very overt symptoms like gonorrhea and perhaps primary syphilis, but rather they could not connect the dots between a microbial infection leading to disease decades later. Keep in mind this also does not mean I think the chinese could not treat such ailments when they surfaced. Tertiary syphilis could be treated based merely upon signs and symptoms, perhaps even effectively. I just said one could easily draw the wrong etiological conclusion if syphilis or some other ancient chinese STD (aids like, perhaps?) led to chronic diseases attributed to excessive sex (when the infection could have been due to a single sexual contact in an otherwise upstanding jing conserving kind of guy). That's what every chinese doc and self proclaimed TCM expert I knew was saying about AIDs in the early 80's, even well past the day the virus was found. That it was due to lifestyle and jing loss. I bought it all hook line and sinker at the time myself. It fed the latent homophobia already endemic in american society and thus was easily accepted by the CM community. The fact that antiviral therapy is the only thing that ever worked to actually save lives kind of made the final case, though. Chinese Herbs FAX: Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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