Embracing Traditional Medicines from Which Modern Medicine Originated

Traditionally, I write an editorial for each edition of Medical Acupuncture.

However, I would like to focus on our Senior Editor, Jennifer Stone. She came up with the brilliant idea of a special edition/feature on the “Origins of Medicine.” I asked her to have the honor of preparing the editorial. Jennifer insisted I write something as my silence would not be golden. The origins of the Universe may have started with the “Big Bang.” And I would like to think that the origin of medicine is more like slowly settling “star dust.” Many suggest that the value of Oriental Medicine is not recognized. A lot of cosmic energy is dissipated here. Best to annihilate this waste and use our collective energy like a supernova and grow all medicines and depart from static thinking and lamenting. —Richard Niemtzow

Western conventional medicine unmistakably saves lives. Lifesaving antibiotics, vaccines, surgery, chemotherapy, and radiation have saved countless lives following their inventions. Even with the best state-of-the art medicine, there are still many patients who don’t respond to usual care, and many chronic conditions that can’t be helped because a diagnosis cannot be found. These are usually the patients who find answers and relief from medical acupuncturists and traditional Chinese, Japanese, and Korean medicine doctors.

This “Origins of Medicine” special issue provides insight from experts, into the roots of where modern medicine that is practiced today originally came from. Surgery has been performed for many thousands of years, only perfected in the past century with modern technology. Herbs and natural products have been used as medicines for an unknown amount of time and are still used today, but many have been repackaged and promoted as pharmaceutical drugs. The original theories that formed today’s modern medicine, such as yin and yang, homeostasis, and the human body and its relationship to nature, are no longer taught and have been lost in U.S. culture. It might serve the Western conventional medicine system to embrace the historical roots, including culture and theory, that their medicine came from, recognize that some traditional medicine treatments and therapies have indeed been subjected to the rigors of modern evidence-based medicine, and stop promoting the message that they are unscientific and ineffective.

The drug Taxol is a nice example of a drug that was once an herb and now has a forgotten history. Most doctors are aware that the lifesaving chemotherapy agent Taxol originally came from the Pacific yew tree. In looking for a reference for the history of the use of the bark from the tree, I was only able to find articles announcing the discovery in 1962 by researchers at the Department of Agriculture. ¹ Multiple sources told the story of a group that went to a Pacific yew tree in CA, collected the bark, brought it home, and discovered it stopped cells from dividing. No mention of why they chose that tree. No mention of its historic use in Chinese medicine. The discovery goes to Dr. Monroe E. Wall and Dr. Mansukh Wani in NC in 1962. ¹ Following Taxol’s discovery, it was subjected to the rigors of Western medical research and passed. Today, as a result of promotional drug marketing, it is unquestionably perceived as a Western medical drug, and the history of how it was used before 1962 has been erased.

Traditional Chinese medicine acupuncture might meet the same fate as the Pacific Yew. The new Western term for trigger point acupuncture is “dry needling.” The term was coined in 2008 by the company Kinetacore, and the needling is widely practiced by physical therapists in conventional medicine settings today where traditional Chinese medicine acupuncture is not. Early promoters marketed dry needling as “Western medicine” and claimed that it was scientific, and that Chinese medicine acupuncture was not scientific spreading the notion that it should not be integrated in a conventional medical setting. It was an attempt to change history. Additional similar examples include (a) mindfulness-based meditation, which is Zen Buddhism repackaged as Western, (b) controlled breathing techniques are Pranayama breath work from Indian Ayurvedic medicine, (c) physical therapy exercise was called Qi Gong, Tai Qi, and yoga in the East, and therapeutic gymnastics in Europe for over 3000 years prior to its current use in US health care.

I think it would serve American people if U.S. health care systems did not discount traditional medicine theories and providers and instead welcomed them into our health care systems. Traditional medicine doctors in many countries practice a medicine that has stood the test of time for many millennia, using diagnostic information we collect from looking, listening, smelling, and palpating because modern testing and imaging were not available. Traditional medicine can provide answers and treatments where Western conventional drugs and surgery fall short.