Chinese Traditional Medicine System Vs Western Biomedicine

                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                                         Comparison of traditional Chinese medicine system and Western medical system

Medical systems, or alternatively health-care delivery systems cannot be studied without taking cultural and social perspectives into consideration, for medical systems are expressions of values and structures of the societies from which they arise (Helman, 1985). Thus, the comparison of Chinese traditional medical system and Western biomedicine system will be presented in lens of cultural and social aspects which are

Comparison of medical systems often begins with health.

WHO in 1946 :Health is a state of complete physical mental and social wellbeing, and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity.

TCM: a balanced relationship between people and nature, or inside body.

Illness:

WM:  socially, Parson’s sick role

                Medically, largely based on objectively demonstrable physical changes in the body structure or function. Doctors always want to find out the cause, which would require for medical measurements and tests.

Body

TCM: treat body as a whole

WM: the parts. Can be repaired. Go to even smaller sectors. Cell.

Chinese medicine has consistently relied on inductive and synthetic method. Consequently it did not develop any anatomy worth speaking of, has known no histology or biochemistry., and instead has evolved organic energetics

The crucial task of any inductive science is to determine and define the relationships between different functions. Since every relationship implies a direction, and since direction is equivalent to a quality, inductive science primarily aims at the quali definition of functions. To comply with the require

Graded to 6 stages.

Cycle of the five evolutive phases-

Cultural attitudes towards illness and health

• Traditional Chinese medicine also saw health as harmonious balance, in this case, between two contrasting cosmic principles: yin describe as dark, moist, watery and female; yang, hot dry, fiery and male. The organs of the body were either predominantly yin (such as the heart, lungs, spleen, kidneys and liver) or yang (such as the intestines, stomach and gallbladder).
• Illness was believed to result from an imbalance, usually an excess of one principle with an organ, which might then have to be removed by acupuncture or moxibustion. (Helman,1985)

• TCM treats body as a whole. About harmony

                                        Qi is vital essence of the body

The principal and basic standards of value used in chines medicine and shared by all Chinese sciences are the polar combination yin/yang and the cycle of five evolutie phases (wu-hsing). The terms yin and yang originially designated topographical aspects--- the shady and the sunny side of a mountain.

• Western medical system/professional sectors are all rooted in the same tradition of Western scientific medicine.

• View body as an. The language and words professions use such as hearting is not pumping, nervous breaking down, (p22)
• Individual parts of body, like the parts of a motor car, may fail or stop working.

• Western medicine- a repairable machine. Ever-smaller division

• American view body as a repairable machine and that needs to be describes the dominant attitudes of United States of America doctors to sickness as an aggressive and can-do approach(Helman, 1985)

• Less a matter of imbalance and more an affliction for improper behavior (William caudill. The cultural and interpersonal context of everyday health and illness in japan and America.)

Diagnosis

• TCM: imbalanced of yin/yang
• W: cause of disease

Conceptualizing of human body has impact on diagpstic and treatment