A Panoramic View Of Western Medicine And Traditional Chinese Medicine

Disease is a kind of natural phenomenon. Both human beings and animals have been fighting against various diseases all their lives. After thousands of years of medical practice, we have been able to overcome most diseases. Traditional Chinese medicine and Western medicine have aroused general interest in medicine because of their respective strengths. At this time, "the book of medicine" is worth recommending. In chronological order, it focuses on 250 development milestones in the history of medicine, from witch doctors in ancient times to the most advanced surgical robots. This book also introduces the medical contributions of China, including the Huangdi Neijing in 300 BC and the acupuncture and moxibustion encyclopedia published in 1601.

The book of medicine shows us a panoramic view of the development of world medicine, which is helpful to enrich our knowledge and broaden our horizons. People who believe in traditional Chinese medicine may not know much about western medicine. Through this book, we can learn that western medicine has a long history in chemical analysis, anatomy and surgery. In 6500 B.C., the human drilled or cut holes were found in the skull. Edwin Smith's surgical papyrus manuscript in 1600 B.C. is the oldest surgical medical literature found in the world. It describes the cranial suture, the surface layer of the brain and the cerebrospinal fluid for the first time. Surgery has a broad mass base in the West. In medieval Europe, barbers also performed simple surgical operations such as bone setting and bloodletting, so they were called "barber surgeons". In about 4000 B.C., Sumer, the birthplace of human civilization, began to record urine analysis results with clay plates. At least 20 different kinds of urine have been described in Sanskrit medical books around 100 BC. The oldest artificial eyeball was unearthed from a site in southeastern Iran, which has a history of more than 5000 years. Indian doctors were able to perform cataract surgery successfully in the 6th century BC. These medical developed areas belong to Indo European culture.

Some people misunderstand western medicine and think that western medicine is not suitable for herbal medicine, but belongs to traditional Chinese medicine. This book tells us that this view is wrong. Since 2000 B.C., the Ayurvedic medical system has used herbs (including spices) to treat diseases. The research of plant medicine is called "pharmacognosy" in the West and has a long history. In the first century A.D., pedanius Dioscores, a surgeon in the Greek army, began to summarize medical information about plants and natural products. In the following 1500 years, it was continuously translated into various languages, laying the foundation for Islamic medicine, and finally spread to Latin America. The subject takes crude drugs as the main research object. It is about the name, source (base source), production (cultivation), collection (collection, processing, processing), identification (authenticity identification and quality evaluation), chemical composition, medical use, tissue culture, resource development and utilization, and new drug creation and so on. Crude drugs include traditional Chinese medicine, folk medicine, national medicine and raw materials for extracting chemical drugs.

Taking digitalis digitalis (Digitalis purpurea) native to the mountainous areas of central and southern Europe as an example, this plant is also known as Digitalis purpurea (Rehmannia glutinosa), which was later cultivated in Zhejiang, Shanghai, Jiangsu and Shandong provinces. British doctor wesselin was proficient in botany. In 1776, he published the complete classification of naturally growing plants in Great Britain. Wesselin once heard that an old rural woman used a secret recipe to treat edema caused by heart failure. He found that a plant called digitalis was used in the mixture. Wesselin carefully compared the effects of different parts of digitalis, such as flowers, leaves and stems after being decocted or made into pills at different growth stages, and found that the leaves of digitalis were grinded into powder before flowering, which could relieve the edema of patients with heart failure. After 9 years of experiments, he treated 163 patients with digitalis, and accumulated a lot of experience. In 1785, he published a monograph, so far, digitalis preparation has been widely used. In traditional Chinese medicine, there is a "distant relative" of digitalis glutinosa, and digitalis native to Europe belong to Angiospermae, dicotyledons, Scrophulariaceae and digitalis. Rehmannia glutinosa is a traditional Chinese medicine, which can clear away heat and cool blood, nourish yin and generate fluid. It can not only be directly used as medicine, but also be used in Guangdong Province.

Western Medicine found that the direct use of digitalis has many shortcomings, many impurities, and it is difficult to accurately grasp the dose, there is a risk of death. The way to solve this problem is to extract the effective components of digitalis. In 1874, German pharmacist Oswald schmiedberg purified cardiac glycoside from digitalis. Up to now, it is still often used in modern medicine. The development of Western medicine is driven by the more developed chemical analysis and anatomy. Traditional Chinese medicine does not use chemical analysis, but uses groping methods in practice, processing, compatibility and constantly trying to add dosage to achieve the desired therapeutic effect.

The advantage of understanding the history of human medicine is that we can look at the differences between Chinese and Western medicine more comprehensively. At present, traditional Chinese medicine can improve the level of science and technology and play a greater role in the field of prevention; while western medicine has developed advanced biological therapy such as gene therapy, which has made remarkable achievements in solving acute, severe and difficult diseases.

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