Talk:Traditional Chinese medicine

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New content should be added at the bottom, not here.

Request for comment

I suggest to remove the sentence: However, Classical Chinese Medicine (CCM) is notably different from Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM). CCM represents the medicine and its evolution through thousands of years.

It would be nice if someone could make a clera distinction between TCM and CCM in this article.

I suggest we revert this article to the edit dated 02:19, 9 Apr 2004, by Jiang, as a preparation to bring the article up to standard for the Wikiproject on alternative medicine. Please comment. heidimo 03:15, 1 May 2004 (UTC)

If you have noticed, I have been able to deflect all the critics, right now, in alternative medicine for two reasons:

• I always use the correct magic words, and
• I keep on referring to our standards of quality guidelines.

To do what you want to do now, requires that you analyze what the wrong doer is doing wrong in terms of our standard of quality guidelines. And, then respond accordingly to the point without resorting to personal attacks. You are allowed to do two reverts a day, for ever ... the way I read it.

But, I will take a closer look and see if I can give you any more specific pointers. -- John Gohde, aka Mr-Natural-Health 03:58, 1 May 2004 (UTC)

John, thanks for your comments. I'd be happy to follow all of those guidelines, and hold off on the revert I suggest until the proper time in the process, if at all. I'm only soliciting comments at this time, not saying if or when I would actually do such a revert. heidimo 04:08, 1 May 2004 (UTC) P.S. I added the infobox. heidimo 04:27, 1 May 2004 (UTC)

I have got it now. I would advised against doing a revert, now, simply because you have waited too long and too many editors have made changes to it. -- John Gohde, aka Mr-Natural-Health 04:35, 1 May 2004 (UTC)

Hello folks. It seems to me a revert now would be less desirable than the inevitable rewrite, which is to say, if you're going to work on it, work on the finished product instead of a temporary patch.

I like and agree with John G's statement on strategy;

"I always use the correct magic words, and I keep on referring to our standards of quality guidelines."

A nice, neutral presentation of information will do the trick, one thinks. As the guidelines say: Wikipedia is not about advocacy or propaganda of any kind, what I would add to that is that Wikipedia is about information of every kind, apparently. People can be as skeptical as they want to be, but the phenomenon exists and the information is out there and it isn't going away any time soon. Just as many aspects of traditional Chinese medicine make perfect sense if they are explained well, there are also many abuses of the traditional Chinese system, especially in the West, and they should not be glossed over. To present information as clearly as possible so that people can make up their own minds is all we can hope for. Fire Star 22:57, 1 May 2004 (UTC)

Precisely! The phenomenon exists. So, we have every right to cover it per our standards of quality quidelines which are direct quotes from existing and well established Wikipedia guidelines.

My accessment of TCM is that it is way too big. Much of the content should be moved to separate articles, with the main TCM article being an outline of what is contained in other articles. Beyond, improving comprehension of TCM to the general public at large this strategy would also deflect edit wars to the other more specific articles. Remember, that the same content would still be there. The details should simply be hidden in separate articles like all hyperlink documents are supposed to be designed. -- John Gohde, aka Mr-Natural-Health 17:45, 2 May 2004 (UTC)

Single-paragraph summaries are a good way to go with this that avoids edit wars - David Gerard 19:19, May 2, 2004 (UTC)

Agreed and agreed. The Tai Chi Chuan article is a good example of this, a discipline with roots and branches in ancient and modern Chinese medical traditions, a page with lots of info, but little overlap with the actual Chinese medicine article. Fire Star 20:48, 2 May 2004 (UTC)

Thinning the page

As part of the wikiproject on alternative medicine, sections are being removed from this article on topics with their own article. Removed sections are being placed in the talk page of the respective articles, for merging purposes. Please help with the merging, if you are so inclined. heidimo 15:59, 8 May 2004 (UTC)

Hi, heidimo. Please forgive me for my outrageous delay. I have some extra-Wiki commitments going on and on, and will come back with the long overdue comments Real Soon Now, promise! - irismeister 18:00, 2004 May 14 (UTC)

Preliminary review of TCM

My preliminary review of the TCM is very favorable. Again, the primary problem seems to be coming from the science people.

I am referring of course to the TCM and Science and Does it work? sections. These sections seems to be trying to duplicate the articles on the scientific method. My suggestion would be to simply add a hyperlink.

Does it work? As a reader, reading TCM for the first time, my response would be: What is it? And, what is it in reference to? Any reader, remotely familiar with science, would discount these sections as being totally mickey mouse. You cannot test for it, unless you have first defined what it is. And, then your conclusions about it would only be valid for a limited set of specific conditions which would probably mean specific medical conditions. Since, it is obviously referring to 100's of different things and since there are literally 1,000's of diseases the whole premise of this section is so fundamentally flawed that a sixth grader wouldn't believe it. -- John Gohde 20:46, 22 May 2004 (UTC)

= Jiang's reversions

Jiang, please stop your reversions. You need to stop pushing your religious beliefs as scientific facts. (You also need to stop denying that the belief in these forces was not religious; it was a religious belief, no matter what you claim, and these beliefs have no scientific validation.) Every time someone adds balance by merely presenting a scientific analysis of your claims, you revert the article. You often censor it by totally deleting all critical studies. That is a serious violation of Wikipedia NPOV policy. Its not just me that you have done this to; others too have suffered under your edits. Please know this - Wikipedia has a neutral point of view policy. When a controversial subject has a significant amount of mainstream criticism, we are obligated to present it. Instead of discussing the contoversy, you just keep on reverting and censoring, over and over. You did this a few months ago, and I am sad to see that you are doing it again, You must stop this inappropriate behaviour. RK 22:27, Jun 13, 2004 (UTC)

I submit that RK is the person who needs to stop his inappropriate behaviour. -- [[User:Mr-Natural-Health|John Gohde | Talk]] 22:36, 13 Jun 2004 (UTC)

Please read the article before posting. Like before, many of the sentences you re-inserted are already present in the article, word-for-word. Now explain why we need to repeat the same sentence twice (or if we havent reverted you a couple months ago, three times). If you insert new material, then we can discuss. If not, we revert. --Jiang 22:42, 13 Jun 2004 (UTC)

In my view, it is a political viewpoint used to control the social role of TCM, to classify qi forces as religious. The purpose of the TCM page should not be to praise, deride, critique, or justify TCM. There are ample opportunities for all of those viewpoints to be expressed elsewhere.

well qi isn't scientific so how would you classify it?Geni 13:58, 25 Sep 2004 (UTC)

The TCM page needs to represent the actual features of TCM with a balance of those topics that are of the greatest salience and importance in understanding TCM. It is an unreasonable imbalance in POV to have pages on western medicine which fail to represent the prominent criticisms of method and structure, while the TCM page dwells on critiques to the point of distraction. The page is not about controveries. Let controversies about TCM have a separate page, please.

Why? They are relivant to the topic. fialing to put them in would may the article very POVGeni 13:58, 25 Sep 2004 (UTC)

Removed parenthetical (shen) after "observation of the patient's face". While shen is primarily diagnosed by facial observation, it can be observed in skin tone at other areas of the body. More significantly, observation of the face can be used to diagnose Lung, Kidney, Spleen, Liver, Qi, Blood, and Jue, not just Shen and Heart. Nick Argall

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Obviously this article can do with some editing. For me some portions need verification. For example, who says Buddhism and Confucianism influenced TCM - I've never heard of it, where are the sources or explanation, for example? Excuse me while I do some very liberal copyediting, and add some fundamentals of TCM from Chinese webpages. Pls voice your opinion if the changes are not to your liking. Mandel 15:32, Feb 26, 2005 (UTC)

Gone through the article. Some parts are very unclear. What has SARS got to do with TCM, for instance? And this: "It may surprise modern people that the Traditional Chinese Medicine uses medicine as the last resort to fight health problems....However, with modern practice of the Traditional Chinese Medicine relies more and more on medicine and eventually abandons the physical treatments (like Gua Sha) largely. Some people believe it is because medicine can bring more profits to doctors than simpler physical treatments." is neither accurate nor true. Mandel 17:28, Feb 26, 2005 (UTC)

Agree - for such a broad subject overview it may not be able to go into detail for all topics. But the SARS section feels totally out of place as there doesn't seem to be any clear statement if TCM has any role in treating SARS or any clear statement on how banning livestock sales related to the practice of TCM. Without such a statement the SARS section should be removed. Nogwa July 15, 2005

中医学 vs 中药学

Hi, I noticed that 中医学 has a separate page from 中药学 on the Chinese Wikipedia; the Chinese one seems to indicate that the former is more general, while the latter refers to an almost scientific study of the foundations of Chinese medicine. It seems a bit strange that we just list both as definitions without further comment. Also, it is strange that one is in traditional characters while one is simplified - does English Wikipedia have a standard for included Chinese? Also, I added and corrected the pinyin for both and verified it on pin1yin1.com; hopefully I did it right. Capybara 07:38, 16 Mar 2005 (UTC)

zh.wikipedia is a separate entity from en.wikipedia, so you should ask the users there. As far as I know, they used to be divided into two camps, although software translation between Simplified and Traditional Chinese has resulted in the two merging. --Euniana/Talk 19:14, 24 Apr 2005 (UTC)

These names are not equivalents. Zhong yi-xue should pertain to the whole field of medical treatment, setting bones, immunization, etc., etc. Zhong yao-xue should pertain to (traditional) medications only. A person who practices Zhong yi uses Zhong yao (or cao3 yao4). I guess I should have a look at the relevant pages, but it would be a really strange use of language if the two names are taken to be synonyms. P0M 04:30, 18 Jun 2005 (UTC)

O.K. Just as I thought, the yi xue article is long and about the traditional practice of medicine, and the yao xue article is hardly more than a dictionary definition that says it is the botanicals, the animal parts, and that kind of thing that are used as medications in the traditional practice of Chinese medicine. P0M 04:34, 18 Jun 2005 (UTC)

More page thinning

There were many redundant statements as well as biases favouring one school or another that I have edited out. I tried (albeit imperfectly) to keep all pertinent information while taking out New Age and any other species of POV doublespeak I could. I apologise for stepping on anyone's toes, but TCM is such a huge subject that I believe that this central article should give mostly just a very general overview, pro and con, while specifics can go on their respective articles. Fire Star 21:20, 17 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Ways to organize this subject of oriental medicine

By system: TCM, 5 elements, Korean hand, French Auricular, Japaneses, I Ching, others.

By History: Each step of the evolution of this medicine has been influenced by wars, emperors and famines.

By modality: acupuncture (each system puts the same points in different locations), tai qi, qi gung, moxabustion, tui na, acupressure, bleeding, purging, surgical (started about 1500 in China), sweating, cupping, gua sha, herbs and food, electrical, others

By system of diagnosis: yin yang, 5 element, 8 principles, zang fu, meridian, 6 divisions or 6 stages or 6 levels from the inner classic of the yellow emperor approximately 100 AD, 4 stages from discussion of warm diseases about 1667-1746. The 3 levels or 3 jiaos mostly from a systematic identification of febrile diseases 1758-1836. Modern diagnosis: this is not formal but in China diagnosis of acupuncture is being very heavily influenced by western diagnostic thought.

By book: Chinese Medicine has a very rich history of books. Many of these books are still used today in modern practices.

By school of thought often centered around a person and his great book or books. The Kidney school, The Spleen school, The 5 element school, the yin yang school, etc.

--Magic.crow 23:26, 27 October 2005 (UTC)

SARS section?

What does this SARS paragraph have to do with TCM? I don't want to mess with something that is being worked on by others. But would someone whose already involved with this please just delete it already rather than just commenting on it? D?ugosz

Some off-topic comment

I cannot help laughing whenever I saw 'Does it work' section. Come on. It has been working in China for thousands of years already. I were personally treated by TCM for various internal and external problems and all worked. However, I admit TCM needs more scientific backup. Just my two cents.

Placebo has also been shown to work since it's been known to be around (thousands of years?). That doesn't mean that it's a valid, systematic methodology for solving health issues. --24.70.70.16 15:46, 8 November 2005 (UTC)

Those who bashed on Chinese quackery just refuse to face the fact that Western quackery is practiced in the name of science. Isn't there enough pharmaceutical scandals in the news to show that when science falls in the hands of the businessmen like those at Merck, the population is poisoned by things like Vioxx. The Chinese quacks just lack the billions of dollars of legal fees. They are not much different. Kowloonese 02:10, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

Quackery occurs when treatments are touted as being effective but are not. In this respect, Vioxx is not quack medicine; it's just BAD medicine. Scientists at Merck discovered the harmful effects of Vioxx in human trials prior to the approval but this was hushed up by senior officials in the company. As such, what Merck did with Vioxx, although dispicable and inexcusable, is a matter of inethical business practices, and not a matter of science. Most chinese treatments on the other hand, have not been tested through rigourous double-blind experiments but are rather based on tradition, hear-say, and possibly placebo effects.

Even many effective treatments in Chinese medicine are still not completely understood by both Chinese and Western medicine alike. For instance, a recent scientific study of accupucture reaffirmed its effectiveness, but showed that positive effects of the treatment can be duplicated by arbitrarily applying needles without the guidelines of accupucture meridians. So is the idea of "meridians" a quack concept? No one knows for sure, since so few studies have been focused on it. No one even knows what a meridian actually "is" in a factual sense, since no one has ever done a conclusive empirical studied on it.

The issue of efficacy and safety of traditional chinese medicine is a thorny issue at best. I personally think much of the "thorniness" has to do with cultural pride, since I also want Chinese medicine to "work". However, the understand of this system of medication is shoddy at best. As such the, differences between Chinese and Western medicine is not legal fees, lawyers and corporations, it is a matter of stringent empirical studies, which not only bring factual understanding but also decreases the incidences of quackary in medicine of ALL forms. -- Sjschen 19:30, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

Where is Five elements (Chinese) (??)!?

I think TCM is not TCM at all if there is no Five elements (Chinese) supporting it. Could anybody add a section for it, explaining the mapping between Five elements and internal organs, showing the special connection between eye and liver, how a symptom in head may a cause on feet etc?

The current content for theory part of TCM is not sufficient even from an amateur's view. --129.7.248.159 19:39, 15 August 2005 (UTC)

Be bold! Put it in there. Just remember, If you do not want your writing to be edited mercilessly and redistributed at will, do not submit it. Fire Star 23:39, 15 August 2005 (UTC)

As I read this page and it's links I see a problem. Subjects like 5E and yin/yang have good pages already but they are not so good for TCM. Should we write almost duplicate pages or just link to pages that don't cover our subject so well? --Magic.crow 04:47, 10 October 2005 (UTC)

The reader who wants to know about Chinese medicine may not be very well motivated to spend lots of time trying to absorb these other articles. Beyond that, the average reader would have no way to apply that information to Chinese medicine without some guidance.

The most interesting connection between the five "elements" and Chinese medicine is due to the five phases (as I prefer to call them) are phases of a single cycle just as the four seasons are phases of a year. In each day, a system of function (organ to us Westerners) can behave differently depending on which of the five phases it is in. Chinese medicine had an awareness that diseases behave differently at different times of the day, and that medicines can react with the body differently at different times of the day. In Western medicine we have only in the last few decades become aware of the importance of circadian cycles to the functioning of the human organism and to its reactions both to diseases and to medicines. P0M 23:40, 7 December 2005 (UTC)

Moved from Uses section

"There are thousands of years of empirical knowledge about TCM on its own terms, and in recent decades there has been an effort to place traditional Chinese medicine on a firmer Western scientific empirical and methodological basis as well as efforts to integrate Chinese and Western medical traditions"

This does not make any sense to me. What does "...empirical knowledge about TCM on its own terms..." mean? I thought empiricism on nobodys terms but own? -- Sjschen 15:49, 18 December 2005 (UTC)

It might be possible to express that idea better. When Chinese doctors started trying to organize their experiences, started trying to figure out what works and what does not work, trying to figure out why certain procedures work better than others, etc., they did not necessarily use the medical terms used in the West. If they did use synonyms for Western terms, they were generally because all humans recognize, e.g., fingers. (They may conceptualize toes, or "foot fingers" as one of my karate brothers called them, differently, however.) As the two medical systems progressed, the conceptual systems both became more and more abstract. Western scholars were talking about things like matter, energy, change of light energy into chemical energy, changes of chemical energy into forces exerted by muscles, etc., etc. Chinese scholars were using concepts like "qi4" ?, "zhi2" ?, "li3" ??etc., etc.

If the Chinese doctor applies pressure to the he2 ku3 ?? point in the web of the thumb and the patient feels nausea, That report is remembered and/or recorded. The same thing happens over and over again. At some point an empirical generalization forms based on these repeated experiences. The generalization is "crystallized" in the form of the whole conceptual system of traditional Chinese medicine, and over the centuries the conceptual system has become more and more coherent.

The problem comes when Western doctors hear about this treatment and try to understand what is going on. Does it really work? If you pinched the patient's nose, would nausea and headach relief occur equally frequently? If it does work, how can Western medicine understand a connection between the nerves and muscles proximal to the thumb, the blood vessels in the temples, and the large intensine? Do nerves from these three areas "cross" at some point? Can it be chemical? If so, (1) how does it happen so fast, and (2) why don't the supposed chemicals affect the retina, the small intestine, the heart...?P0M 17:48, 19 December 2005 (UTC)

What has happened to our Chinese character (Unicode) input? Are we back to the old way of entering Chinese characters? P0M 17:53, 19 December 2005 (UTC)

They are reading fine for me, let me see... 一字師. Those were cut and pasted from my user page. Is it possibly a browser problem?--Fire Star 18:06, 19 December 2005 (UTC)

I can see 一字師 "yi zi shi" but not 氣"qi4" 質"zhi2"理"li3" 3 paragraphs above. I see question marks where characters should be. Now the characters are showing up in preview, but let's see what happens when I actually save the page. I've been having lots of "session data lost" problems lately. It seems that the servers are overloaded again. P0M 18:20, 19 December 2005 (UTC)

I seem to be able to fix things now. Probably it was the "loss of session data" that cause the problems. P0M 01:30, 21 December 2005 (UTC)

I have to admit that I am a cynic at heart. First off, in order for a field to "be empirical", one has to remove any "unempirical" concepts in a field and put them through empirical testing before allowing them to be used. In that respect, what is the definition and proofs of 氣"qi4", 質"zhi2", and 理"li3"? Is "qi" something that can be tested and substantiated or is it just a loose mental concept like the western folk medicine "ether"? Sjschen 20:12, 10 January 2006 (UTC)

We observe things all of the time and subsume the observations under "scientific" (i.e., inter-subjective) categories. But that doesn't mean that the scientific terms refer to things that can be directly observed. Everybody experiences light. Humans have used light for as long as we have existed. But nobody has ever seen a photon. It's very much like the difference between seeing a bullet hole appear in the wall by your head and seeing the bullet in flight. We never see a photon, we see only the result. But we make theories about light, and they are scientific theories. They may not be "forever" theories, however. That is the way science progresses. Newton says that light consists of corpuscles. Somebody else comes along and shows that light fans out after it goes through a narrow opening, which bullets would never do, so light must be a wave. Light forms interference patterns, light forms colored zones on bubbles and on thin films of oil on puddles of water. So it must be a wave phenomenon. Finally we come down to the 20th century. Light is whatever it is, and we can describe it in human terms as particles or as waves, and either way we never get the job done. So we start with objective, empirical observations, and we formulate those empirical observations in terms of some model (e.g., light is a wave in ether). It's good enough to help us make excellent telescopes and microscopes. Huygens talks about "wavelets" that may have no bearing on what is going on in the microcosmos, but his model is good enough for making excellent optical instruments. The information that is encoded in that way doesn't get lost just because somebody uses a model that is later superseded.

Working back from theory, the basic meaning of li is pattern. (It goes all the way back to the 詩經　where it is a verb that means to lay out the fields in a human-designed pattern.) There are patterns or regularities in the human body, and both Chinese and Western medicine have things to say about these patterns. But if a Western person looks at a weiqi board s/he is likely to imagine that the stones go in the boxes rather than on the intersections of lines, and the way the Western doctor looks at the patterns in the human body may be subtley different from the way the Chinese doctor would characterize the same corpse or the same living body. 質 refers to what the Western doctor would refer to as the matter, the flesh and bones components of the human body. But the theoretical explanation given for what and why it is as it is are different. You can see a fairly clear exposition of 質 in the works of 朱熹，顏元　et. al. Western medicine has only recently become more interested in things like circadian rhythms, the dosing of certain medicines being appropriate at different levels depending on what part of the circadian cycle a patient is in, etc. Western medicine has tended to see the human body like an "exploded" diagram of an automobile. Western medicine examines the electrical system in one field, the motor in another field, the carbeurator in another field, the exhaust system in another field. If something goes wrong because of the train of interactions from the exploding gas in the engine on out to the point that exhaust exits the system, then the Western doctor may have problems seeing the problem. (Sorry for the rough analogy.) Western medicine can talk about energy, but it tends to compartmentalize energy into electrical energy, chemical energy, momentum, etc., etc. Chinese seems to collect all of its observations about these kinds of energy into one concept, 氣.

Let me propose an experiment based on something my 7th grade biology teacher taught us. He claimed that if one is about to sneeze that sneeze can be suppressed by exerting moderate pressure with a fingernail at the point where the cartilage at the end of one's nose joins the nose bone. I've tried it many times, and it seems to work. I've never been a second-story man, so I've never had to test it under "real life conditions," but it stands as a hypothesis with a fair amount of anecdotal evidence in my own experience. To test this hypothesis scientifically I guess we would have to get a number of volunteers and some sneezing power, and then test their ability to suppress sneezes with and without the use of the fingernail pressure. Assuming that we could prove that something is really going on, how would Western medicine explain the phenomenon? Probably some idea of "counter-irritation," which really isn't much of an explanation. In trying to make the explanation more clear, one might trace the nerves from that part of the nerve back to the brain and then watch what happens in the brain to modify the sneeze reflex. But as an empirical matter, what we start with are the people in the lab with the sneezing powder. That information isn't falsified by being hooked up with one or another theoretical explanation any more than the studies of the emission spectrums and the absorption spectrums of the various elements are altered or made less objective depending on whether what happens is explained in terms of a wave explanation of light, a corpuscle explanation of light, or a quantum mechanics explanation. P0M 23:04, 12 January 2006 (UTC)

I agree that Huygens' theory of light is still very useful for making optical instruments, and that you can never directly observe a photon. But the point is that empirical studies are still being conducted as to gain further understanding into the nature of light. One tries to figure out what light "is", and what one thinks one knows about it has an empirical foundation. To my understanding, 氣 has not received the same degree so scrutiny. Sure the theory of light is not like you say, a "forever theory", but that what's important, namely with new knowledge comes new insight. Because there has never been any studies on what 氣 actually is or if the definition holds, there really is no new knowledge on it, whether it is true or false. Hence our current discussion.

I also agree that Western medicine tends to take the human body and treatment in too miniscue a perspective. This could be because research information comes is small pieces and linking them up to form a big pictures takes time, and then more time. But when the information is link together to form the big picture, you can be sure you have something more or less correct since there is very high confidence with the accuracy of each of the tiny pieces. With the concepts of TCM, one too often assumes the one has knowledge of the big picture, be it the human body or the car. Although one might get lots of treatments correct, many are often ineffective or even worsens a condition. I sometimes see TCM treaments as similar to someone jarring a computer to rid it of a buzzing sound; it may work, but you don't know exactly why.

As for applying fingernal pressure to inhibit sneezing, I've never tried it. Problem is that the "treatment" is based on (1)expert proclamation and (2)anecdotal evidence, both of which historically has a very good tendency to be wrong. This is why stringent empirical studies came about in the first place. As for how one might prove or disprove the efficacy or the mechanisms of the treatment, there are many methods possible. But even if we are to begin with as you said, "empirical matters", there are actually things more important than the test itself, namely, the controls that gives us certainty that the test is actually empirical and reproducible. For instance: Does the type of sneezing powder matter? Does knowledge of the treatment induce a placebo effect? Do temperatures and body conditions matter? Can applying pressure to the anywhere on the head work just as well?

I'm not saying that TCM is all false, as you so implieded. TCM has produced it share of important modern medicines and treatments (think inhalers). Problems is that TCM lacks examination under what I (and many others) consider to be unbiased and well-designed empirical studies. We can't go around stating that Chi run through meridians and that we will cure people by "redirecting it" when we don't even know what a meridian or what Chi is. No one has even been able to associate a meridian channel with any anatomical feature. Chi cannot even be measured or observed, we don't even know how it works. So how can we even say that metal needles can block or redirect Chi. In the legal world, I belive that's call fraud. If clinician have taken the "empirical" positions of TCM at the time of Louis Pasteur, we probably would still think spoilage and bacterial growth is due to energies and forces in the air. What TCM ultimately needs is "More Light"! ;) Sjschen 09:48, 19 February 2006 (UTC)

Changes based on personal experience

Removed "The general distinction made by Chinese in China is that Western medicine involves cutting or acute care while Chinese medicine involves manipulation or chronic care. Hence medical procedures such as bone setting or chiropractic spinal manipulation would be seen as Chinese, while surgery tends to be seen as Western." and added more detail to same paragraph to more accurately represent my observations of Chinese medicine hospitals whilst in China in 2005. Piekarnia 22:58, 12 January 2006 (UTC)

Please be aware that Wikipedia articles are not to report on or depend on personal research. They are to be backed up by material provided with citations to published, and preferably peer-reviewed, research. P0M 23:07, 12 January 2006 (UTC)

Now rectified (hopefully up to standard)Piekarnia 12:06, 14 January 2006 (UTC)

Lead section

Why would the reader assume that TCM would be scientific? Does every article on Wikipedia about a nonscientific topic need to have "though unscientific" inserted in its lead section? I think a better way to address this would be as in acupuncture article. -Jim Butler 23:25, 3 May 2006 (UTC)

(Well, looks like there isn't the consensus there that I thought there was, but we'll get there.)Jim Butler 05:41, 4 May 2006 (UTC)

I disagree with you Jim. Modern readers seeing the word "medicine" would expect it to be scientific and efficacious. It's unlcear here what you mean by the acupunture reference. Mccready 17:34, 5 May 2006 (UTC)

I disagree Kevin. When most "modern people" hear the phrase "Traditional Chinese Medicine" they don't expect scientific trials to have even been completed - they think mystery and uncertainty. It's certainly the exception rather than the rule that people have even looked at any of the thousands of trials that have been conducted. I doubt that people would mistake the word "medicine" in Traditional Chinese Medicine for a scientific based medicine. The word "traditional" is certainly a giveaway, and "chinese" certainly makes it sound exotic or at least foreign. Nonetheless, I think the reword has removed all traces of ambiguity. For future reference, the word systematic means "based on a system". It neither means nor implies that TCM is a scientific system - particularly when in the same sentence the systems are named: yin-yang, five elements etc.Piekarnia 23:30, 7 May 2006 (UTC)

Linkspam?

This user's only two contributions to wikipedia consist in placing this link California State Oriental Medical Association to a website in progress on the TCM page and acupuncture page. I'd rather see it removed at this stage, at least until their website is fixed. Mccready 06:18, 14 May 2006 (UTC)

As I mentioned on the acu discussion page, CSOMA is actually legit, so I think it should stay. It would be good, imo, if someone organized the links section as I did with acupuncture. Will try to get to that. thx,Jim Butler 05:45, 17 May 2006 (UTC)

Taking a liberty

I've taken the liberty to delete the macro section. If anyone objects we can put it back in when the problems are ironed out. My reasons are that it:

1. makes untrue generalisations about TCM (eg artimisinine doesn't fit this description)
2. makes unsourced comments on other forms of medicine
3. makes POV comments about "natural"
4. is unsourced
5. poorly written

This seems like a drastic step but it would take so much work to improve it, I've decided on this route. Please feel free to object. Mccready 06:38, 14 May 2006 (UTC)

You won't hear me objecting. Agree, it was a mess, and whatever was of value in that section should be rewritten from the ground up. I would if I had the time. Anyway, good call. Jim Butler 05:47, 17 May 2006 (UTC)

I STRONGLY object. Deleting the whole section IS a DRASTIC step. In that sense, many articles in wikipedia should also be deleted totally. The spirit of Wiki is not deleting when you see something not good, but incrementally improving it if you can! Therefore I put it back. Please be polite to contributions from others: improve it or leave it alone. For the case of artimisinine , I already put most diseases at the very first sentence. NO generalisations can cover ALL cases. --Leo 00:17, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

Delete or improve

Hi Leo, Jim and I, from almost polar opposite ends of the spectrum on attitudes to TCM, both agree that this should be deleted temporarily. If you wish please feel free to improve it before replacing. I'm happy to give some further input into why it's not acceptable in its present form. Please understand that we would welcome the section back but it needs to be rewritten first. WP policy is that if material is deleted because it is unsourced then it stays deleted until sources are provided. I look forward to some cooperative editing on this piece. cheers, Kevin Mccready 00:57, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

I also think deleting is a drastic step, however also think that the macro section needs considerable improvement. Perhaps the section should remain until someone has agreed to rewrite it. Sjschen 05:57, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

Yes it's a drastic step, but one that is supported by wikipedia policy. The material isn't lost. Anyone can retrieve it from the history and work on it. I wouldn't be happy reinserting substandard material. Mccready 08:32, 22 May 2006 (UTC)

Well, since this section was put back into the article, I rewrote it to be more NPOV, and merged some parts with other sections. I don't know if it's a particularly accurate description of TCM, but I don't really have any expertise on the matter. -- Beland 03:53, 3 June 2006 (UTC)

Perfect! Thanks a lot. You grabbed the essence of what I wrote!! --Leo 19:38, 7 June 2006 (UTC)

Empirical knowledge

The claim that "There are thousands of years of empirical knowledge [neutrality disputed] about TCM conceptualized and recorded in terms appropriate to that system" implies that all claims advanced by TCM are true. This is disputed in some cases. A NPOV replacement could be to differentiate between claimes which are generally accepted as true, versus those that are still being evaluated. -- Beland 22:45, 1 June 2006 (UTC)

TCM model of the body

I am unable to reconcile TCM model of the body with the contents of this article. That article proceeds as if there is one, universally accepted model, but this article seems to indicate that there are multiple theoretical systems. It would be nice if this article contained examples of diagnoses, and that article explained the various theoretical systems. -- Beland 02:47, 3 June 2006 (UTC)

Requests for clarification

"Uses" section:

• "It has also been used to treat antibiotic-resistant infection." This implies "successfully", but that is a very strong claim, which should be referenced, if true.

"TCM theory" section:

• What is meant by "Received TCM"?

"Received TCM" refers to the body of Chinese medical practice, both as an oral tradition and as represented in various medical texts, prior to the system's codification by the Chinese government in the 1950s. However, there's no reason to use that term in this context, and the sentence should probably be clarified.

Soft helion 23:32, 16 January 2007 (UTC)

• "Chinese academics of various schools" - It would be helpful to have some by name.
• shen is a disambiguation page that points back here; perhaps there is room for a separate article explaining the concept of spirit/soul/mind specifically with regard to Chinese philosophy. It seems like it could be an interesting topic.

It would be an interesting article. It's also one part of a rather large discussion involving a dozen or more pairs of terms. Shen is the stuff that evolves from jing and means "spirit", but only in the sense used in, e.g., "My, you're in good spirits today." (By "evolves" I mean to "come out of" a liquid or solid the way some gas evolves from a mixture of chemicals heated in a test tube.) In one of the commenataries to the Dao De Jing it says: "If your shen does not roam about, your semen will not ejaculate." (Shen bu you, jing bu xie.) There are also "spirits" that are more like our idea of souls, the hun and the po, which also form a pair, one being the earthy spirit that sinks to the Yellow Springs at death, and the other being the heavenly spirit that rises up to the sky at death. Writers speak with great confidence about these entities in limited contexts, but there doesn't seem to be a "grand theory of everything" that draws them together in a clear relationship. To ask for such an account might be like asking a pre-modern person to explain how the conscience relates to the five humours. P0M 04:14, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

"Treatment techniques"

• What treatments are possible using Chinese astrology??

I'm not sure what the original writer had in mind. Although they got their time periods in an arbitrary way that, to me, seem unlikely to have any real validity, it may be that some doctors thought that which treatment or which dosage might be appropriate could depend on the positions of the planets in relationship to each other. In my view that would be an overgeneralization from a valid observation that western medicine is only recently taking into account -- circadian rhythms. The appropriate dosage of a drug can vary according to the hour of the day. Knowing that could be important in cases when there are big penalties for not getting the dose right since the dose that would just barely get the job done at 10 a.m. might be enough to make somebody sick at 10 p.m. (That's probably too dramatic, but you get the idea.) Anyway, that's just an idea of what kinds of connections to look for. P0M 04:49, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

• "Such practice of bone-setting is not common in the West." Bone setting (in casts) is quite common. What is it that this statement is trying to say is not common in the West?

Here I think the problem is just that the writer has not been clear. I think I remember hearing just recently that evidence of set bones and healed fractures had been found in prehistoric sites. The question is how one is to protect the bone after it is set. We most often use plaster of paris. The cast is not only heavy, but usually (always?) makes the patient's skin under the cast become very itchy. The traditional Chinese practice, as it was explained to me back in the 60s, is to put some kind of traditional ointment on the skin surrounding the break, then wrap the area with lengths of cloth tape (rather like the tapes that bosers use to wrap their hands and wrists before the gloves go on, I should think), and finally some kind of splint material is taped on the outside (most likely split bamboo or wood). The patient sees the doctor occssionally while waiting for the bone to set. The doctor will unwrap everything, check the alignment, etc., put on a new covering of ointment, and zip everything up again. On the other hand, the original writer may have had something entirely different in mind. P0M 04:49, 6 June 2006 (UTC)

-- Beland 03:09, 3 June 2006 (UTC)

Beland's work

Hi Belend, Looks like generally a good approach. A couple of points. 1. The capitalisation of western in the victorian govt quote shouldn't have happened - if it's a quote then it needs to be exactly what they wrote. They used lower case so the quote should be in lowercase. If you really feel the need to do so you can put in a (sic), but I don't think this needs it. 2. You are also asking questions about stuff which Jim and I agreed should be deleted and properly sourced before being replaced. Some stuff has been replaced which is not properly sourced. I'd prefer it be taken out unless it can be sourced. It appears to be rather florid OR to begin with. Keep up the good work. I liked Pearle but my computer science friends wouldn't be happy to call it AI :-) Mccready 04:53, 3 June 2006 (UTC)

Feel free to do as you see fit. On other controversial Chinese cultural articles, we have had problems with people adding and removing large chunks of text of disputed veracity and neutrality. Since that has already started happening here, I would recommend justifying any removals on a point-by-point basis, so that people intending to revert the change will have food for thought, and will have something specific to reply to if they feel the removal was unjustified. For people not familiar with the subject (like me), it is unclear which portions are unreferenced but generally accepted as true, and which are unreferenced and shaky. Putting clear citations to referenced sources from the portions of the article which are well supported would help with that. But personally I have no objections to removing anything you think is wrong or which qualifies as original research. -- Beland 19:45, 3 June 2006 (UTC)

Note to editors - monthly statement

I edit lots of stuff which deserves the label pseudoscience, perhaps not the case here, and want to alert you to my editing principles lest I be accused of too rapidly reverting. Have a look at my userpage and please make comments if you wish. Happy editing. Mccready 04:53, 3 June 2006 (UTC)

TCM and Internet

I guess my writing has some problems. So, I put a copy here in case somebody will delete it. Please refine it if you are interested in this piece of information. The key words here are: online web sites providing FREE herb prescriptions, having some positive results already. Unfortunatedly, all of them are in Chinese so far.

With the popularity of Internet, increasing number of TCM doctors are seeking new approaches to diagnose and treat diseases using remote, non-contact methods, mostly by filling online symptom questionaires and uploading the photos of tongues. Some TCM advocates even established web sites like Folks TCM to provide free herb prescriptions to patients having Internet access. Doctors and patients can actively exchange information about symptoms, prescriptions and feedbacks via Bulletin board system there. While limited by remote diagnosis methods, some positive cases (including cancer, diabetes,leukaemia etc) have been reported on these websites.

--Leo 17:27, 10 June 2006 (UTC)

Seahorse reference

The following article provides the needed information on sea horses and thier shrinking populations due to TCM. I do not know why people insist on reverting this, as 'citation needed' means 'go find an article relevant' which I have done. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/nova/seahorse/vincent.html --168.56.111.83 16:42, 20 July 2006 (UTC)

Dried Deer Penis?

Do we really need this picture in here? Aren't there plenty of other great images that represent tcm besides dead sea horses, penises and some random photo of some store isle in HongKong? --Travisthurston 23:29, 5 September 2006 (UTC)

I don't see it being a bad thing. Besides, TCM is hard to capture in pictures due to the wide variety of disperate sub-disciplines that the term covers. Do you have any suggestions of images? Sjschen 01:35, 6 September 2006 (UTC)

Deer penis seems like a bad choice to me. Would prefer an interior shot of a serious traditional pharmacy, for example. Viande hachée 15:02, 3 October 2006 (UTC)

The text on the this image is in Japanese. Why would a Chinese pharmaceutical shop use Japanese? Hanfresco 17:13, 21 September 2006 (UTC)

These images should be removed, since their labels are Japanese. Look carefully, and you'll see the yen sign. bibliomaniac15 04:58, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

So is anyone gonna obtain new pictures? I will if no one does in say, a month. Funny thing is the Chinese wiki also uses these pictures.. Hanfresco 09:40, 19 October 2006 (UTC)

The penis pix and the seahorse pix appear to come from the same pharmacy. The seahorse pix indicate they were taken in a Chinese shop in Yokohama. The Japanese text may be there because the phonetic spelling of the English "penis" is more acceptable to customers than the straightforward version. (I once asked my family doctor what "anus pruritus" meant and got a very old English definition. It wouldn't have been acceptable for a magazine article or a TV advertisement, but it was accurate.)

The appearance of sympathetic magic in Chinese medicine is one indication that it is in some ways neither scientific nor grounded in anything other than a kind of wishful thinking. The use of the penis pictures may be justified as "truth in advertising." P0M 03:42, 26 October 2006 (UTC)

I totally agree your concern. I removed the links to the images. --Leo 14:38, 7 December 2006 (UTC)

"Heat"

Shouldn't this article describe "heat," "cold," "dampness," etc., as they relate to TCM? This seems a serious omission. Badagnani 02:13, 5 October 2006 (UTC)

"Liu hairuo"

I know this is unrelated to the article, but does anyone know anything about her? She is mentioned several times as a prominant example of the effectiveness of TCM, but I cannot find much information about her, aside from that she was involved with an accident, and she was alledgedly curred by TCM 128.250.87.22 08:09, 23 October 2006 (UTC)

I googled her name in Chinese. I did not find too much help from TCM for her as far as I know. --Leo 06:10, 26 November 2006 (UTC)

West came to China in the 1930s!?!?

During the early 1900's, CCM developed the notion of germ theory: either oral- or food-borne pathogens. Concurrently, the West was also developing the same notion with the invention of the microscope, which provided proof of germs (bacteria) existing in food or in body fluids (mucus from a sneeze, for example). The West came to China along with the microscope in the 1930's, proving both theories valid.

Errr, "the West came to China in the 1930s"?!?! I can't even begin to express how dissapointed I am that this piece of misinformation has lasted through even one edit check. Anyone with a 6th grade education should have been suspicious. China had trade, both intellectual and commercial, long before the 1900s. And the germ-theory of disease was not developed in the 1900s, it was almost universally established and applied in the 1800s and was actually being developed in the 1700s (and was talked about long before that).

I'm not saying anything about whether or not CCM developed germ-theory independently. But this whole paragraph is of suspect veracity due to the glaring innacuracies that surround that contention. I'm deleting it. If you put the parts that might be true, such as the independent development of germ-theory, then put it back with a cite. But please keep the "the West came to China in the 1930s" bit out--its downright silly. Brentt 19:03, 17 November 2006 (UTC)

Recent multiple edits by one new congtributor

Someone more familar with this field than I should carefully go over the new content added by Spiritprimer. S/he appears to have "signed" the new stuff with the URL of a commercial site. I'm tempted to revert the whole thing, but there may be something of value in it.

While looking at the most recent edits I also noticed that the English grammar in the article is poor. P0M 05:56, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

I don't know enough to evaluate them, but I've tagged the additions with citation tags to assist other more knowledgable editors to find them. A Ramachandran 06:41, 10 January 2007 (UTC)

Spiritprimer's contributions are spam. The paragraph added to the end of the "Branches" section is non sequitur. The only support offered for the assertion that the Jingfang school is experiencing a comeback is the existence of the two websites that Spiritprimer is promoting. If those websites represent a phenomenon of historical importance, then this claim should be backed up by an outside source, not a link to the websites themselves. Moreover, the websites are in Chinese and are of no use to readers of the English wikipedia.Soft helion 23:47, 16 January 2007 (UTC)