Different from Chinese medicine, many hospitals have already abolished Chinese medicine. Even traditional Chinese medicine hospitals, which mainly focus on Chinese medicine, rarely diagnose the cause by looking, smelling, asking and feeling. Like other western medicine hospitals, they have passed all kinds of instruments, but only Chinese medicine stores are kept. Nowadays, Chinese medicine hospitals are more like western medicine hospitals that use Chinese medicine.
Why is there such a big gap between private hospitals and official hospitals in Chinese medicine treatment? In my opinion, the therapeutic effect of most traditional Chinese medicines is not credible.
Modern western medicine believes that diseases are pathological changes of organs themselves, so western medicine can be divided into cardiology, ophthalmology and orthopedics. The usual diagnosis method is to determine the cause by direct observation of the body (such as ct, X-ray, B-ultrasound, gastroscope, etc.). ) or body fluid examination (blood test, urine test, stool test, etc. ), and then compare the indicators of normal people. Because it is considered that illness is the pathological change of the body itself (blood viscosity, fracture, etc.). ) or the invasion of external substances (fungi, viruses, bacterial infections, etc. ), the natural treatment is to treat headache and foot pain.
Traditional Chinese medicine believes that all organs of the body are coordinated with each other, and getting sick is due to the imbalance of yin and yang, which leads to the destruction of the balance in the body, and more is philosophical thinking. It may be deficiency of yin and blood, excess of yang, or deficiency of qi and blood. Treatment is mainly based on yin-yang regulation. But not all diseases can be regulated by yin and yang, so Chinese medicine also has surgery (skin) and bonesetting. The diagnosis method is to look, smell, ask and examine the disease and its cause. For example, pulse diagnosis needs to distinguish powerlessness, pulse size and pulse position fluctuation, and then prescribe corresponding prescriptions, which are nothing more than removing fire, invigorating qi and enriching blood. Because of this, most Chinese medicine practitioners can cure any disease.
The essential feature of science is falsifiability, that is, he can find a way to verify whether what he said is correct. Because it can be falsified, it can be tested by practice, and then it can constantly improve itself through testing. Modern western medicine believes that a certain disease will lead to an increase in some indicators, and these indicators will decrease after treatment. It's easy to cheat, and it's clear at a glance when you look it up with an instrument. Traditional Chinese medicine does not develop with the development of science, and quantifies these empirical judgments into indicators that can be objectively measured by machines. Take the pulse condition as an example. The strength of pulse and the fluctuation of pulse are not quantified, and everyone has his own judgment. As for the deficiency of qi and blood and the imbalance of yin and yang, it is naturally impossible to measure.
"Large-sample randomized double-blind trial" is the "gold standard" for modern western medicine to judge the curative effect. Whether a new medicine and a new treatment method of modern western medicine are effective or not needs to be verified by "large sample random double-blind test" before it can be used in clinic.
Even so, it will take decades of clinical observation for these drugs to be included in western medicine textbooks. However, with the continuous progress of equipment and instruments, we will find that many drugs that have been proved have great side effects, resulting in almost no enduring medical festivals in western medicine.
Because Chinese medicine can't be falsified, it can't pass the "large sample random double-blind test". So how can Chinese medicine identify the effectiveness of drugs or treatments?
It's easy to master the methods of verifying drugs or treatments in TCM, as long as you go to the classics handed down from ancient Chinese medicine, such as Compendium of Materia Medica, Emergency Prescription, Shennong Materia Medica Classic and so on. If it is recorded in ancient books handed down from generation to generation, then this aspect is effective.
As modern people, we all know that "practice is the only criterion for testing truth", but there is no practice test in the methodology of traditional Chinese medicine. This blind faith in authority will naturally create many immortal works, and the older they are, the more traditional they are and the more trustworthy they are. Under the guidance of such values, Huangdi Neijing has become an immortal masterpiece in Chinese medicine.
Someone will definitely refute: you said that Chinese medicine is not credible, but modern Chinese medicine can't. In China, Chinese medicine has been used to treat diseases for thousands of years, and there are many magical doctors, such as Hua Tuo, Sun Simiao, Bian Que and Li Shizhen. How do we explain this? Tu Youyou, the Nobel Prize winner, found that artemisinin can treat malaria according to the records in Compendium of Materia Medica, which proved that Compendium of Materia Medica is indeed a classic.
It is absolutely impossible to say that Chinese medicine can't cure diseases at all. However, because it is difficult to grasp the discretion of TCM therapy, even if there are a group of "magic doctors" with superb medical level, it will not change the reality that the overall medical ability of TCM is low.
Modern medicine tells us that many diseases will be cured even if they are not treated, such as colds and ulcers. In other words, if you get such a disease, even if the treatment is ineffective, you will "get rid of the disease." However, diseases such as wound infection and smallpox were basically resisted by autoimmunity before efficient treatments such as penicillin and vaccinia were discovered. Naturally, some people can be cured, and some people can't rule well, which has created many folk elixirs and legendary doctors in the field of traditional Chinese medicine. Have you ever heard of the folk prescription of experimental western medicine?
As for the ancient imperial doctors, there is a common feature. They all write books and have strange or bold legends about treating diseases. But there is another similarity. In the legend of imperial doctors, most imperial doctors do not treat diseases. In ancient times, when the medical level was low, even if the prescriptions in medical works didn't work, the author's popularity could be well improved. If some accidents happen again, people's infinite reverie of "imperial doctor" may be improved.
For example, it is said that Hua Tuo's Qingnangshu recorded Hua Tuo's painstaking efforts and medical experience all his life, but it was finally lost because of his disciples' poor protection. In addition, according to the Records of the Three Kingdoms, Hua Tuo scraped the bone for Guan Yu and opened the skull for Cao Cao, and put forward an unprecedented medical method. Finally, he died of Cao Cao's suspicion, which naturally increased the legend of Hua Tuo. However, these legends can't be considered in detail. Wuqinxi in Qingnangshu is mostly classified as health qigong series, while Mafeisan is just a legend. So far, modern medicine has not found a specific drug that can achieve general anesthesia only by oral administration. Even if Mafeisan really works, it does not have the surgical conditions. Once the wound is infected, the patient will die.
As for Tu Youyou's discovery that artemisinin can treat malaria from the record of Compendium of Materia Medica, it was selected from Compendium of Materia Medica by Tu Youyou with the experimental method of modern western medicine. Most of the records in Compendium of Materia Medica are completely unfounded. To put it bluntly, it's just that Li Shizhen himself collected it, and most of it has not been verified. There are more than 40 kinds of drugs for malaria in Compendium of Materia Medica, including gypsum and earthworm, but only Artemisia annua is effective at present.
Chinese medicine can persist for a long time, which shows that Chinese medicine is not useless. An important reason is an important concept in psychology-"placebo effect". It refers to the phenomenon that patients "expect" or "believe" that treatment is effective, even though they get ineffective treatment, so that their symptoms can be alleviated. In addition, the treatment mechanism of traditional Chinese medicine is more complicated, and the explanation of the treatment principle of traditional Chinese medicine is more mysterious and makes people feel more comfortable. But because of this, the curative effect of traditional Chinese medicine is even less credible. Even if Chinese medicine does cure some diseases, we can't know whether the treatment effect is medical or psychological.
To develop modern Chinese medicine, it is necessary to learn the scientific experimental methods of western medicine and screen out specific drugs like artemisinin from various ancient records. Diagnostic methods should also learn from the quantitative comparison of modern western medicine. To put it bluntly, it is to constantly verify the accurate efficacy of drugs, get rid of their dross, take their essence, be more scientific and less routine.