Note: I’m going to start cross-posting some blog entries about my book-writing process on both my primary blog, Matters of Varying Insignificance, and the Tumblr blog I set up specifically for the book.
A major figure in my book will be my paternal grandfather, who was a renowned practitioner of Chinese medicine in his hometown. The first time I sat down and talked to my dad about grandpa for the book, our talk quickly turned into an hour-long crash-course introduction to Chinese medicine, and I thought I would share a couple of the interesting points here.
My dad, who read a lot of my grandfather’s writings about practicing Chinese medicine, explained some of the basic fundamental differences between Chinese and Western medicine. The biggest is that while Chinese medicine has terms such as lung, heart, kidney, and liver, they refer to functions rather than specifics organ. Also, in Chinese medicine, a disease within one function is viewed as a result of problems in another.
Therefore, the approach to treatment is quite different. One of the basic principles of Chinese medicine is “Pouring water from above to keep a pot from boiling over is not as effective as pulling out firewood from below.” In that saying, the boiling pot is a local symptom, whereas the fire is the true cause of the ailment. Therefore, simply pouring cold water into the pot to cool it off doesn’t solve the problem, as the fire still rages and will boil the pot again soon. On the other hand, if you remove firewood, it’ll reduce the fire and cool off the water, treating the ailment at its root.
My dad gave me an example to illustrate how this philosophy is practiced: If someone is coughing up blood, Chinese medicine would say it’s caused by “fire” in the liver rising upward through the body, meaning that the liver function is too strong. However, instead of applying treatment to the liver or the lung, where the cough is coming from, a Chinese doctor might prescribe medicine that affects the kidney function. Why? Because in Chinese medicine, there are five elements: gold, water, fire, wood, and soil. The liver is classified as “wood”, the lung is classified as “gold”, and the kidney belongs to “water”. So when the wood (liver) catches on fire and gets too hot, it will melt the gold (lung), hence the coughing up of blood. The wood is catching fire because it is too dry, therefore the treatment would be to add water (strengthen the kidney function).
To a Westerner, this might sound like rubbish, not to mention backward, Dark Ages-esque pseudo-science, but as someone who grew up being a beneficiary of Chinese medicine, I can say that it does work for a surprising array of ailments. A part of my book will discuss my grandfather’s view toward the roles of Chinese and Western medicine — a relationship that hasn’t always been smooth in Chinese history.