Discussion what is it with chinese novels and their traditional medicine?

Lmao coincidentally I'm writing an essay about the world running out of antibiotics. It's ok, one day we'll run out of antibiotics for everything. Can't wait lmao Time for me to drink mercury for my cold.

 

Im Chinese and its pretty rooted into our culture today still. The fundamentals of TCM is still used in modern day. From what I gathered before, Western medicine is a fast cure that targets specific illnesses but TCM is more about restoring balance, therefore health, to yourself. For example, in canto theres a term called "Yeet hey" which means you have too much heat in your body. The idea of hot and cold in your body also stems from TCM.

 

Don’t knock it till you’ve tried it! Dinosaur bones might be able to work wonders, that is, if you’re actually using dinosaur bones instead of the solid rock copies we dig up nowadays.

Honestly, chinese medicine is probably a lot more useful than the things Europeans were doing to try to cure the bubonic plague XD praying to god, killing jews, rubbing pigeon blood, etc etc. It’s just that TCM has worked to an extent for thousands of years and it’s part of the culture.

Plus, what are you gonna do with all your western medicine knowledge and skills as a neurosurgeon if you get transmigrated to the ancient world without any of the stuff you need? TCM is simply more practical in novels because you don’t actually need specialized equipment other than maybe needles. You can’t find western medication in nature and you can’t make it yourself, no matter how unparalleled your surgery skills are, you can’t operate without the proper setting. On the other hand, oriental medicine comes with a mystical quality so it’s easier to bs and make a character super op. In other words, it’s not because Chinese people think TCM is super amazing, it’s just more convenient in novels.

 

Most of China is very poor, there are also people who, until last couple of generations, lived in rural areas.
So that means they can't really afford to use Western medicine. Which can lead to preconception of it being shit.

Secondly, chink novels tend to focus on wuxia and heroism and stuff, so "hot weapons" are always inferior to martial arts. Here the more modern Western medicine is the "hot weapon" and chink medicine is the "cold weapon".

Lastly, it's harder to call out a writer on his bullshit when his medical system is essentially entirely based on bullshit that can't be fact checked.

 

To be really fair though, while a lot of people think "Western" medicine is artificial, the reality is that a vast majority of it is natural ingredients just stripped of its useless parts. It really is not much different from Chinese medicine other than them cutting corners in the post processing.

I won't ever "like" Chinese medicine since god knows what some manufacturers put into their products but there is some effectiveness in them. If you can be sure they are safe. I was skeptical once until I tried out powdered ginseng as an experiment in lieu of caffine. I admit I was skeptical.... until I could not sleep for 2 days. lol. I suspect that the effect was so strong because I was not used to it.

Part of the effectiveness of Chinese TCM is because in practical terms, they have tested the stuff for centuries. They might not know how it works, but they do know it does. Empirical evidence in other words.

Actually I think the "hot/cold" thing is a mistranslation. When you translate "fire"arms from Chinese to English, poor translators tend not to translate this part properly. Same as "cold weapons" when the proper English translation would be "cold steel".

OTOH, stories. Don't read too much into it or we'll be looking for people in the sky flying about wearing their underwear inside out and our soldiers will be marching into battle with round red and blue shields with white stars painted on them. lol.

 

Well... the novel's target audience are chinese who take more stock in traditional chinese medicine. It's part culture and part audience. Same reason why japanese novels have japanese food and katanas. All so the reader can relate to what they're reading.

 

Chinese Medicine is an interesting topic as it falls under mystical healing rather than hard science. While it seems fake, it has one thing going for it over traditional medicine. It relies heavily on belief to work. And it's hard not to believe considering that hard science still can't explain many things in the world.

While I'd say that traditional medicine is definitely more reliable, it can't fix everything. Look at the problem from an alternate viewpoint and check Chinese Medicine out in that case. Even if it can't offer direct treatment, it might provide a better way to mitigate the pain.

 

@mio
I think it's a combination of multiple intersecting aspects. I'll list out the relevant ones and try to keep the info-dumping to a minimum.

First, you need to keep in mind the role of "family" in the Chinese culture. Even if they treat you shitty and attempt to ruin you and kill off everyone you love, you are still expected to be loyal and pay piety. It's an extreme example, but one of the reasons it is so prevalent in nearly all novels here is because it isn't far off from the truth.

Second, the Chinese have be fortunate to maintain a lengthy and stable continuation of the written histories and literacy for millennia. Much knowledge is often lost when this is not the case, and it's one of the reasons the Chinese were able to not devolve as much as other cultures through all their infighting and periods of stagnation over the years.

Third, medicine always progresses atop a pile of corpses. An extreme example is during the middle ages (if I'm remembering correctly, since I forget his name) one of the major compilations for anatomy was written after thousands of dissections were done on prisoners during their torture sessions. I think some homeless were also drug in when prisoners were unavailable. So, as the Chinese were able to keep longer written records, less knowledge about what plants kill and result in what reactions was lost.

Fourth, the Chinese society makeup makes it quite easy to "source volunteers" for medical study. When you mix such extreme emphasis on familial piety and such a long history of the class system like they have, they kind of expect to be taken advantage of to get anywhere in life. It makes it easier to find helpers when you want to test research. Plus, there were always many poor people who are sick.

I agree with you in that all cultures had and have similar knowledge in plants and medicine. It just develops differently and is focused in different areas. These are just the reasons I've found for myself to justify what I've been reading. It's also exaggerated a bit because of national pride and what the censors expect.

 

Western medicine, besides other root of observations on human anatomy, also partly rooted in tradition western herbal medicine: many old codexes documented with illustrations on hundred of herbal plants and observations effects of their herbal concoctions consumed by humans. The modern type is just put the concentrated extraction of phytochemicals from plant into pill version, instead of simple brewing of tea or oilment in tradition western medicine. So modern western medicines often have side effect because of too strong concentration.

 

The one thing most people forget when discussing this topic is MONEY! Why is that important you ask? The answer is simple. You cannot patent a weed or bush or tree bark. But you can patent a laboratory derived copy of a molecule found in that plant. Patents = profit for pharmaceutical companies.
https://www.jstor.org/stable/797080?seq=1#page_scan_tab_contents

 

Nahh,

The question only comes up because you are thinking the modern medicine practice is the best solution to health problems.

 

This is a minefield, so let us start with some uncontroversial bits, and gradually work towards the precipice.

The salient feature is the fact that all cultures are weird in their own ways, and some of it could be really good. For example, people have already brought up the Japanese and their fixation on food preparation. Incorporating such details in their novels seem really weird to the rest of us, but in fact they serve as a way to connect with the readers. This effect is relies upon the fact that Japanese schools make the kids cook for everybody on a cooking roster, so that everybody had learnt some food preparation before and knows all the details covered in those novels. They are literally doing the correct thing educationally, and thereby opens up a new thing for novels to capitalise upon.

From the C perspective, you anglophones and your fixation on god is extremely weird. Even for theists, the conversation happens only rarely. And on this topic, we know that it is you that is weird---Scandinavians keep religion to themselves, and now they are mostly no longer religious, although they now believe minor silly things like gnomes. You could chalk the C situation to be due to the communist washing away of religions, but even before then, the C culture is pretty neutral about faith in general. It is quite an ironic amusement to note that vaccination was active in C by stabbing needles between corpses and the healthy long ago, yet on the religious front, there was no conception of religion as a dangerous cult, such that the TaiPing Rebellion brought 10 MILLION people over to christianity before it collapsed. This is just like smallpox wiping out the native Americans, just that this is in mind-space; and if the Confucian ideal was not to make the population stupid and hence easy to govern, they could have had vaccinated themselves in the mind too. The Brits literally did not know what to do about it---they were obviously deluded fools who had a chinese-looking jesus+brother, but it was more christians than they could simply reject out of hand.

If you realise that something is weird, it helps to see if there are some huge forces at work. Despite your declaration of independence literally claiming to be independent of religion, you can see on the literal currency of yours that the state apparatus had been used to coerce a certain talking point. Your TV and radio and news media in general are routinely broadcasting theologians. It is really not that different from Soviet Lysenkoism, or Nazis decrying "Jewish Physics". The state didn't like, or liked something, and silenced opposition and made it the only talk in town.

Or, like organic food industry, essential oils, homeopathy, etc, there is literally a tonne of money at work. Organic food industry is so rich and powerful today, that their beloved bogeyman, Monsanto, is a fraction of their net worth. Snake oil is extremely profitable, and they will use their money to buy advertisements, even entire news media, bribe politicians and more. Alex Jones' employees revealed that his frequent claims on his talk show that his supplement sales are bad, are entire lies. Instead, the supplement sales have only ever been profitable or wildly so. If you really go and check it up, you will find that John Oliver's presentation on supplements, that 1 in 3 supplements are so shady, that they do not contain traces of the stuff advertised on the bottle, is true. Can you imagine how profitable you can be, when you cut corners that much?

In C's case, every part is there. We have records of how acupuncture was thinning out. The emperor even banned it, because even within the C culture, its failings were apparent and could not be sustained any more. Like, if you really go and study acupuncture, you will find that some teachers say that there are exactly 360, some 365, some 1000, etc. These round numbers are obviously chosen to fit other stuff, in the astrological vein, than is defensible.

Or consider the herbal stuff. You already have jokes about tiger penises here. Rhino horn is making the species go extinct. These are extremely obvious cases of how there are zero conceivable mechanism by which the scheme would work, and every evidence points to how the entire system is a scam. Yet you will always find people who go things like "you should give it a try before you say anything".

The biggest problem is epistemology. To save you a google search, it literally means to study "how do you know what you know". This is precisely where it is extremely important. C students top the world in terms of educational achievements, and they churn smart folks out by the millions. Which is not difficult, seeing that law of large numbers and the bell curve necessitates it. They know a lot of stuff. But they don't know why what they know are true. It is the difference between an engineer and a physicist: one knows how to make things work, the other knows why it works the way it does.

An earlier commenter already pointed out that they would learn both "western" medicine and also tc"m". Yet, the vast majority of the most basic tcm stuff are untested (and are actually inconsistent with each other's claims). Why? The system is so successful, that they churn out by the millions people who cannot even design and write papers testing the basics properly. The recent Nobel prize, shows fully well that standard scientific medicine is open to whatever tcm ingredient being actually useful. Why aren't there hundreds more of stories like hers? Why would anybody want to have a system like that?

The guy above who talked about how the historical development was such that there was insufficient money and time and training to provide medicine to the masses. That is true. But it is amusing to see how it is not also mentioned that Mao literally invented tcm as a lie to fill the gap; he himself does not use any of it, merely promoting it. And we have been left with such lies thereafter.

I am not very much interested in the conspiracy bits. Those are juicy but irrelevant. The fact remains that there is a huge void where proper epistemological thinking should be, and that is in-the-news dangerous all the time, simply never attributed so. Measles have come back, for example, and there is nothing about this that is conspiratorial. It is merely stupid people inflicting all of us with their man-made problems.

Oops, I forgot to mention that, after Mao spent so much money on it, it has now become an issue of national pride, only more fervent than Lysenkoism. Once it becomes national pride, and that it is always simply taken to be true, you'll find your crusaders.

So yeah, I'm sorry. As a yellow-skinned myself, and I even love the language, this is one battle I know is impossible to win. It makes it impossible for me to read C novels, precisely because they are all impossible to read. Not to mention the chi / qi thingy, which violates Newtonian mechanics all the time. They are as mentally disturbing as the plot holes of Mission Impossible.

 

honestly, i know no one who tells such stories... maybe because a lot of my friends ended up working in the medical field? but then again, most are working on medical machines and not medicine, so i don't think there's really a link there... anyway, i did not know it was prevalent in america as well.

the last i heard about such things in real life was when i was twelve, where they told me nettle was good for your blood... and i'm pretty sure that was mostly because i fell with my rollerblades and literally rolled through 5 meters of nettle barechested with shorts =p

wow, thanks for the elaborate answer! i learned a lot from it ^^

fyi, i am not american, but i do agree on your pov towards religion, fake medicine, and how the media affects how people think in a purposeful and calculated manner, but there's one thing you forget about epistemological thinking; some people don't want to know.

not because they're stupid, not because they can't see how important it is, but mostly because they're lazy. it's simpler if they don't know, then they don't have to look for an excuse not to care.

it's sad, but there's more people like that than any of us wants to admit.

yes and no. i do believe the modern medicine practice is the best solution to health problems.

but only because the solution to said health problems is always the solution that works most consistently, and will thus naturally become the modern solution, because it is most effective and actually works.

i do not, however, have any doubt that there is better medicine available than what you get at the doctor's, that is not given to you either because it is expensive by itself, or because the profit-margins on what you get are better for the company selling it.

it is the same with how a lot of companies are not researching the cure for cancer, but a way to stop cancer from advancing; that way, you have to buy for life, and they can slowly milk you dry.

 

Aww, thanks. I believed this thing as a kid (and I ate so much that I love the smell; not the ones with dead hornets, though). In a sense, my aversion now is a rebound reaction.

I was just told by my psychologist friend who toured Russia, that Putin's support base is strong because of precisely the kind of thing that you are talking about.

But it is not about lazy. It is also about simplicity. Doubting what you are taught in schools or outside; rather, the act of doubting in itself causes severe psychological stress on people, and they obviously have an incentive to avoid it. I spent my life being opposed to postmodernism, but this part they really did well.

 

Cancer research is way too difficult. Simply being able to slow any one variant of it is already a huge improvement over what we currently have. Like, insulin for diabetes is not a cure, but it staves the problem so far down, that the issue is no longer important. And the quality of life is vastly improved too.

I am so angry that the doctor I went to, used his judgemental religious views to block me from getting the HPV vaccine, when that is the only vaccine that prevents any cancer at all.

 

Well I learned this with my body in the worst way possible.

I would personally go to hospitals as a last resort for any illness that I have. I'd go to a doctor for my kids illness and mine from time to time in emergencies (bad fever, endless coughing). For health support though? I'd rather go to a chinese doctor.
Why?
When I was around 15 years old, I had alergies... modern doctors would just say I had to take inhalers to cope with my alergies... I hated those things, coz it causes a lot of problems with my breathing afterwards.
I've been to a real chinese "doctor". I don't even have to speak out my complaints, she just took a look at me, put her finger on my pulse and describe to me what exactly my problems are. I didn't have to say a word and she already knew I had alergies, troubles with my asthma and skin irritation. She said I needed herbs for my kidney which was causing white hairs, told me to stop drinking milk, more herbs for lungs, etc.

After 2 months of her medicine, I had less allergies and I stopped having white hairs for about 20 years.... I didn't think this was possible.
My motto since then? If you are sick, go to a modern doctor. If you want to be healthy, go to a chinese doctor.

 

I'm not calling it useless, but like most traditional medicinal methods it's part belief system and part real.

It doesn't help that American medicine is first corporate and second political. Curing the world's ailments is a distant third. "Healthy diet" has way to many corporate and political fingers in the pot to be anything but garbage.

To cure cancer you have to be able to selectively alter people's DNA in small directed patches. What we call cancer is a catchall category for cells mutating until they make a lethal screwup and start doing things they shouldn't. There are way too many ways for it to happen and this is only the bare basics of the issue. The situation is seriously complex and involving other functions of the human body.

 

Tell me about it,

Do you know how I got those allergies in the first place? Our government was proactively advicing people to drink milk in order to get enough calcium in our diet. I read further on there was a research that milk caused more problems than good in our body when consumed.

The craziest thing about all of this? My 3rd year grade school kid came home one day asking me why I said milk was bad when his school told him it was good.

This conversation happened:

Now if you drink milk, do you get rashes in the middle of the night?
Yes.
So is milk good or bad?
Bad.
if you write milk is bad, do you get bad points?
yes.
So live by not drinking milk because you know it's bad for you, but answer its good to get good points.

While I do agree in some cases that cancer can be caused by genetic mutation or poisoning,.

But it was researched in Europe that during world War, when countries were thrown into poverty, cancer patients went down as much as the stroke and heart attacks.

So it was concluded that our rich diets contributed to cancer too..

 

Hm... Why people don't ask the same about healing potions and other crap from RPG?

 

The government promoted traditional medicine in the '60s to supplement a shortage of modern Western medicine.