Traditional Chinese Medicine Doctors Research Articles

Chemical composition of the essential oils of flowers of Rosa banksiae from China

Rosa banksiae is a climber, growing to about 20 feet tall, and is very long lived. The flowers of Rosa banksiae have a lovely fragrance, similar to violets. It has no serious disease or insect problems. Rosa banksiae is an important and widespread woody plant in southwest China. It is reported that the flowers and leaves of this plant show free radical scavenging activity [1, 2]. Doctors of traditional Chinese medicine believe that the radical and leaves of this plant can stop pain and bleeding. However, it is noteworthy that the flowers of Rosa banksiae Ait.f. have a distinctive aroma. So far, there is no published scientific information in the literature on the chemical constituents of the volatiles of flowers of Rosa banksiae Ait.f. The objective of the present study is to provide qualitative and quantitative information on the volatiles present in flowers of Rosa banksiae Ait.f. from China. The flowers of Rosa banksiae Ait.f. were collected during flowering (April, 2006) in Enshi, Hubei Province, China, as identified by Prof. Kaigong Lu (School of Biological Science & Technology, Hubei Institute for Nationalities), and placed in the shade to dry. Two hundred grams of dried flowers was placed in a three-neck flask. Distilled water (1500 mL) was added and the contents distilled for 5h in an oil bath. The distillate was extracted with anhydrous ether (AR grade). The extracted solution was combined, dried over anhydrous sodium sulfate (AR grade) overnight, and concentrated by passing a slow stream of oxygen-free nitrogen gas (99.99%) to it without ether. A bright reddish-yellow essential oil (0.2612 g) was obtained and stored at 4°C until analysis. The yield was 0.13%. In total, 46 compounds were identified in flowers of Rosa banksiae Ait.f. from China (Table 1). These identified components constitute 94.15% of all identified peak areas using GC-FID with a DB-5 column. Of the total number of components identified, there are one acetal, 12 fatty hydrocarbons, three aromatic aldehydes, three carboxylic acids, five alcohols, two arenes, 17 terpenoids, and three phenols. As the main compounds (concentration higher than 1.0%), the following were found: octane (4.73%), phenylethyl alcohol (5.78%), 2-bornanone (26.34%), cis-verbenol (2.68%), borneol (3.78%), dodecane (41.01%), 6-methyldodecane (1.00%), elemicin (3.01%), and α-cadinol (1.06%). Among all the detected compounds in the flowers, we focus on the 17 terpenoids, which are responsible for the flowery odor.

Research on psychiatry in the integration of Chinese and Western medicine in 1950's

In 1950's, the studies on psychiatry in the integration of Chinese and Western medicine was in its primary stage, which can be further divided into two periods, viz. the preparative stage, covering 1950 to 1954, during which doctors of traditional Chinese medicine were absorbed into the group of psychiatry research; and the preliminary development period, covering 1954 to 1958, during which there were more development of the clinical research on psychiatry in the integration of Chinese and Western medicine and in the Chinese herbal medicine, thus offering some effective new methods and drugs.

My Elective in Shanghai – Experiencing the Use of Acupuncture in China

I am a fifth year medical student at Leeds University and have just come back from my elective period visit to China. The aim of my elective was to gain experience in Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM), particularly looking at acupuncture which had been an interest of mine, and which had prompted my trip to China so I could see it practised in its country of origin. When I arrived I was jetlagged and disorientated yet extremely excited about beginning my elective within a culture so different from my own. I struggled to hoist my luggage into the back of a taxi outside the airport and off we went on the hour-long drive into Shanghai city centre. As we got closer the neon colours got brighter and I became more and more anxious about how I would find my way to the hotel I had booked, not knowing a single word of Chinese. I was in luck when I happened to be dropped off fairly near to another large hotel which had an English speaking receptionist who guided me towards where I needed to be. Feeling quite vulnerable with a considerable amount of luggage, in a strange place that was now dark, I began the walk to my hotel. Crossing the road was a difficult task in itself as I have never experienced such busy, chaotic roads, filled with an array of vehicles including many more bicycles and motorbikes than I was used to. I was later told to be more wary of vehicles on two wheels than four when crossing the road. It became apparent that the two-wheeled vehicles did not follow the same rules as everyone else! The next day I had to get up pretty early to make it to my first session at the acupuncture department of Yue Yang Hospital. Yue Yang is an international teaching hospital, where people come from all over the world to learn more about the practice of TCM. The hospital uses about 30% Western medicine and 70% TCM in its treatment of patients, but there are only a few doctors with knowledge of Western medicine. Most of the doctors at the hospital are keen to spread information about TCM to other countries throughout the world. One of our mentors, Dr Dong, travels fairly regularly to America where he teaches Western doctors and TCM therapists how to perform acupuncture effectively following TCM principles. TCM doctors train for about five or six years to practise acupuncture and are all highly skilled and knowledgeable about the principles of diagnosis and treatment of disease using acupuncture as well as other therapies including herbal remedies. This is quite different from the UK where acupuncture can be practised without such extensive training and knowledge, which led me to wonder whether this was the same kind of acupuncture. We spoke a lot with doctors at the hospital during their lunch breaks. Doctors like Dr Dong who had travelled abroad told us that most of the acupuncture practised in the West is practised contrary to TCM principles, that is to say, according to the meridian system and theories of energy flow through the body. He told us that this could be dangerous and so part of his work involved travelling abroad to teach people the correct way to practise acupuncture. I was shocked to hear this, as I know many people who have received acupuncture here in the UK who have said that they have received much benefit from their treatment. I told Dr Dong this and he said that short term relief can often be gained from applying needles locally to a painful area, but that this effect would not last. He also said that applying needles to certain meridians may have adverse effects on other parts of the body which connect with the same meridian. I attended my first clinic which was run very differently from any clinic I had seen in the UK. Patients did not have appointments but formed a queue outside the room. About five or six patients could be treated at any one time on beds and chairs set up within a small room, which meant there was little privacy for any of them. This, however, did not appear to bother patients in the slightest, who would Sarah Wells medical student Leeds University, UK

Application of Bayesian network in syndrome differentiation system of traditional Chinese medicine

The concept of syndrome in traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) is a nonlinear, open and complicated huge system. Syndrome differentiation in TCM belongs to cognitive and noetic science. To establish a new syndrome differentiation system based on the key elements of the syndrome is necessary for TCM practitioners to promote differentiation ability and reach consensus on differentiation method. With combination of experience and computation models, the Bayesian network was used in the study of the relationship between the key elements of syndrome and the symptoms, and the relationship among different key elements, in which the computing diagnosis result was identical to the result from an experienced TCM doctor. The study showed that Bayesian network is a good method to deal with the information of symptoms and signs for syndrome differentiation, but it is also not to reflect comprehensively the thinking ability of TCM doctors in doing syndrome differentiation.

Region partition and feature matching based color recognition of tongue image

Color recognition of tongue image is one of the key tasks in a computerized tongue inspection system in traditional Chinese medicine (TCM). Most existing methods carry out pixel-wise classification in a tongue image without considering regional information which is essential for TCM doctors to retrieve the color distribution of the substances and coatings of the tongue in its diagnosis. This paper presents a novel color recognition scheme. A color–texture segmentation algorithm has been firstly developed to obtain a number of homogenous regions; then these regions were classified into different categories of colors of substances and coatings based on Earth Mover’s distance (EMD). We also have employed the locally linear embedding (LLE) technique to eliminate the discrepancies among samples. Finally, the experimental results have shown that the proposed approach was superior to the pixel-wise classification algorithm especially in achieving meaningful areas of substances and coatings of tongue and its performance was well accepted by TCM doctors.

"The medicine from China has rapid effects": Chinese medicine patients in Tanzania

Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) involves both biomedical and traditional medical training, which makes well-trained TCM doctors inexpensive health care providers for primary health care. The Tanzanian Ministry of Health and Ministry of Commerce recognised this potential, and in the mid-1990s issued short-term licences for private TCM enterprises. In Dar es Salaam, some of these practices experienced a period of considerable growth, but by the year 2000 a degree of ambivalence if not resentment existed against Chinese medical doctors who were accused of unlawfully using biomedical medication, and the government refused to issue further licences. In addition, some 'doctors' had insufficient training or minimal clinical experience (though I also met some notable exceptions). This article asks why Tanzanian patients turn to the Chinese for medical treatment, and what patients know about Chinese medicine and medication. One of the chief findings is that the Swahili term dawa ya Kichina is vague, which allows patients to transfer their positive experiences with Chinese biomedical doctors during the period of socialist orientation onto the current, entrepreneurial TCM doctors. Dawa ya Kichina is often considered a rapidly effective 'advanced' 'traditional' medicine; its ready-made patent formulas, which make it look 'scientific' and 'modern', are easy to consume; and its entrepreneurial set-up has several advantages over the bureaucratic structures of 'hospital medicine'. Chinese anti-malarials, artesiminin derivatives, reduce malarial fevers within hours, and though, strictly speaking, they are biomedical drugs, they are indeed dawa ya Kichina . Moreover, patients of TCM doctors sometimes experience rapid recovery, mostly due to skilled integration of biomedical and Chinese medical treatment. Further research is recommended to investigate the primary health care potential of such integrated Chinese and biomedical treatment.

A study on the prevention and treatment of myopia with nacre on chicks

The contents of mineral elements and amino acids in the hydrolysate of the traditional Chinese mineral medicine nacre have been determined. It has long since been proved by the practice of doctors of traditional Chinese medicine that pearl can be used to treat eye diseases. Based on such an understanding, a study is made of the influence of the said medicine on the incidence of myopia. First a form-sense-deprived model (FDM) for chicks is developed and the effect of the said medicine on the elongation of axis oculi is determined with an Abbe’s comparator and an A-mode ultrasound instrument. The activity of superoxide dismutase (SOD), nitric oxide synthetase (NOS), and the content of nitric oxide (NO) in the retino-pigmental epithelium choroid homogenate are also analysed. The role of the said traditional Chinese mineral medicine in preventing and treating myopia is explained with respect to the above findings. The results obtained will provide a basis for using nacre, a traditional Chinese mineral medicine, to prevent and treat myopia.

Predicting traditional Chinese medicine's use and the marginalization of medical care in Hong Kong.

The study examined the importance of socio-demographic factors, health conditions, health beliefs and health seeking behaviors in predicting the use of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) in Hong Kong. A sample of 4,339 respondents was randomly selected and interviewed. Among the 1,651 respondents who had consulted a doctor in the three months prior to the survey, 8.6% consulted a TCM doctor. Besides, 13.5% of the entire sample reported that they had been using TCM drugs frequently or occasionally. Socio-demographic factors, health conditions, health beliefs and health seeking behaviors were all found predictive of the use of TCM. In particular, those who were older, female, new immigrants, unemployed, retired, had chronic disease such as rheumatism, bronchitis, asthma, and those taking non-prescribed medication and not seeking treatment when falling ill were more likely to use TCM. Perceived difficulty in obtaining medical services and high medical cost also predicted TCM use. In sum, the findings suggest that TCM users are likely to be those who have been marginalized in obtaining medical care.

The role of attitudes and beliefs in differential health care utilisation among Chinese in Singapore

One hundred and twenty-eight Chinese patients at two Western medical practices and two Chinese medical practices in Singapore completed a questionnaire regarding perceptions of illnesses. Health beliefs and attitudes towards different medical practitioners. Results indicate significant differences between those who consult only allopathic physicians (Western doctors) and those who consult both practitioners of traditional Chinese medicine (sinsehs) and Western doctors. Individuals consulting both Western doctors and sinsehs perceived a smaller proportion of “general” illness attributes (those found in both Western and Chinese medicine) to be relevant to specific diseases and showed greater endorsement of Chinese health beliefs than did individuals seeking help only from Western doctors. Also individuals consulting both types of practitioners expressed less satisfaction with the doctor's treatment than did those consulting only Western doctors and also rated sinsehs as more concerned with patient well-being and as listening more to their patients.

A software tool for constructing traditional Chinese medical expert systems

It is an urgent task to implement a lot of expert systems to capture the valuable expertise of experienced doctors of traditional Chinese medicine. In order to meet the needs, a software tool is developed. It features a unified diagnosis model, a specially designed knowledge representation language and an efficient but effective inference engine. To implement an expert system, it is only necessary to input the expert’s knowledge expressed in knowledge representation language without the design of any additional software. The time and effort required for implementing an expert system are thus greatly saved. The software is very compact and can run on microcomputers e.g. IBM-PC/XT. Two traditional Chinese medical expert systems have been successfully implemented with the tool.