中医

Traditional Chinese Medicine (中医, zhōngyī) is built on a set of cosmological principles applied to the body. The central concept is 气 (qì) — the vital force that flows through the body along channels called 经络 (jīngluò, meridians). Health is unobstructed qi flow; disease is blockage, deficiency, or excess.

The body is understood through the framework of 阴阳 (yīnyáng) — complementary forces that must remain in dynamic balance. Yin corresponds to cold, interior, feminine, passive, and descending qualities; yang to heat, exterior, masculine, active, and ascending. Most symptoms can be categorized as yin excess (cold, damp, pale), yang excess (hot, dry, flushed), yin deficiency, or yang deficiency — and treatment aims to restore balance.

The 五行 (wǔxíng, Five Phases) — Wood, Fire, Earth, Metal, Water — map onto organ systems, seasons, emotions, tastes, colors, and directions in a comprehensive correspondence table. The liver (肝) corresponds to Wood, Spring, anger, sour taste, and the color green. Treating liver qi stagnation therefore might involve sour foods, the color green, and addressing the patient's anger. The five phases provide a symbolic anatomy that integrates body and cosmos.

The 黄帝内经 (Huángdì Nèijīng, "Yellow Emperor's Classic of Internal Medicine") is the foundational text of Chinese medicine — a dialogue between the mythological Yellow Emperor and his physician Qibo, discussing physiology, pathology, diagnosis, and treatment. The text as it exists was compiled between roughly 200 BCE and 100 CE, though it claims much older origins.

The Nèijīng established the conceptual vocabulary that Chinese medicine has used ever since: the meridian system, the organ correspondences, pulse diagnosis, and the principles of prevention (treating before illness manifests rather than after). Its famous opening statement attributes all disease to disharmony — between the person and their environment, between the organ systems, between yin and yang.

Unlike Hippocratic medicine, which developed a tradition of systematic observation and empirical testing, the Nèijīng established a theoretical framework within which all subsequent Chinese medical knowledge was organized. New observations were fitted into the existing system rather than used to revise the system — a pattern of knowledge growth that differs fundamentally from the Western scientific method and is central to understanding both the strengths and limitations of traditional Chinese medicine.

针灸 (zhēnjiǔ, acupuncture and moxibustion) involves inserting fine needles into specific points (穴位 xuéwèi, acupoints) on the meridians to regulate qi flow, or burning the herb mugwort (艾 ài) near or on these points (moxibustion) to warm and stimulate them.

The classical texts describe over 360 acupoints on the fourteen major meridians. Each point has specific indications (what it treats), contraindications (when not to use it), and needling depth. Memorizing the points and their locations is a major component of TCM training.

Acupuncture has undergone more Western clinical research than any other component of traditional Chinese medicine. Evidence for effectiveness is strongest in pain management — particularly chronic lower back pain, headache, and osteoarthritis — where multiple systematic reviews and meta-analyses show effects exceeding sham acupuncture. The mechanism remains debated: whether the effects are mediated through endorphin release, local tissue response, or placebo with particularly effective delivery characteristics is not fully resolved.

The 本草纲目 (Běncǎo Gāngmù, "Compendium of Materia Medica"), completed by 李时珍 (Lǐ Shízhēn) in 1578, is the most comprehensive Chinese pharmacopoeia — 1,892 entries covering plants, animals, and minerals with their properties, preparation methods, and clinical applications. It remains a foundational reference.

Chinese herbal medicine operates through compound formulas rather than single-active-ingredient drugs. A classical formula might contain ten to fifteen ingredients — some primary (君 jūn, "ruler"), some adjunct (臣 chén, "minister"), some moderating (佐 zuǒ), some guiding the formula to its target organ (使 shǐ). The formula is decocted into a tea for consumption, with proportions adjusted to the individual patient's constitution and current pattern.

The artemisinin story illustrates the pharmacological potential: 屠呦呦 (Tú Yōuyōu) isolated artemisinin from sweet wormwood (青蒿 qīnghāo), a plant used in Chinese medicine for fever since at least 340 CE, and developed it into the most effective antimalarial drug currently in use — a direct translation of traditional knowledge into modern medicine that won the 2015 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine.

China's public health system practices 中西医结合 (zhōng xī yī jiéhé, "integration of Chinese and Western medicine") — a policy established under Mao Zedong in the 1950s partly for ideological reasons (preserving Chinese medical heritage) and partly for practical ones (there were not enough Western-trained physicians to serve the rural population). Most major Chinese hospitals maintain both a TCM department and standard Western medicine departments.

The evidence base for specific TCM practices is uneven. Herbal treatments derived from documented pharmacological compounds (like artemisinin) have strong evidence; practices like tongue and pulse diagnosis as standalone diagnostic tools have weaker evidence; many classical formulas have not been subjected to rigorous clinical trial. The regulatory environment in China differs from Western countries in ways that affect how this evidence is gathered and evaluated.

For learners of Chinese: TCM vocabulary saturates everyday Chinese health discourse. When a Chinese person says they are "上火" (shàng huǒ, "rising fire" — an excess heat condition) or "气虚" (qì xū, "qi deficiency"), they are using clinical TCM terminology that functions as common health language. Understanding this vocabulary is understanding how Chinese people talk about being unwell.