A Background On Chinese Herbal Therapy

By Enid Hinton


Chinese medicine has always been one of the oldest and most effective kind of medicine that could actually be traced back to 5000 BC. Even up until today, chinese herbal therapy is widely used by a lot of alternative doctors who would prefer to give natural medicines that do not have bad side effects like conventional medicine. However, this type of therapy had its origins in ancient China and has been used until the modern world.

Now the very first recognized herbalist was a man whose name was Shen Nong. This man lived in 2800 BC and was rumored to have tasted around a hundred herbs and passed on his knowledge to the farmers that were in the area near him. He even wrote a book that was named Shen Nong Ben Cao Jing which was said to have classified in detail three hundred and sixty five types of herbs.

Now in his book, he classified the medicines into three different kinds by strength. Now these three categories would be the superior kind, the tonics which are the long term consumables, and of course the special medicines that are used for certain ailments. Now unfortunately, the complete text of this ancient book was never found but there are actually a lot of physicians who rewrote it.

Now there was another very famous herbalist whose name was Zhang Zhong Jing and was in fact one of the best and most well known herbalists in 196 BC. He even wrote a book that eventually became the reference for a lot of doctors and a lot of physicians that existed in that period of time. This book was in fact not only just a medicine book but it was also one that explained the concepts of Five Elements and the YinYang.

Now the whole book actually is about how to use the herbs and how they would relate to the concepts of Yin and Yang as well as the elements of the earth. Now since this book was rather long, writers and scholars split the book into two separate parts some time during the Song dynasty. The ones who rewrote it were also herbalists who succeeded the great Zhang Zhong Jing.

Eventually these works were then further edited and refined in order to suit the present state at that time. In the Tang Dynasty, all of the books were edited and compiled into one single book known as the Yaoxing Lun. This was a reference for many herbalists as well as many doctors that existed during this time.

Today, chinese herbal medicine is actually a separate practice alongside conventional medicine that is usually used in the hospitals. This practice is known as traditional chinese medicine or in short, TCM and is a very complete system that includes herbs and acupuncture. This type of practice has even reached as far as America.

In fact, there is a city in the States known as Erie, PA that has a lot of clinics that would practice TCM. There are even some schools in this city that would offer certain courses that would specialize in this field of medicine. It is evident that TCM definitely has a big impact in the world up until today.




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