Abstract
This paper explores how doctors of Chinese medicine have borrowed from a long history of scholarship on the problem of “constraint” to develop treatments for modern emotion-related disorders, such as depression. I argue that this combining of medical practices was made possible by a complex sequence of events. First, doctors in the 1920 and 1930s were engaged in a critical reexamination of the entire corpus of Chinese medical knowledge. Spurred by the encounter with European imperialism, the sudden rise of Japan as a new power in East Asia, and the political struggles to establish a Chinese nation state, these scholars were among the first to speculate on the possible relationship between Chinese medicine and Western medicine. Second, in the 1950 and 1960s, doctors like other intellectuals were focused on national reunification and institution building. They rejected some of the experimental claims of their predecessors to focus on identifying the key characteristics of Chinese medicine, such as the methodology of “pattern recognition and treatment determination bianzheng lunzhi.” The flexibility of the new bianzheng lunzhi paradigm allowed doctors to quietly adopt innovations from their early twentieth century counterparts that they ostensibly rejected, ultimately paving the way for contemporary treatments of depression.
Highlights
How do doctors of Chinese medicine treat a psychiatric condition, such as depression, when there is no such disease category in their medical practice?Cult Med Psychiatry (2013) 37:8–29Doctors and scholars assert that Chinese medicine and biomedicine differ considerably in almost all respects (Kaptchuk 2000; Shapiro 2003; Ren Yingqiu 任应秋 1957).1 As we will see in the discussion below, whether it is the views on the inner structure of the body, its principles of operation, the nature of human illness, or the strategies and techniques for medical intervention, these differences are quite striking
When we examine contemporary texts on Chinese medicine treatments for depression, we can find a similar primacy of the Liver
For Zhang Taiyan, the empiricism of these texts is found in their careful avoidance of speculative philosophy, such as the Five Phases, and their reliance on the principle of “examining the presentation to craft a formula 審證處方.”7 the importance of evidential scholarship would begin to decline with the fall of Qing dynasty and the end of the imperial examination system, many of the Republican era reformers were steeped in it from their early education, and directly influenced by Zhang Taiyan, whom they revered as teacher and statesman
Summary
How do doctors of Chinese medicine treat a psychiatric condition, such as depression, when there is no such disease category in their medical practice?Cult Med Psychiatry (2013) 37:8–29Doctors and scholars assert that Chinese medicine and biomedicine (or Western medicine, as it is known in China) differ considerably in almost all respects (Kaptchuk 2000; Shapiro 2003; Ren Yingqiu 任应秋 1957).1 As we will see in the discussion below, whether it is the views on the inner structure of the body, its principles of operation, the nature of human illness, or the strategies and techniques for medical intervention, these differences are quite striking. How do doctors of Chinese medicine treat a psychiatric condition, such as depression, when there is no such disease category in their medical practice?
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