ABSTRACT
From a historical perspective, no tradition is impervious to change. It has been widely recognized that Chinese medicine is not a uniform, homogenous category, but rather is plural and inclusive, something which is broadly evidenced in its multiple historical schools, heterogeneous clinical practices, and international disseminations from ancient times to the present. 1 A famous Chinese medicine doctor named Xiao Longyou (1887–1960) made an analogy around a century ago that if Western medicine is a magnificent tall tower, then Chinese medicine is a huge mountain. These two metaphors insightfully pointed out the difference between Western biomedicine and Chinese medicine and their views on the human body. The tower is a sophisticated piece of engineering, whereas the mountain a widely based natural phenomenon. Chinese medicine, like a mountain, has a rich and widespread cultural basis in which philosophy, history, literature, art, astrology, geography and clinical medicine were integrated in a quest for well-being and longevity. In other words, it goes far beyond the narrow sense of “medicine” defined by modern scientific disciplines. In this chapter, we will explore the foundational tenets of Chinese medicine and discuss its holistic approaches to health, which advanced today’s biomedical model.
