Abstract
X The commune worker was referred to the Beijing hospital with complaints of severe headaches, nasal obstruction, and ringing in his ears for several months. A roentgenogram confirmed the preliminary diagnosis: nasopharyngeal cancer, one of the most frequent among Chinese. The prescribed treatment: radiotherapy, but with a plus—a daily tonic produced by boiling a mixture of medicinal herbs specifically selected for the patient to bring his yin and yang into balance again. This unusual hybrid of Western and traditional Chinese medicine has been evolving in mainland China since the revolution in 1949, when the new government's health policy moved toward uniting the two approaches. The result is a health care system that retains the cultural heritage so important to many Chinese. One continuing obstacle to the merger, however, is that traditional Chinese medicine is based on centuries-old empirical observations instead of current objective experimentation. But a number of Chinese physicians
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More From: JAMA: The Journal of the American Medical Association
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