I don’t know much about China and their traditional medicines but it seems that people there developed their own medicine based on experience or word of mouth. It’s like we know somebody successfully kicks out his fever just by eating a kind of herb and we copy that. Their ancestors might have passed on these experience to the next generations. And one day, Western guys come and study those things under the light of science…
This is basically what I’m trying to get at. Just because you take something, study it from a scientific perspective and produce a chemical substitute to the natural substance doesn’t take away from the original cure and make it “Hocus Pocus.” There are economic interests at play to make you feel that it is, but that doesn’t make it true. I really do believe that we have all the natural resources we need to cure disease. Most of the medicines that mankind know of are illegal though. Heroin, Cocaine, Marijuana, etc. This drugs are not good when abused but could have substantial benefits to the medical community if it wasn’t so taboo to openly explore it.
I feel like every few years we discover “new things” we always knew existed and now say the medicial benefits of them. Notice the sudden increase in Pomegranate and Acai everything? See that Apricot Kernels have been linked to cure cancer? There are many examples look up Herbalism. I don’t see why we’re more comfortable accepting things made in a lab than grown from the Earth.
It absolutely is ethnocentric to dismiss civilizations that have existed for thousands of years before our own.
That’s fine, then you can adopt hocus pocus and I’ll stick with medicine. Such is the free society we live in.
For all the evil that medicine is in your view, it’s interesting that countries that embrace science dramatically outlive those that embrace mostly hocus pocus:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_life_expectancy
I mean, you can go back to how they lived in antiquity when most died by 35 but hey, I’ll enjoy modern health care.
Viagra is actually based off of panther testes.
No matter the illness, you really can’t go wrong with panther testes.
So I assume there is no middle ground in your opinion? You’re either eating bugs from under rocks or praising big pharm. I’m not sure if you’re aware, but the 5th place on that list (above Canada) is Hong Kong where people still follow traditional medicine, but integrate modern medicine too. This kid I knew from Hong Kong told me people there eat Bear Feet or other stuff for increased sperm count or other reasons.
Some traditional remedies probably help in alleviating symptoms of illness and perhaps even addressing the illness itself. If people from 500 years ago experimented with all kinds of random approaches to illness, the treatments that appeared to work would have been more likely to be recorded and taught to their descendants, even if the people had no idea how the treatments actually worked. So, I don’t think all traditional medicine should be dismissed for not being developed in a scientific way.
With that being said, many traditional treatments have absolutely no logical basis. My grandfather would eat turtle soup because supposedly it makes you live longer… like a turtle. You can also walk into many Chinese medicine stores and straight up buy the penis of some animal. Literally, the guy will hand you a 2 foot dried dong of a moose or something. Traditional medicine practitioners tend to have an overweighted belief in the power of dongs.
Ultimately, I don’t think it’s wrong to get ideas from traditional medicine. However, the efficacy of these treatments should be tested and verified scientifically.
Hong Kong’s high life expectancy is probably related to lifestyle - low obesity, no Denny’s - and high doctors per capita, since the whole country is a big city.
Uh yeah, duh! This is because “modern” medicine does not have voodoo, so all of the curses, torments and plagues visited upon enemies in “hocus pocus” countries don’t happen in other countries.
Don’t believe me? Secretly get a strand of your boss’s hair and keep it in your pocket for two days. If he/she doesn’t get a headache then I’m a monkey’s uncle.
When I was in the 7th grade this girl Bianca told me she put voodoo on me. It seemed odd to me being it was a Catholic school, but she was Haitian so I think she meant it.
while it’s a common misconception, but one should not confuse chinese astrology with taro cards and palm reading and other types of fortune telling.
It’s like confusing a fundamental analyst with a technical analyst - they are coming from very different perspective.
I don’t think it’s completely faith. Chinese medicine - specifically the discipline that uses herbs and natural ingredients as medicine, is what people used for thousands of years before modern medicine.
have you EVER tried seeing a (certified) chinese medicine doctor and drank the prescribed herbal soup/tea??
Don’t ban it until you try.
Though i don’t have a lot of expereince, but it’s definitely growing, a lot of people are using natural medication than eating anti-biotics all the time. Chinese medicine is more on recovery and strengthening of your body, western medicine is more about curing the symptoms.
I feel odd agreeing with Nana on a subject, but there’s a first time for everything.
I think western medicine and chinese medicine are a lot more similar than you may think.
For example, for thousands of years, Chinese (also Japanese) believe goji berries are good for staying young and eye-sight/ vision.
NOW (in the last few years), goji berries are becoming more popular in North America because it is high in Vitamin A and antioxidents - they are more SCIENTIFICALLY proven to minimize free radicals causing aging and improve vision.
I think a lot of people here are misguided by bad plots and poor portrayal of “china town” in hollywood movies and just think everything is bogus.
Funny you share that link, because within the top 5, at least 3 (hong kong, singapore and japan) countries use traditional medicine in some ways on a regular basis.
Again, i beleive traditional medicine IS science - we just eat the actual ingredients instead of eating the extracts in the form of pills!
Science is distinguished by the process that scientists use to produce results. In this respect, some traditional medicine is probably rudimentary scientific and some is not. If a traditional practitioner tries 100 different random herbs on a sick patient, observes the results, and records the herbs which produced a favorable result, that can be classified as a scientific process. However, if the results are based on supposition; for instance, that eating monkey brain makes you smarter, then that is not scientific at all. Traditional medicine, particularly traditional Chinese medicine, is a combination of both of these
Agreed. I was born in a family that uses both kinds of medicine so I find it quite true. Traditional herbs sometimes are used in cooking to alliviate headache or improve patients’ recovery (e.g: steamed herbal chicken soup)
I myself also take supplements extracted from ginkgo biloba leaves to enhance concentration when studying 
By the way, if you come to Seoul in Autumn, you will see a lot of glorious gingko trees lined the streets
Yes, Korea uses a lot of tradition methods too in their everyday cooking.
I think it’s good to understand teh concepts behind it before judging.
anyway, back to astrology. my friend did a “reading” for me and it’s quite detailed. i am trying to see if they all come true this year!
Don’t forget about confirmation bias.
Biases are not exclusive to old herbs though: