Chinese Assignment..

...Term 3

Topic QuestionsWhat Kind Of Herbs Were/Are Used By The Chinese?

What Are The Effects Of Acupuncture?

How Is Meditating/Qi Gong Beneficial?

Were The Chinese Medically Smart In Their Time?

中药学

Chinese herbs have been used for many centuries. The first herbalist in Chinese tradition is Shennong, mostly a mythical person, people say he has tasted hundreds of herbs and given his knowledge of medicinal and poisonous plants to the people. The first Chinese book on pharmacology, the Shennong Bencao Jing(Shennong Emperor's Classic of Materia Medica), has 365 medicines, 252 of them are herbs, and is as old as the 1st century A.D. Han dynasty. Earlier writings were like lists of prescriptions for specific ailments, from a manuscript "Recipes for 52 Ailments", found in the Mawangdui tomb, sealed in 168 B.C.

Chinese herbs have been put into 3 different categorys..

The Four Natures

This goes by yin and yang, ranging from cold (extreme yin), cool, neutral to warm and hot (extreme yang). The persons’ internal balance of yin and yang is accounted for when the herbs for treatment are chosen. For example, medicinal herbs of "hot“ or yang, are used when the person is afflicted by an internal cold that needs to be purged, or when the person has a general cold area. Sometimes an ingredient is added to to take away the extremity of one herb.

The Five Tastes

The five tastes are pungent, sweet, sour, bitter and salty, suiting their functions and characteristics. Take this for example, pungent herbs are used to make you sweat and to direct and vitalize chi, and blood flow. Sweet herbs often tonify or harmonize bodily systems. Some sweet herbs also give off a bland taste, which aids dampness through diuresis. Sour taste most often is quite harsh or consolidates, while bitter taste rids you of heat, purges the bowels and gets rid of dampness by drying them out. Salty tastes soften hard masses as well as purge and open the bowels.

The Meridians

The Meridians refer to which organs the herb is assigned for. For example, menthol is pungent, cool and is supposed to tend to the lungs and the liver. Since the lungs is the organ which protects the body from invasion from cold and influenza, menthol can help get rid of coldness in the lungs and invading heat toxins caused by hot "wind."

中药学

中药学

Qi Gong..

.. ( Chi Kung )

Qigong

Qigong refers to a very vast variety of traditional practices that involve methods of accumulating, circulating, and working with Chi/Qi or energy

inside the body. Qigong is sometimes mistakenly said to always incorporate movement and/or regulated breathing; When in actual fact, use of special

methods of focusing energy centres in and around the body are common in the more advanced forms of Qigong. Qigong is practised for medical and health purposes, as a therapeutic intervention, as a medical profession, a

spiritual path or as a part of Chinese Martial Arts.

气功

Qigong, and its intimate relation the Chinese martial arts and traditional Chinese medicine, are often associated with spirituality. This link is much stronger than with other techniques in traditional Chinese medicine. Qigong was historically practiced in Taoist and Buddhist monasteries as an aid to concentration as well as martial arts training, and the health benefits of martial qigong practice have recently been confirmed in western medical studies.

Beliefs

In China, the use of acupuncture can possibly be traced as far back as the Stone Age, with the Bian shi, or sharpened stones. Stone acupuncture needles dating back to 3000 B.C. have been found by archaeologists in Inner Mongolia. More definite evidence exists from the 1st millennium BC, and archaeological evidence has been identified with the period of the Han dynasty (202 BC–220 AD).

Acupuncture's origins in China are not clear. The earliest Chinese medical text that first gestures acupuncture is the Yellow Emperor’s Classic of Internal Medicine (History of Acupuncture) Huangdi Neijing, which was made around 305–204 B.C. However, the Chinese medical texts (Ma-Wang-Tui graves, 68 BC) doesn’t even mention acupuncture. Some hieroglyphics have been found dating back to 1000 B.C. that could prove an early use of acupuncture.

..The History Of Acupuncture..

Treatment of acupuncture points may be done along many layers of pathways, most commonly the twelve primary channels, or mai, found throughout the body. The first twelve channels correspond to systems of function: Lung, Large Intestine, Stomach, Spleen, Heart, Small Intestine, Bladder, Kidney, Pericardium, San Jiao (an intangible, also known as Triple Burner), Gall Bladder, and Liver. Other pathways include the Eight Extraordinary Pathways (Qi Jing Ba Mai), the Luo Vessels, the Divergents and the Sinew Channels. Ashi (tender) points are generally used for treatment of local pain

How Is It Done. ?

Summary

The Chinese were medically, very technologically forward. They had many many ways of treating all sorts of ailments. The Chinese may have been one of the most diverse civilisations in medicine and healing.

Bibliography

Sites

Traditional Chinese Medicineen.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trditional_Chinese_medicine – 22/09/08

Acupuncturehttp://skepdic.com/acupunc.html - 24/09/08

Bibliography

Books

Paul Unschuld1985Medicine in China: A History of IdeasPublished by University of California Press

Giovanni Maciocia, Zhou Zhong Ying1994The Practice of Chinese MedicinePublished by Elsevier Health Sciences