Pursuing the Elixir of Life

The following sections are included:

• Preface
• Contents

Glamorous Hong Kong Phoenix TV hostess Liu Hairuo was seriously injured in a British train accident in May 2003, suffering severe multiple fractures to her ribs and damage to her head, liver, lungs and spine. She underwent several surgeries at the Royal Free Hospital in London but remained in a coma on life-support. British doctors conjectured she was brain dead and were prepared to pull the plug and end her life.

What is special about Chinese medicine that makes it a mystery to sceptical Western observers yet passionately embraced by myriads of users in the Orient? Why does it enjoy a sizable and growing following in Europe, Australia and America?

In Chinese medical theory, the body contains the fundamental ingredients of qi, blood, and jing (collectively known as the three precious ingredients or sanbao 三宝) as well as body fluids known as jinye 津液.

Chinese medicine has an understanding of the workings of the human body that originally was influenced by ancient philosophy and cosmology. The ancients believed that the inner universe within the body was a sort of replica (microcosm) of the outer universe, hence they looked to certain regularities observed in nature and tried to see similar patterns within the human body. In practice, physicians had to contend with the realities of human illness and sought models of the workings of the human body that would guide them to heal the sick. The result was a set of principles designed to best fit their clinical experience, refined over hundreds of years into a narrative behind a system of medicine that has stood the test of time.

In this chapter we explore the central theme of medicine: what causes illness, how is it diagnosed, and how it is treated.

The pursuit of the elixir of life has a long history in China. It was an obsession for the great emperor Qin Shi Huang (秦始皇) who subdued all warring states in the land and for the first time in history united all of ancient China under one sovereign, so establishing the Qin dynasty (221.207 BC). He was held in awe as much for his military genius as for his unspeakable cruelty, burying alive hundreds of elite Confucian scholars and burning all their books because some of them objected to his lapses in humanity. Everything he fancied in China was for his taking. The only thing that eluded the Qin Emperor and never submitted to him was his mortality.

The humble root of a plant, or its leaves, bark, flowers and seeds all have potential medicinal value. Many of these plant parts have been carefully studied for their health promotion and therapeutic effects, and recorded in the Chinese pharmacopeia compiled over thousands of years by generations of herbalists and physicians.

We now turn to the practical reason for studying herbs: how to use them to heal illness and to promote health. This is a vast and fascinating area of study, taught in medical universities as an important subject but also as degree and research courses entirely devoted to studying their healing actions.

During Richard Nixon’s historic visit to China in 1972, his entourage witnessed one of the wonders of ancient Chinese science in action. Brain surgery was conducted with the patient fully awake, and a woman after delivery by a Caesarean operation while fully conscious got up from the operating table and walked to the recovery bed. All this took place withacupuncture needles placed in strategic points on the patients’ bodies. Western expert opinions vary as to whether the patients received painkillers and other drugs during those procedures, but there was no doubt that acupuncture needles played a key anaesthetic role.

In Chapter 6 we caught a glimpse of the broad principles of the ancients in cultivating good health and avoiding illness. We now look at the subsequent development of these basic ideas over the centuries and how modern knowledge of physiology and nutrition can be incorporated to provide us with practical guidelines for good health.

The renowned Tang dynasty physician Sun Simiao 孙思邈 (581–682 AD) opined that the foundation of body health lay in food: “He who does not understand food is ill-suited to living.” Since ancient times, the role of diet has been accorded prime importance in life cultivation; in particular, a diet that was not tailored to the individual person’s constitution would be considered harmful to body health in the long run.

To illustrate how TCM methods are applied to some common chronic illnesses, we examine briefly its use in coronary heart disease, stroke, diabetes, digestive disorders, depression and cancer. These conditions have been chosen because TCMtreatment in each case provides an interesting complement or alternative to Western medicine. TCM physicians regularly encounter patients who may not have found satisfactory results with Western medicine for such ailments and seek alternative treatments. The objective here is to show how TCM methods have been used in a wide variety of clinical work and offera comparison with biomedical methods.

In the 21st century, even as TCM clinics and colleges flourish in East Asia and many Western countries, doubts about its scientific credentials persist among a generation of biomedical scientists nurtured in the reductionism of molecular and cellular biology and accustomed to the statistical methods of the so-called ‘evidence-based medicine’.

The following sections are included:

• Annex 1: Common Chinese Herbs
• Annex 2: Common Chinese Prescriptions
• Glossary of Common Names of Herbs
• References
• Index