Chairman Mao: The real inventor of “traditional Chinese medicine”

[HuckleB]

http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2013/10/25/chairman-mao-inventor-of-traditional-chinese-medicine/

"Most, if not virtually all, of what is now referred to as “traditional Chinese medicine” is quackery. I realize that it’s considered “intolerant” and not politically correct to say that in these days of “integrative medicine” departments infiltrating academic medical centers like so much kudzu enveloping a telephone pole, but I don’t care. I’m supposed to be impressed that the M.D. Anderson and Memorial-Sloan Kettering Cancer Centers, among others, have lost their collective mind and now “integrate” prescientific nonsense along with their state-of-the-art cancer therapy? I don’t think so. I can be puzzled by it. I can be dismayed by it. I can even be enraged by the infiltration of woo into prestigious medical centers. I am not, however, impressed by it, at least not in the sense that I’m about to jump on the bandwagon and embrace pseudoscience, too. I will admit, however, to being impressed—but not in a good way—with the ability of clinical leaders at such institutions who really should know better to embrace pure pseudoscience, including acupuncture, tongue diagnosis, the balancing of hot, cold, damp, and the other things that TCM claims to balance, and the vitalism that is at the heart of TCM in the form of qi, the undetectably imaginary life “energy” whose flow is supposedly redirected to healing effect by acupuncture.

Particularly galling about the ascendency of TCM in the US is the myth that is swallowed whole by its advocates. That myth is the very history of TCM, whose true origins are unknown by all but a very few. Contrary to popular belief (particularly about acupuncture), those beliefs do not go back thousands of years into antiquity, when the ancient healing wisdom of the Chinese was supposedly first discovered. In actuality, very few people are aware that the single person most responsible for the current popularity of TCM was not some ancient Chinese healer but rather Chairman Mao Zedong. That’s why an article published by Alan Levinovitz in Slate.com entitled Chairman Mao Invented Traditional Chinese Medicine is so important.

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Indeed, what’s interesting about Levinovitz’s article is his description of how the exportation of TCM to the world was quite deliberate, as part of a strategy to popularize it among the Chinese. There was a problem, however. As Levinovitz noted, there was no such thing as “traditional Chinese medicine.” Rather, there were traditional Chinese medicines. For many centuries, healing practices in China had been highly variable, and attempts at institutionalizing medical education were mostly unsuccessful and “most practitioners drew at will on a mixture of demonology, astrology, yin-yang five phases theory, classic texts, folk wisdom, and personal experience.” While it’s irresistible (to me, at least) to make an analogy to how naturopaths draw from a wide variety of quackeries, TCM is not naturopathy. Mao realized that TCM would be unappealing to foreigners, as even many Chinese, particularly those with an education, realized that TCM was mostly quackery. For instance, in 1923, Lu Xun realized that “Chinese doctors are no more than a type of swindler, either intentional or unintentional, and I sympathize with deceived sick people and their families.” Such sentiments were common among the upper classes and the educated. Indeed, as we have seen, Mao himself didn’t use TCM practitioners. He wanted scientific “Western” medicine.

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Moreover, acupuncture is probably not nearly as ancient as its advocates portray it. Common portrayals of acupuncture paint it as being 3,000 years old, as implausible as that is. Why implausible? For one thing, the technology to make such incredibly thin needles didn’t exist 3,000 years ago. For another thing, as Harriet Hall points out, the earliest Chinese medical texts from the 3rd century BC don’t mention acupuncture, and the earliest reference to “needling” is from 90 BC referring to bloodletting and lancing abscesses. Indeed, even by the 13th century the earliest accounts of Chinese medicine reaching the West didn’t mention acupuncture, and the first account of acupuncture by a Westerner in the 1600s described large golden needles inserted into the skull and left in place for 30 respirations. It has also been argued that acupuncture evolved from bloodletting based on astrology.

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A good read. It's also worth following the link to the original piece on Slate.