In today's context, when we talk about modern medicine, we are talking about Western medicine, which is based on the scientific method and gradually moving in the direction of evidence-based medicine. Through hypotheses, experiments and observations, modern medicine has a well developed system for diagnosis and treatment.
Traditional Chinese medicine (sometimes shorten to TCM) is usually looked upon as an alternative method of treatment. It is commonly mistaken as something based on folk wisdom, without as compelling a foundation as Western medicine. And therefore, it is mistaken as being not as effective as Western medicine. I think we cannot be more wrong. TCM has a well developed system too, and it is similarly based on experiments. A lot of knowledge accumulated inside the TCM system is from trial-and-error (which is a form of large-scale, long-term experiment) over the generations. All that knowledge is then encapsulated inside a system which is unfamiliar to Western medicine practitioners but that doesn't mean the system is wrong or ineffective. It is just a different system. Just like we have different cuisines, that doesn't mean one type of food is better than another, since they all fulfil the purpose of filling our stomachs.
In fact, the amount of empirical testing for TCM may even out-number that of Western medicine, given the long history of TCM, and the size of the population over which it was practised in. A treatment that has worked for the past few thousand years can't be that ineffective, right?
In fact, even in science, there can be different theories explaining the same thing. And as long as both theories are able to explain and predict the same outcomes, there is actually no "better" theory. Since both Western medicine and TCM are able to classify illnesses (in their own classification system) and have more than enough examples of successful treatment, there shouldn't be a "better" system. They just happen to be different systems that work.
Who knows, maybe one day, when the pendulum of time swings towards the East, TCM may become mainstream medicine, and Western medicine delegated to "alternative method of treatment"?
Traditional Chinese medicine (sometimes shorten to TCM) is usually looked upon as an alternative method of treatment. It is commonly mistaken as something based on folk wisdom, without as compelling a foundation as Western medicine. And therefore, it is mistaken as being not as effective as Western medicine. I think we cannot be more wrong. TCM has a well developed system too, and it is similarly based on experiments. A lot of knowledge accumulated inside the TCM system is from trial-and-error (which is a form of large-scale, long-term experiment) over the generations. All that knowledge is then encapsulated inside a system which is unfamiliar to Western medicine practitioners but that doesn't mean the system is wrong or ineffective. It is just a different system. Just like we have different cuisines, that doesn't mean one type of food is better than another, since they all fulfil the purpose of filling our stomachs.
In fact, the amount of empirical testing for TCM may even out-number that of Western medicine, given the long history of TCM, and the size of the population over which it was practised in. A treatment that has worked for the past few thousand years can't be that ineffective, right?
In fact, even in science, there can be different theories explaining the same thing. And as long as both theories are able to explain and predict the same outcomes, there is actually no "better" theory. Since both Western medicine and TCM are able to classify illnesses (in their own classification system) and have more than enough examples of successful treatment, there shouldn't be a "better" system. They just happen to be different systems that work.
Who knows, maybe one day, when the pendulum of time swings towards the East, TCM may become mainstream medicine, and Western medicine delegated to "alternative method of treatment"?
1 comment:
http://opinionator.blogs.nytimes.com/2013/09/28/the-enigma-of-chinese-medicine/?smid=pl-share
An article on the New York Times about this too. Keep the ball rolling!
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