A brief reading of the section upon Acupuncture and Traditional Chinese Medicine in the good health guide SLAINTE (ed. Susanna Hassett, Wolfhound Press, Dublin, 1990. pp.29-50) by Thomas J. Shanahan, the Director of the Irish College of Traditional Chinese Medicine, will further explain the extent and effectiveness of Chinese medicine in treating a very wide range of medical and related complaints to justify the conclusion:-"China can claim to have the most ancient and sophisticated medical system in the world" .Handbook of Complementary Medicine, Stephen Fulder.

China and Chinese Medicine
China is one of the oldest and most cultured of world civilizations. Its medicine, namely Traditional Chinese Medicine, is one of the most potent, tried and tested, and sophisticated forms of medicine known to man. It has many branches, which can flourish independently or in conjunction, one with the other. Some of them are already well-known in the West such as Acupuncture and Traditional Chinese Herbal Medicine, others are currently less well represented. All the several branches have certain features in common, the most crucial being that they all focus, according to their individual modalities, upon the Qi, a notoriously difficult word to define with anything approximating to adequacy, so complex is the notion of Qi.

Qi
In purely medical terms, and leaving aside all the other features of Qi, we could say that the word encapsulates whatever it is that makes a person alive and healthy, a sort of vital energy, a vitality or life force, a verve or spark that underpins and gives expression, ideally, to all that a person is on all levels of personality, including the physical, emotional, psychological, mental, intellectual and indeed all other features of that which goes to make up a healthy human being. This, of course, is considering Qi at its best, when it is as it should be – when it is at its healthiest. Not all Qi, in the real world, as far as human beings are concerned, is constantly at its optimal level. We do not live in a world of ideals but in a world that falls far short. People are not always, or even most frequently, as healthy as they could possibly be. They get sick. They become unhealthy. They decline. They degenerate.

TCM confronts this phenomenon head on. It employs its various weapons to fight against this ever present invasive onslaught – frequently with surprising success. No matter which of the medical modalities is employed in any given instance, they all strive to boost, reinforce, strengthen and invigorate the Qi. Acupuncture medicine, for example, employs finest needles, applied to the skin, to drive out unhealthy Qi and restore healthy circulation of optimal Qi. Herbs do likewise, but “from the inside”. The herbs are ingested and work away, silently and unseen, to do their restorative, regenerative or vitalizing work.

For more information on Chinese Herbal Medicine and Tuina click here
Medical Qigong click here

Back to TCM in Ireland.