She Came from Western Medicine; I Am Heading toward Western Medicine

On Saturday, a gastroenterologist came to see me about her child's illness. She was trained in Western medicine; I used to study TCM and am now also studying Western medicine, though only just beginning. We chatted for a while about medical matters. She had taken the Western-doctors-learning-Chinese-medicine training but had not taken up TCM as her profession.

After many years in clinical practice, she was a little disappointed in Western medicine. In her words, for too many diseases Western medicine can diagnose very accurately but cannot treat them, whereas TCM still has some ways to help. Having studied TCM for so many years and now studying Western medicine, my feelings are similar to hers. To be honest, I too am a little disappointed in TCM: in the face of too many diseases, TCM is also powerless.

But because I have a foundation in TCM and rich clinical experience, my state of mind while attending Western-medicine classes is different from that of people studying pure Western medicine. After taking professional courses at school for a while, I began to understand why the doctors at the grassroots hospitals back in my hometown so readily tell patients they need surgery. Because in medical schools, teachers constantly talk about surgery when they lecture. Not only our teachers, but when I listen online to master teachers from the nation's top medical schools, I feel they are the same.

If I had never studied TCM, then the idea of treating these diseases with surgery would have become deeply imprinted in my mind. But I have studied TCM, and of the many diseases the teachers describe, I have not only treated them but treated quite a number, basically curing patients with TCM conservative treatment. So when I hear teachers lecture this way, many question marks rise in my mind: "Is surgery really the only way to solve the problem? Shouldn't we consider what painful aftereffects surgery brings to the patient?"

Our school's affiliated hospital is separated from the campus by only one wall, and some of its doctors are graduates of our school. A few days ago, a girl in our class had a toothache and went to the affiliated hospital for treatment. The doctor prescribed metronidazole; after she took it, the effect was poor. In the end, a doctor who had graduated from our school "cut" the girl's tooth nerve. My female classmate told me that ever since the tooth nerve was cut, she no longer had a toothache. This treatment is simple, crude, and effective, but after hearing it I felt very wrong about it.

Because I have handled quite a lot of this kind of toothache myself, including having once had a toothache so bad it was unbearable. I treated it according to TCM wind-fire toothache, combining Chinese and Western medicine: externally I plugged the nostril with Bingpian (borneol) to stop pain, and internally I took Niuhuang metronidazole, Erzhi Pill, and Zhibai Dihuang Pill. Without cutting the tooth nerve, the toothache also resolved. My father also had a toothache this Spring Festival; the local doctor suggested root-canal treatment, which I firmly opposed. I cured him with a similar method, and it has not recurred to this day.

This female classmate of mine has just turned eighteen; her life is still long. After her tooth nerve is dealt with, there will be a series of aftereffects: her tooth will become brittle, its color will darken, and she may have to have it extracted and replaced early in life.

I can imagine that when these classmates who have studied only Western medicine go out to work in the future, when they encounter the same problems they will also use this simple, crude, effective method to handle them—and as for what kind of aftereffects it later brings to the patient, they will not be able to worry about that.

If I had not first studied TCM and then Western medicine, but the reverse, I might not be able to accept the TCM system. But now, I can look at the various textbooks before me with a more comprehensive perspective. I am not saying here that Western medicine is inferior to TCM, or that Western medicine is absolutely bad. If Western medicine had no merits, I would not be spending the effort, at my age, to study it.

I only want to express this thought: one should not be biased in studying medicine, nor one-sidedly believe only in Western medicine or only in TCM. If conditions allow, one can thoroughly study both well. When encountering a concrete clinical problem, choose the good of each and apply it.