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Traditional Chinese Medicine

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Introduction
This essay seeks to explore classical texts in relation to contemporary traditional Chinese medicine as discussed in the Chinese Classics module NCA 7302. There are different school of thoughts emphasising divergent aspects of importance in the classical literature. According to leading scholars Chinese medicine faces several challenges that need to be addressed, ranging from epistemological and hermeneutic elucidations in addition to the claim for more robust research and stronger evidence base.
Definition of TCM
The basic theories of Traditional Chinese Medicine are stated in the introduction of Essentials of Chinese Acupuncture and here used as an indication of a definition. This book has been the main textbook for beginners …show more content…

The medicine has gone from a lifesaving medicine to a more spa movement (Maxwell, 2012, Neal, 2013). In martial art the same narrowing has been seen. In the West tai ji and qi gong are practiced for health and recreation - being more esoteric, not seen as a practical way of building fighting skills. “Chinese medicine is practical, logical – there is nothing esoteric about it. It only seems esoteric when you don’t know what it is saying” (Maxwell, 2012). This stands in contrast to Fruehaufs (n.d.) more spiritual view of Chinese medicine as an alchemic path where numerology, stems and branches, esoteric discipleship, and folk wisdom identifies the …show more content…

Chinese medicine is not considered to be a religion, even though it emanates from the ideology of Daoism, Confucianism and Buddhism (Unschuld, n.d.). Chinese classics share the same long lasting problem of translation and interpretation as religious texts and traditions. Historical material in an archaic language is full of interpretative issues, and if they are considered sacred it raises the level of difficulty due to the pre-supposition that they are infallible and perfect (Grassie, 2003). Hermeneutic is the science of scholarly interpretation of texts, particularly classical or religious texts. The hermeneutics of Chinese medicine may be deciphered according to the plain meaning of the texts looking at the language and the historical period, or as a text with a deeper meaning and knowledge. Our viewpoint on this, prejudice and knowledge will form the way we interpret literature from the past. What Chinese medical texts as historical documents have in common with the theological is that they are still actively in use within their discipline (Henriksen,

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