FORWARD FOR NOSTALGIC ANCIENT ORIENTAL MEDICINE

     There are basic fundamental properties of our Universe, which mold reality.  Light, gravitational forces, oxygen, nitrogen, hydrogen, carbon and complex nutrients, brought together create life.  We do not readily or inherently know everything.  Emile Zola noted “If you shut up truth and bury it under the ground, it will but grow, and gather to itself such explosive power that the day it bursts through, it will blow up everything in its way.”  Thus “Those people who truly study science (the real world) share a common reality”. 

     As cultures develop, they guard their way of life and in my view, traditional Oriental Medicine is no exception.  Origins of Chinese medicine can be traced back to second millennium BC Shamanic traditions.  Thus, the first primary health care givers in the Orient were the shamans.  Traditional Oriental Medicine was based on natural observations and evolved in conjunction with their religious philosophies. 

In the early Orient everything had a harmonious reciprocal relationship with everything else.  This explains why Qi is linked to the universal force.  Concepts of Yin and Yang in Traditional Oriental Medicine are the same as the concepts in Taoism.  This gives rise to two issues; that of circular logic as opposed to the linear and Aristotelian logic. Aristotelian logic has brought us Modern Technology and Science.  Yet complete devotion to circular logic renders a blindness to twenty-first century reality with refusal to drop unnecessary outdated concepts and methodologies inherent with the ever continuing scientific development and practice of Herbology and acupuncture.  The only way to bring Acupuncture Therapy into modern medicine would be to first teach the original limited system with subsequent modern medical training.   Remember it is the limited original circular logic or Acupuncture Therapy, which has held captive the minds, creativity, adaptability, growth, progress, lack of maturation, and the absence of the real doctor within Oriental Medicine or the "total care Oriental Medical Physician". 

     Long before science finds all the questions and subsequent answers, we will fully understand the medical prowess of acupuncture and Herbology.  In all of mankind’s experiential existence as our earth race progressed, philosophy predated scientific methodology.  Medicine itself began with humble healers looking for reasons people suffered and how to alleviate mankind’s suffering.   Five thousand years of documenting treatments, which aid mankind.  Many mistakes were made if one looks back and criticizes with the today’s ever correcting knowledge. Of course hindsight is 20/20.  The purpose of this contribution to our society is not to offer all the answers known relative to the safe, effective, and interphysician reliability, or reliable reproducible effects of acupuncture or Oriental Herbology.  It is to present Traditional Oriental Medicine as it is practiced today as a nostalgic medicine, and at the end of the day, present the first textbook sound scientifically reproducible methods of utilizing Acupuncture for pain and disorder control.   

       In 1978 this author wrote (in the 1980 edition the quotes in blue are rekindled) in the official publication for the Chiropractic Profession, the Journal of the American Chiropractic Association, “of course the future may bring new language, but we as professionals, must change, accept new corrections, and bend as the wisdom of science bends in the currents of new knowledge.”   Truth will be attained through the acceptance of the multi-disciplinary approach to team work (science) medicine.  “Health care is a team effort and cannot remain divided”Neff.  

      It would be a disservice to caregiver’s in Oriental Medicine to not review their beautiful nostalgic medicine method of pain control.  Nostalgic Medicine is the mainstay of care for three fourths of the world today.  Traditional Oriental Medicine as it is practiced and licensed today relative to diagnosis, has made efforts and continues to improve it's “scientific consistency” with western differential diagnosis.  However these consistencies were illusive to the literature until this series of publications.  The methods used to determine the treatments and findings are based on trial and error experimentation conducted behind the great confines of Asia which have indeed yielded some reproducible treatments with some reproducible pain control on millions of people.   

     For the past five thousand years, each new generation of Oriental caregivers evolved, they made additional refinements to Oriental Medicine with improved combinations of acupuncture and Herbal medicine based on successful patient outcome, repeat trials and anticipated results reproduced. 

      I opine, that the ancients, realized that not everyone was of the same intellectual levels nor could everyone remember complicated medical concepts nor even understand the how, where, when, and so forth as readily as one an other.  Thus they developed the "basic element concepts" of wood, fire, earth, metal, and water in this order to remember the "Yin aspects of a given medical problem".  If the order were metal, water, wood, fire and earth these would be the Yang aspects of healing. 

     Yin and Yang being one.  If you use a wood point you would tonify the acupuncture point designated by fire or heat, fever, anxiety and so forth.  In other words, it is my belief that as I call the "ancients", were a few brilliant people, who realized that by strong stimulation of certain points by pointed sharpened rocks could relieve "dis"-"ease".  They realized that to continue their discoveries, they would have to teach others who had not the intellect to understand the discovery.  For example, they could not explain fever to others.  But they could associate it with fire.  Students absent the genius could understand fire.  They could understand that to bring down or put out a fire one could throw earth or dirt on the fire.  This was likened to treating the acupuncture earth point. 

     The ancients could teach students that to kindle the fire or bring up body temperature to normal, one could place wood in the fire.  Thus treat the wood point to warm the cold limbs or torso when indicated by the full system in play. 

     This author has found acupuncture interwoven with beliefs of Taoist religion to fill in the gaps which the ancients oriental medical minds tried to pass on for the restoration and maintenance of health, but could not explain concepts which would seem routine to the well equipped medical forensic scientific investigator of today.  And this is the cause of skepticism found in scientists today.

    Thus, absent an understanding of how Oriental Medicine is practiced today, you will miss clinical observations about key human body disharmonies, which were obtained through five thousand years of clinical trials on human beings occurring within the confines of the continent of Asia.

ESSENCE OF LIFE & PROMULGATION OF HUMAN BEINGS

     In Oriental Medicine there are many ethereal concepts likened to the Life force of the universe (or G-d).  This life force or Essence of life continues to promulgate the life form until death.   In reality Qi is likened to sources of life and energy.  Although this cannot be measured, attenuated, generated, reproduced nor exist in its strict meanings, it has value to the ancients and their students as utility to discern proper care for needling or Herbology.   This editor tried to  formalize these concepts as presented in a concise form for the study of "always changing modern" harmonious Oriental Medicine when I studied the subject and published these works for my Acupuncture University Alma Mater.             

Good Luck and God Bless.-Dr. Scott Neff, DC MSOM