Chinese medicine went into decline during the Yuan dynasty
(1279-1368). Despite the fact that geographically China reached its
greatest expansion, there were serious famines and pestilences, and
the population declined from about 100 million (c.1125) to 60
million (c.1290). The Ming dynasty (1368 - 1644) ended the rule of
the foreign Mongols and a capital city was built in what is now
Beijing.
A spectacular but sadly short lived attempt to revive classical
culture followed, however the 432 years of ‘barbarian’ rule had
taken its toll and culture went into decline again. Towards the end
of the Ming dynasty, Li Shi Chen (1518-1593) wrote the Pen Ts’ao
Kang Mu. This work in 52 volumes took 30 years to complete and
lists 11,000 prescriptions. An important feature of this work is
the classification of herbs by their energetic properties, taste,
Yin-Yang character, direction etc. This is considered to be the
piece de resistance of the modern age of traditional medicine, and
some people consider it to be the only significant text to follow
the Mongol age. Along side the Nei Jing, Nan Jing and the Shang Han
Lun it is one of the most significant texts in Chinese
medicine.
The arrival of the Jesuits in China at the beginning of the 17th
century, would have exposed the Chinese to Western ideas and
medicine but for the Emperor Kang Hsi who, feeling that the ideas
they espoused were too revolutionary, suppressed them, fearing that
they might disturb the harmony of Chinese culture. For their part,
a comprehensive misunderstanding of the philosophical principles of
Chinese medicine by Jesuit translators prevented it from being
taken seriously in the West. Although some historical sources state
that it was prevalent during the earlier parts of the Ming dynasty
the Chinese consider that it was the Portuguese who first brought
syphilis into China.
The Qing dynasty (1644 - 1911) once again brought foreign
domination as the Manchu crossed the Great Wall of China and
established themselves as the rulers of China. They were never
assimilated by the Chinese people and this, combined with the
arrival in force of Western foreign powers bent on ‘trade’ and
conquest, saw Chinese medicine go into decline. 1838 marked the
inauguration of the Medical Missionary Society in China whose
primary purpose was to use Western medicine as a vehicle to
propagate Christianity.
Riding on the back of an aggressive political and economic invasion
from Europe, modern Western medicine had arrived inauspiciously, in
China in the seventeenth century. As the Qing dynasty went into
decline during the nineteenth century, Western science and
technology became, in the eyes of Chinese intellectuals, (many of
whom had been to Europe to study) something considerably superior
to the traditional Confucian based culture that had dominated China
since the second century BC.
In 1911 the Qing dynasty finally collapsed and the Kuo-Min Tang
party established China’s first and only Western style democracy.
It became government policy to put traditional ways aside and
replace them with Western ideologies. In 1914, Wang Ta-Hsieh, the
head of the Ministry of Education of the newly formed Republic of
China informed a delegation of practitioners of traditional
medicine, "I have decided to abandon Chinese medicine from now on
and not to make any use of Chinese pharmacy".
It is debatable whether there was, at the beginning of the twentieth century, one identifiable body of knowledge that could confidently be put together and called orthodox Chinese medicine. Despite this, differences of opinion were put aside as hitherto disagreeing factions came together to salvage the integrity of the profession. Despite disagreement as to whether or not to try to integrate Western and Traditional Chinese Medicine, a basic theoretical framework emerged. Stripping aside shamanism and demonology, what began to emerge was a system of medicine which structured the theories of the early classics in a way which was comprehensible to modern medical establishments.
The Government had intended to phase out all educational institutes teaching traditional medicine by 1929, but these plans were overtaken by the Warlord era, the Japanese invasion of 1931, the rise of the Communist party and the ensuing Civil War. Initially the Communists appeared to be in agreement with their political rivals over the fate of traditional medicine. In 1941, the Marxist T’an Chuang described traditional Chinese medicine as the ‘collected garbage of several thousand years’. During many years of fighting against the Nationalists and the Japanese, the Communists learned to value their indigenous medicine. Unlike Stalin who sought to destroy his rural population in favour of industrialisation, Mao Tse-Dong realised the virtues of a peasant based revolution; 80% of China’s population was and still is rurally based. Mao acknowledged and exploited this. One of the Communist governments most important achievement is the resurgence of traditional medicine and its amalgamation with Western medicine.
Ostracised by the international community and forced into an uneasy alliance with the Soviet Union during the fifties, the Communist government of the Peoples’ Republic of China were obliged to fall back on its own resources. The lack of trained ‘Western’ doctors led to a re-evaluation of Traditional medicine. This became apparent in 1958, when Mao Tse-Dung stated that "Chinese medicine is a great treasure house! We must make all efforts to uncover it and raise its standards!". Taking up the ideas already broached earlier in the century, the Chinese government set about re-assessing traditional medicine along politically correct lines.
"The doctrine underlying the theory of Chinese medicine Yin/Yang and the Five Phases represent a kind of original materialism and spontaneous dialectic. They are an expression of opposition to the religious and superstitious doctrine of the existence of spirits .." Chairman Mao teaches us: "The dialectic of antiquity, however, possesses a spontaneous, primitive character; in accordance with the social and historical conditions of the time, it could not yet assume the form of a complete theory and was unable to provide a comprehensive interpretation of the world...We must therefore strive to comprehend the original significance of the doctrines of Yin/Yang and the Five Phases and develop it critically from the perspective of dialectic and historical materialism, in order to uncover the medical treasure-house of our homeland even better”.
