Traditional Chinese Medicine Has Always Kept Pace With The Times
China is a populous and diverse country, and it is not easy to make yourself heard there; unless you hold an extreme view and shout it from the rooftops, few people will pay attention. After Professor Tu Youyou won the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine, it stirred up a great deal of controversy in China. The most chilling part was the fierce rejection of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM). A chief researcher at a TCM research institute produced a scientific achievement that won the Nobel Prize, and the final social verdict was a repudiation of TCM itself. Could anything be more absurd?
The cause of TCM has been continually advancing. Anyone who has studied the history of Chinese medicine even a little, or who has patiently studied TCM for some time, knows that TCM is the sum of rich clinical experience accumulated over the long history of the Chinese people's struggle against disease. In every dynasty there have been innovators who, drawing on the academic achievements of their own era, pushed the cause of Chinese medicine forward. To imagine TCM as an unchanged ancient medicine frozen two thousand years ago is to completely ignore the work of generations of physicians. Today's TCM scholars are combining Chinese medicine with modern science and technology to further develop it; this is entirely in keeping with TCM's long-standing tradition of valuing practice and keeping pace with the times. TCM is a lively and vital science, and it is no bad thing that it should become a branch of modern medicine for the benefit of patients.
Much of the experience within TCM is exceedingly valuable and deserves to be taken seriously. Someone once said to me, "What use is such an ancient thing as TCM today?" My reply was: rice was also discovered by our ancestors thousands of years ago; are we therefore supposed to abandon rice and eat something else? Human experience does not lose its value simply because times change. TCM represents a large body of practical results that generations of ancestors derived from countless human experiments carried out in medical practice. This practical knowledge will continue to contribute to relieving the suffering caused by disease, not only in the past but also in the present and future.
Those who nowadays loudly debate the merits and faults of Chinese and Western medicine rarely truly understand either. Some are half-baked dilettantes who, having picked up only a superficial knowledge, dare to be arrogant and dismissive of everything. I believe that anyone who has truly entered the doorway of medicine—whether of a traditional medicine like TCM or of modern Western medicine—will hold cautious views. Especially after witnessing a great many deaths during clinical practice, such a person becomes silent. Because both traditional and modern medicine are effective, yet both are limited in what they can achieve. When a doctor has watched a patient die despite every effort, that doctor will not be complacent or arrogant, nor will that doctor hold his own medical knowledge without any skepticism.
Medicine needs to progress, and this is true for both Chinese and Western medicine. Casting aside prejudice, reading widely to improve therapeutic results, continually and consciously accumulating medical knowledge, and approaching medicine with an open and unburdened mind—this is the beginning of a person's true entry into the study of medicine. We do not study medicine to defend the dignity of some school we adhere to, nor to show off, but to improve outcomes and solve medical problems.
The study of medicine values patient immersion, but also the courage to doubt and to innovate, and the willingness to integrate new technologies of the age in order to advance a medical craft rather than cling to the old ways.