what is CM?

[Guest guest]

, " "

<@c...> wrote:

>

>

> >

> >

 

>

> " Even the 'major' texts authors, like ZZJ, LiDongYuan, ZhuDanxi

etc. I

> thought all saw many patients. Have you heard different? "

>

> Meaning I am unsure about ZZJ and LiDongYuan, but pretty sure

about ZhuDanXi

> (I don't have my books here) - Do others know...?

 

 

 

We don't really know how many patients any of them saw. We just know

what historians like Unschuld have to say on the subject in a general

way. I think the following are commonly accepted historical facts:

The literate docs represented a minority tradition in China and most

folks just could not read. Simple as that. ZZJ seemed to be

primarily focused on preventing further harm to his remaining family

members, not the general public. And whether the old masters saw

patients or not, it is my understanding that many of the commentators

during later dynasties were confucian gentlemen who did not really

practice, except to tend to grandma or wife or child. So even if

these guys from the jin-yuan and earlier were actually busy docs,

their ideas were refined in later dynasties by many who were

primarily scholars or researchers, not clinicians. We certainly

can't put ultimate stock in a set of ideas that looked good on paper

to a tiny number of scholar doctors, but were only sporadically

applied in clinic by the practicing herbalist (if by herbalist one

includes all those who practiced in ancient China).

 

This is at least the overall impression I get from Unschuld's

Medicine in China: A History of Ideas. And even moreso in

Forgotten Traditions where the author rails endlessly against the

bogus ideas of the so-called jin-yuan masters. Or in Unschuld's

picture book on historical artifacts, in which he examines the

marketing wars between rank and file herbalists and literati doctors

(by examing their advertisements and concurrent texts of the period -

you can dismiss some of Unschuld's conclusions, but you can't

unimpressed with the ethnographic evidence he has accumulated - we

are free to interpret it in different ways or at least try). There

was apparently an ongoing cultural battle between elitest scholars

and those who actually dug around in the dirt. What did Paracelsus

say as he was burning Galen's books in the courtyard of the

University? Something like he learned everything of value from the

witches and midwives. The books were the pontifications of idiots.

Well, I wouldn't go near as far, but I suspect at least a kernel of

truth in that statement. Whenever abstract and highly complex mental

machinations on the natural world become too divorced from practice,

the end result is not useful. If ZZJ knew what he was doing, it was

because he was in the trenches.

 

Chinese medicine may have very well declined in China during the Ming

for the same reason galenic medicine declined in the west during the

same era. The proponents had become so lost in their own minds that

the medicine no longer worked as it had in days of old. This was the

point in Forgotten Traditions. We need to take Bob Felt's plea to

heart. We have institutionalized a form of CM that has always

enjoyed elite patronage,but was not necessarily the medicine actually

practiced by most. This would include illiterate healers and

literate herbalists who did not adhere to the bian zheng tradition.

One may assume the bian zheng tradition is superior because it came

later in history and is oh so more complex. But I recall a letter I

wrote many years ago to Bob Flaws, long before this list existed or I

even had an email address. In that letter, I wondered why the

herbalization of acupuncture was so bad, when during the jin-yuan,

what happened was essentially an acupuncturization of herbology. for

those who have no idea what I am talking about, you are probably

lucky. But there is the position held by many that acupoints were

not assigned herbal type functions before the modern era. I believe

this has been proven false in absolute terms, but overall this

undertaking really was largely a modern one. Similarly, during the

jin-yuan dynasty, the theories of the nei jing, an acupuncture book,

were first systematically applied to herbology. Why is one bad and

the other a leap forward?

 

Ask yourselves honestly about all the practitioners you know who

prescribe mostly patents, have a largely disease orientation in their

practices, who have abandoned any part of TCM that does not suit them

and grafted on whatever they pleased? Do these folks do well? Get

good results? Have happy patients? Now how many Americans who will

only prescribe some form of raw herb individually tailored herb

formula and will not really do much else are able to support

themselves solely in practice. Lets just say less than the former

group. We have to give our patients and peers some credit. This

cannot all be delusion. People are probably really getting better.

Who gets to define CM? It is clear that many of those who are making

policy have given little or no thought to the many and varied

complexities of this matter and have plowed full stream ahead anyway.

 

I think a solution may be found in part by scrapping the current mode

of assessment, which is rooted to a large degree in Skinnerian

behaviorism. I feed you knowledge, give you a reward, ring a bell,

you do a trick and when the stimulus is removed, the training fades

(i.e. utterly worthless). If exams were geared towards assessment of

cognitive skills like problem solving, they could be designed to more

flexible in assessing those who used different styles of practice.

But that would not only necessitate our accreditors and examiners

behaving in a highly progressive way, it would require a major change

in attitude amongst policymakers about what is CM.

 

 

[Guest guest]

It is interesting that you use the example of Paracelsus, since he

almost single-handedly ended the era of polypharmacy herbal medicine

based on pattern differentiation and established the use of toxic

substances in single doses to treat diseases.

 

 

On Jul 18, 2005, at 9:07 PM, wrote:

 

> What did Paracelsus

> say as he was burning Galen's books in the courtyard of the

> University? Something like he learned everything of value from the

> witches and midwives. The books were the pontifications of idiots.

> Well, I wouldn't go near as far, but I suspect at least a kernel of

> truth in that statement. Whenever abstract and highly complex mental

> machinations on the natural world become too divorced from practice,

> the end result is not useful.

 

 

 

 

[Guest guest]

, " "

<zrosenbe@s...> wrote:

> It is interesting that you use the example of Paracelsus, since he

> almost single-handedly ended the era of polypharmacy herbal medicine

> based on pattern differentiation and established the use of toxic

> substances in single doses to treat diseases.

 

That is one take on the man. He is also the patron saint of

homeopaths. And he was indeed railing against a system that had

failed to be efficacious anymore. It was in fact the galenics who

spent all their time purging their victims. Paracelsus was much more

complex than your portrayal of him. There is a reason Mitch

Stargrove, well known ND and creator of IBIS, named his pionneering

professional alternative medicine forum Paracelsus, because what

Paracelsus really stood for was the overthrow of stale dogma for real

clinical experience.

 

[Guest guest]

I don't disagree. What is very interesting here is that both

allopaths and homeopaths claim Paracelsus as 'their man'. . .there is

a slight divergence from the idea of finding the toxic portion of a

crude medicinal substance and using it to fight disease (allopathy)

and finding the non-material essence of a crude medicinal substance

and using that. But from this slight point of divergence, radically

different medical schools developed.

 

Rational theories in medicine, whether Galenic or bian zheng/Chinese,

are only as good as the practitioners who use them. However, there

have been many empiricists in medical history who have taken an

originally useful technique and hammered every patient with it no

matter what variance in pattern or presentation was there in reality.

 

 

On Jul 19, 2005, at 9:04 AM, wrote:

 

> That is one take on the man. He is also the patron saint of

> homeopaths. And he was indeed railing against a system that had

> failed to be efficacious anymore. It was in fact the galenics who

> spent all their time purging their victims. Paracelsus was much more

> complex than your portrayal of him. There is a reason Mitch

> Stargrove, well known ND and creator of IBIS, named his pionneering

> professional alternative medicine forum Paracelsus, because what

> Paracelsus really stood for was the overthrow of stale dogma for real

> clinical experience.