Standard Western Medical Textbooks Now Acknowledge the Efficacy of Chinese Herbal Medicine for Nervous System Diseases

Yesterday, while reading, I came upon the following passage on page 332, first line, of Xitong Jiepouxue (Systematic Anatomy) (chief reviewer Ding Wenlong; editors-in-chief Cui Huixian and Liu Xuezheng; People's Medical Publishing House, 10th edition, July 2024; 3rd printing, November 2024): "Physical factors such as alternating magnetic fields, electric fields, and helium-neon laser, as well as the active constituents of certain Chinese herbal medicines, also have a certain promoting effect on the regeneration of the peripheral nervous system."

This passage is quite remarkable, because this is the standard textbook for the whole nation's clinical medicine, basic medicine, preventive medicine, and stomatology majors—all of which are Western-medicine disciplines—and this very set is what I am now using to study Western medicine in medical school. Nowadays, when the confrontation between Chinese and Western medicine is so severe, it is no small thing for a Western-medicine textbook to fairly acknowledge that Chinese herbal medicine has a certain efficacy against nervous system diseases.

Of course, the great majority of those studying Western medicine will not pay much attention to this sentence; after all, first-year medical students have limited life experience, and these words will not leave a deep impression on them. Only someone like me, who first studied Chinese medicine and now receives formal, orthodox Western-medicine training, will keenly catch this sentence and feel, from clinical practice, a deep resonance with it.

Nervous system diseases are extremely difficult to treat. In the past, the medical community once held that the nervous system could not be repaired once damaged. Over the last decade or two, scientists have found that injured neuronal cell bodies and their fibers undergo a process of structural repair and functional recovery; this phenomenon is called nerve fiber regeneration.

This means that nervous system diseases can also be rehabilitated; patients whose nervous systems were damaged in traffic accidents, trauma, or cerebral hemorrhage are no longer without recourse. Moreover, the efficacy of Chinese herbal medicine against nervous system diseases has also been affirmed. There are even now dedicated rehabilitation majors, and neurological rehabilitation is one of the key areas they study. Acupuncture and Chinese herbal medicine both have a good promoting effect on the rehabilitation of nervous system diseases; this has been verified by clinical practice and is recognized by the medical community.

The diseases described in traditional Chinese medicine as "bone injury," "bi-syndrome," "stroke," and "wilting syndrome" are closely related to nervous system diseases in modern medicine. Because family members have had a history of such diseases, I have researched these extensively and accumulated much experience in this area. I have long hoped to conduct deeper integrated Chinese-Western research in this field; now it seems this direction is well worth pursuing.

At present, rehabilitation from nervous system diseases remains one of the world's great medical challenges. Although rehabilitation is possible, the overall effective rate is still not high, and recovery speed is not ideal. To improve the cure rate for nervous system diseases, Chinese and Western medicine must work together in more and deeper research.