The American Journal of Chinese Medicine

This paper seeks to examine and explain the changes in China's health policy since 1949. It attempts to clarify the role of various determinants in the health policy-making process in various stages of China's development and discover what forces propelled the shifts in health policies and campaigns. Various social, economic and political forces are discussed as they bear on the evolution of China's health policies, and the fate of Maoist vs. pragmatic tendencies in assessed.

The Japanese health care system is frequently criticized within Japan for the over prescription of medication. This problem is analyzed by examining the modern medical system as a cultural construct. Attitudes towards medication derived from the traditional East Asian medical system are delineated and their reinforcement through other cultural institutions is discussed. The implications of the persistence of these attitudes for contemporary medical practice is presented.

Many countries in Southeast Asia have the experience of traditional treatments of drug dependence, or have healers who are extending traditional methods to meet contemporary needs. Some treatments, for example those used in some Buddhist monastereis in Thailand and clinics in Japan, reply upon the philosophical and religious traditions of the country; others come closer to faith healing and magic in their practices; and many use herbal preprations during detoxification and afterwards, as well as offfering spiritual or secular therapy. This paper argues that careful evaluation be made of the methods and outcome of these traditional treatments of drug dependence and summarizes some of the evidence so far published.

According to the earliest ideas, Blood = Soul. Blood-Vapours were interpreted as volatile liquid and called Ruh in Arabic. Greeks looked upon the same as dust-fine matter and called it "smoke" or Thymos. Soul thus became the finest form of matter, liquid or solid, and, as such, dual-natured. In Chinese cosmogony Ek-Chhi, the One Soul, cosmic soul, was conceived as the source of all existence, of all forms of matter, as well as of all forms of energy. It was dual-natured, matter-cum-energy. In physics there is a corpuscular theory of light, making it correspondingly dual-natured. Moreover, the cosmic soul, or Chhi, persists in every form of creation. Paracelsus also recognized an entity as "the most subtle constituent of each individual thing" in fact as primordial matter or as the first creative energy that persists in all creation. The Chinese call this element Chhi. Now the word Ek-Chhi has been Arabicized as Iksir, hence Elixir. Thus what is Chhi in Chinese and Iksir in Arabic, Paracelsus calls Alcool. He has clearly assigned it a dual nature, e.g., the volatile fraction wine and dust-fine powder as collyrium, corresponding to blood-vapours, called Ruh in Arabic, and to Smoke-Soul in Greek, called Thymos. Later, when chemists recognized alcohol as a definite substance, they retained the Paracelsian term Alcool for it, ignoring in the future the dual nature orginally attributed to it by Paracelsus. Thus arose the designation alcohol for Alcool. We then discuss the etymology of ther word Alcool which has not been undertaken so far. Collyrium was dust-fine black powder. First it was micronized charcoal, later lamp-black. The Arabic word for collyrium was Al-kohl, with Kohl as a loan word from the Chinese. Here Ho = Black. Ho is pronounced Kho. Lu = Pot. Then Ho-Lu = Kho-Lu = black-pot. In fact the term Kohl-Pot, as such, does occur in the literature, which thereby confirms Lu = pot. Then Kho-Lu, when Arabicized, became Al-Kho-Lu, later Al-Ko-Lu mutated into Al-Ko-Ul. It was spelled Al-co-ol by Paracelsus, while even in 1653 it had been expressed as Alcohole, a variant in the spelling of alcohol. Briefly, alcohol is derived from a Chinese term meaning "Black (collyrium in)-Pot".

The cardiovascular effects of the administration of sodium salicylate (100 mg/kg), the administration of morphine sulfate (0.5 mg/kg) and acupuncture by electrocautery at Jen-Chung (Go-26) were compared in groups of dogs under 0.75% halothane anesthesia. Cardiac ouptut (CO), stroke volume (SV), heart rate (HR), mean arterial pressue (MAP), pulse pressure (PP), central venous pressure (CVP), total peripheral resistance (TPR), pH, PaCO₂, PaO₂ and base deficit were measured over a two hour period. A significant increase in CO, SV, PP, and CVP in addition to a significant decrease in TPR were observed following the administration of sodium salicylate. Morphine sulfate decreased the CO, HR, and MAP significantly while the SV and PP were significantly increased. Acupuncture by electrocautery at Jen-Chung (Go-26) produced a significant increase in CO, SV, HR, MAP, and PP and a significant decrease in TPR. This model was satisfactory in comparing cardiovascular changes evoked by a mild analgesic, sodium salicylate, a potent opiate, morphine sulfate, and acupuncture by electrocautery at Jen-Chung (Go-26).

The ginsenoside Rg₁ extracted from the root of Panax ginseng can promote mitosis in cultured human lymphocytes activated by PHA or Con A. Its most effective concentrations are around 0.0003-0.0005 mg per ml of medium. Experiments shows that its does not arrest the cells at any particular mitotic stage. It can also enhance the DNA synthesis in the activated lymphocytes. As a result of the increased number of mitotic cells and enhanced DNA synthesis, the cell density is significantly increased in the Rg₁-treated culture as compared with the control. However, in the absence of a mitogenic lectin, Rg₁ cannot restart the quinescent human lymphocytes to divide in vitro; therefore it is not mitogenic to resting cells. The possible action Rg₁ on activated human lymphocytes as well as its pharmacological significance are discussed.

Water extract from seeds of Annona cherimola was tested in vitro on uterus strips of nongravid guinea pigs. The extract resulted in possessing utero-constrictive properties due to the presence of a gluco-steroidal substance isolated from it.

This paper explores the method of acupuncture anesthesia in craniocerebral operations: selection of cases and preoperative management; selection of acupuncture points and adjustment of stimulus parameters; preoperative administration of drugs and choice of proper adjuvants during the operation; and problems existing in craniocerebral operations during the application of acupuncture anesthesia and their countermeasures. The "triple contrary effects" of acupuncture anesthesia are considered, namely: anti-pain or analgesia, anti-shock, and anti-infection. How acupuncture activates the analgesic effects of the organism is discussed: the spinal afferent pathway for the needling sensations; the role of the caudate nucleus in acupuncture analgesia; and the co-relationship between endorphin in the cerebrospinal fluid and acupuncture analgesia.

A method employing solvent-activated tape electrode was adapted for locating electropermeable points, minimizing possible errors due to human and external factors. Measurements along two meridians on the forearm showed that these points were somewhat scattered about the conventional acupuncture loci and their observable occurrence was probably the result of localized thermal damage of the epidermis.

Guinea pig acupuncture points located on the back of the animal, cranial and caudal to the last rib in the muscular groove between longissimus dorsi and iliocostalis, were treated by electro-acupuncture (EA). In the duodenum, when compared with the control, the EA-treated group showed a significant decrease of its enterochromaffin (EC) cell count. However, the sham-treated group also had a lower EC cell count compared to the control. Decreased EC counts were also observed in the jejunum and colon in both EA and sham treated groups: however, they were not significant except in the sham-treated colon. The present study demonstrated that in the normal guinea pigs electro-acupuncture on certain points tends to cause a decrease of the EC cell count in some parts of the gut; however, such results cannot be completely attributed to the effect of acupuncture.