Chinese Herbal Therapy
An Historical, Cross-Cultural Perspective
Western pharmacology and Chinese herbology share the same root; the manipulation of plants, minerals and animals to treat illness. In fact, the early theoretical platforms for both medicines are also shared as the philosophy of health and disease suggested by Hypocrites and later Paracelsus have many parallels with that of Chinese medicine and the great physicians of China.
The Father of Western Medicine
Hypocrites was born on the island of Cos, Greece in 460BC and although little is known about the specifics of his life, his influence in transitioning medicine out of the arena of philosophy and spirit into the world of experimentation and logic was great in addition to his contributions as a geometrist. It has been suggested in fact, that he was born to a family directly descendant from Aesculapius, the son of Apollo. He was a student of Herodicus and gained a great understanding of medicine from extensive travels. He was the first physician to diagnose disease, namely epilepsy and pneumonia and had a very pragmatic approach to preventative health which included getting enough rest, washing and eating well. He is famous for saying “nothing to excess” as the basis for a long life and it is suggested that he himself lived to be well over one hundred years old.
The importance of his work is exemplified by the universal use of his beautiful code of ethics for physicians, which is still used to this day and the acknowledgement as the “Father of Modern medicine.” He is recognized as authoring what is called the “Hippocratic Corpus,” a collection of sixty heterogeneous medical treatises compiled in Hellenistic times, although he is sure to have only contributed a small portion of the total compilation. Among those treatises where revolutionary concepts such as preventative medicine. For instance, “Regimen and Regimen in Acute Disease” correlated diet and lifestyle to illness. “Airs, Waters and Places” linked environmental factors to disease etiology and “Prognostics”, “Coan Prognosis,” and “Aphorisms” discussed disease prognosis and prediction based on clinical experience. The following is a select list of medical comments made in the treatise “Aphorisms”:
“Life is short, art is long, occasion sudden, experiment dangerous, judgment difficult. Neither is it sufficient that the physician do his office, unless the patient and his attendants do their duty and external conditions are well ordered.
In extreme diseases extreme and searching remedies are best.
Old men easily endure fasting, middle-aged men not so well, young men still less easily, and children worst of all, especially those who are of a more lively spirit.
Those bodies that grow have much natural heat, therefore they require good store of food or else the body consumes, but old men have little heat in them, therefore they require but little food, for much nourishment extinguishes that heat. And this is the reason that old men do not have very acute fevers, because their bodies are cold.
Those things that are or have been justly determined by nature ought not to be moved or altered, either by purging or other irritating medicine, but should be let alone.
Sleeping or walking, if either be immoderate, is evil.
It is dangerous much and suddenly either to empty, heat, fill, or cool, or by any other means to stir the body, for whatever is beyond moderation is an enemy to nature; but that is safe which is done little by little, and especially when a change is to be made from one thing to another.
Changes of seasons are most effectual causes of diseases, and so are alterations of cold and heat within the seasons, and other things proportionately in the same manner.
And in what part of the body there is unusual heat or cold there the disease is seated.
The same meat administered to a person sick of a fever as to one in health will strengthen the healthy one, but will increase the malady of the sick one.
The finishing stroke of death is when the vital heat ascends above the diaphragm and all the moisture is dried up. But when the lungs and heart have lost their moisture, the heat being all collected together in the most mortal places, the vital fire by which the whole structure was built up and held together is suddenly exhaled. Then the soul leaving this earthly building makes its exit partly through the flesh and partly through the openings in the head, by which we live; and thus it surrenders up this cold earthly statue, together with the heat, blood, tissues, and flesh.”
Within this list of statements is a fascinating conceptual framework for a newly found medicine free from superstition and devastating actions of divine will. Here we see guidelines for the medical practitioner based on the theories of seasons and temperature, age, diet and fasting and the death process itself.
This broad spectrum of commentary and clinical observation created an important foundation for modern medicine to move in the direction of scientific protocol and also very similar to how a Chinese medical practitioner would view a medical condition, make a diagnosis and create a treatment protocol. However, during the Renaissance, a shift occurred with the work of Paracelsus.
Paracelsus (1493-1541) Paracelsus created an alternative model to the traditional Galenic system of humoral imbalances during the Renaissance period in Europe. He was a Swiss physician who attempted to generate a mind-body medicine based on alchemical principles utilizing salt, sulfur and mercury in addition to maintaining a strong commitment to experimental medicine in an age of magic based healing. Born in Eisiedeln, Switzerland to a poor German physician and chemist he was home schooled in botany, chemistry, metallurgy and medicine and then graduated by the age of 17 from the University of Vienna with a degree in medicine. He then traveled as a student through Egypt, Arabia, Mesopotamia, and Europe seeking the knowledge in alchemy and medicine.
He gained much recognition using unconventional treatments that manipulated various minerals and is noted
for discovering the element zinc. For example, he treated and cured syphilis using mercury and also made pills that contained minute traces of a person’s feces in his remedy for plague. His opinion on trauma and wound care was to keep the area from becoming infected and mostly to provide proper drainage that would allow for the area to heal on it’s own. This was in contrast to the standard procedure of cauterizing with boiling water and amputation following gangrene.
He acknowledged a relationship between man and the planetary forces that surround us and used astrological information as an important component in creating his treatment strategy. His belief in the mind-body relationship is illustrated in the following statement,
“Man is not body. The heart, the spirit, is man. And this spirit is an entire star, out of which, he is built. If therefore a man is perfect in his heart, nothing in the whole light of Nature is hidden from him.”
In effect, he is stating in my opinion what many of the eastern philosophies propose, that the suffering of man, be it mental or physical, can be cured by discovering one’s true self, a limitless experience of wisdom and compassion which begins by opening or connecting to one’s own heart. This hypothesis for him, as an alchemist, was fueled by a search for the fundamental element of all creation that would prove to be a universal medicine.
He surely brings to the arena of Renaissance medicine a mixture of many elements both scientific and spiritual which is what surely sparked much of the controversy around his many writings. A great intellectual and to a certain extent, a theologian, Paracelsus was truly interested in creating a holistic approach to medicine. His interests ranged from miners diseases and venereal disease to theorizing about the etiology of the plague and the curative powers of mineral water. In addition, his notions about the spirit, astrology, and other unorthodox views in relation to medicine mixed together with his own reactionary temperament and anti-Galenic attitudes all lead to a life of mixed publicity and approval. His writings were difficult to have published and he in fact spent most of his life wandering from place to place studying and practicing a poor physician. Respect for his discoveries and chemical treatment of disease were not really respected and honored until well after his death.
For the last five hundred years, however, beginning with the work of Paracelsus, there has been a movement away from the concept of health as a natural extension of balance. Paracelus created a new concept of working with particular diseases treating with a specific remedy rather than treating from a humoral perspective. This shift initiated a new evolutionary trend that moved away from a holistic model of medicine into a reductionistic one. In addition, advancements in anatomy (Andreas Vesalius, 1453), in the physiology of the circulatory system (William Harvey, 1616), Pasteur’s Germ Theory (1822-1895), Joseph Lister’s contribution of connecting microbes with wound sepsis and developing the use of carbonic acid during surgery for prevention (1877), Robert Koch’s (1893) work in bacteriological research on anthrax, typhus and tuberculosis and Alexander Flemming’s (1929) discovery of penicillin all nurtured the new direction of medicine right into the twenty-first century.
Where does herbology fit into all this? The use of herbs in Western medicine has continued into the present but the focus of how herbs are used has changed and the form we take them in, as pills, fosters a disconnection with the original form of the medicine. The result is that we don’t know where our medicine is coming from and herbology itself, the use of these amazing substances in their natural state, gets forgotten, belittled and ignored. The following is a list of a few powerful and common medicines that have herbal roots:
Digitalis, purple foxglove was discovered by Dr. William Withering who learned of the herb from a local gypsy-herbalist. It is a cardiotonic drug, a steroid that effects the heart muscle and has been used since 1775. Today it comes in a form called Digitoxin or Digoxin and is used to control heartrate.
In Chinese Medicine, we use the root of the foxglove, sheng di huang, “fresh earth yellow” to treat conditions related to the blood.
Aspirin, originally from meadowsweet and white willow tree bark, the active ingredient is salicin which the body converts into salicylic acid. Salicylic acid in white willow bark lowers the body's levels of prostaglandins, hormonelike compounds that are associated with aches, pain, and inflammation. While white willow bark takes longer to begin acting than aspirin, its effect may last longer. In addition, it doesn't cause stomach bleeding or other known adverse effects that may occur with synthetic aspirin use. All aspirin is now chemically synthesized.
In Chinese medicine, white willow bark has been used for hundreds of years to relieve pain and lower fever.
Morphine, from the poppy, Papaver Somniferous, it is a potent narcotic analgesic, and its primary clinical use is in the management of moderately severe and severe pain. Morphine is isolated from crude opium, which is a resinous preparation of the opium poppy, and prescribed in drug form as Roxinal, MS Contain, and Morphine Sulfate.
Penicillin, produced from molds, kills by preventing some bacteria from forming new cell walls. In the Us alone, infectious bacterial diseases are only 1/20 of what they were in 1900 because of medicines like penicillin.
The first major Chinese text describing the actions and functions of herbs was compiled by a famous Taoist, Tao Hong-Jing (452-536A.D.) This text, the Divine Husbandman’s Classic of the Material Medica had 364 entries and described the therapeutic properties of the medicinals and the proper preparation for each. By 1596, the Grand Materia Media contained a thorough description of 1,892 substances and in 1977, the Encyclopedia of Traditional Chinese Medicinal Substances was published which includes 5,767 entries.
Herbs are categorized into eight different therapeutic methods. They are:
Warm the Interior, Increase Circulation
Clear Heat or Infection
Reduce or Eliminate Accumulations in the body such as clots, phlegm, or water
Tonifying or Nourishing Weakness in the body
Promote Sweating
Induce Vomiting
Induce Defecation
Herbal formulas are then designed to remove stagnation, support deficiencies, remove obstructions, weigh down anxieties, dry up damp conditions like edema and moisten dry conditions. With the exception of vomiting, we continue to use all of these treatment strategies in modern Chinese medicine.
Herbs are prescribed to exactly match diagnosed patterns of disharmony. Formulas traditionally include between 7 and 15 different herbs on average. The goal of any prescription is to address as many symptoms as possible while maintaining a balanced integrity. Chinese herbs when properly prescribed do not produce side effects. They can act very much like a dietary supplement with the strength and precision to eliminate our ailments, nourish our bodies and prevent illness.
There are many different types of herbal prescriptions. Herbs may be prepared as raw decoctions, that is, a grouping of twigs, leaves, roots, and flowers which are boiled in water until a thick soup is created. Prepared liquid extracts, pills, and powders are also available. Because there are many different kinds of people with different needs, Chinese medicine offers a wide range of options for treatment.
The Father of Western Medicine
Hypocrites was born on the island of Cos, Greece in 460BC and although little is known about the specifics of his life, his influence in transitioning medicine out of the arena of philosophy and spirit into the world of experimentation and logic was great in addition to his contributions as a geometrist. It has been suggested in fact, that he was born to a family directly descendant from Aesculapius, the son of Apollo. He was a student of Herodicus and gained a great understanding of medicine from extensive travels. He was the first physician to diagnose disease, namely epilepsy and pneumonia and had a very pragmatic approach to preventative health which included getting enough rest, washing and eating well. He is famous for saying “nothing to excess” as the basis for a long life and it is suggested that he himself lived to be well over one hundred years old.
The importance of his work is exemplified by the universal use of his beautiful code of ethics for physicians, which is still used to this day and the acknowledgement as the “Father of Modern medicine.” He is recognized as authoring what is called the “Hippocratic Corpus,” a collection of sixty heterogeneous medical treatises compiled in Hellenistic times, although he is sure to have only contributed a small portion of the total compilation. Among those treatises where revolutionary concepts such as preventative medicine. For instance, “Regimen and Regimen in Acute Disease” correlated diet and lifestyle to illness. “Airs, Waters and Places” linked environmental factors to disease etiology and “Prognostics”, “Coan Prognosis,” and “Aphorisms” discussed disease prognosis and prediction based on clinical experience. The following is a select list of medical comments made in the treatise “Aphorisms”:
“Life is short, art is long, occasion sudden, experiment dangerous, judgment difficult. Neither is it sufficient that the physician do his office, unless the patient and his attendants do their duty and external conditions are well ordered.
In extreme diseases extreme and searching remedies are best.
Old men easily endure fasting, middle-aged men not so well, young men still less easily, and children worst of all, especially those who are of a more lively spirit.
Those bodies that grow have much natural heat, therefore they require good store of food or else the body consumes, but old men have little heat in them, therefore they require but little food, for much nourishment extinguishes that heat. And this is the reason that old men do not have very acute fevers, because their bodies are cold.
Those things that are or have been justly determined by nature ought not to be moved or altered, either by purging or other irritating medicine, but should be let alone.
Sleeping or walking, if either be immoderate, is evil.
It is dangerous much and suddenly either to empty, heat, fill, or cool, or by any other means to stir the body, for whatever is beyond moderation is an enemy to nature; but that is safe which is done little by little, and especially when a change is to be made from one thing to another.
Changes of seasons are most effectual causes of diseases, and so are alterations of cold and heat within the seasons, and other things proportionately in the same manner.
And in what part of the body there is unusual heat or cold there the disease is seated.
The same meat administered to a person sick of a fever as to one in health will strengthen the healthy one, but will increase the malady of the sick one.
The finishing stroke of death is when the vital heat ascends above the diaphragm and all the moisture is dried up. But when the lungs and heart have lost their moisture, the heat being all collected together in the most mortal places, the vital fire by which the whole structure was built up and held together is suddenly exhaled. Then the soul leaving this earthly building makes its exit partly through the flesh and partly through the openings in the head, by which we live; and thus it surrenders up this cold earthly statue, together with the heat, blood, tissues, and flesh.”
Within this list of statements is a fascinating conceptual framework for a newly found medicine free from superstition and devastating actions of divine will. Here we see guidelines for the medical practitioner based on the theories of seasons and temperature, age, diet and fasting and the death process itself.
This broad spectrum of commentary and clinical observation created an important foundation for modern medicine to move in the direction of scientific protocol and also very similar to how a Chinese medical practitioner would view a medical condition, make a diagnosis and create a treatment protocol. However, during the Renaissance, a shift occurred with the work of Paracelsus.
Paracelsus (1493-1541) Paracelsus created an alternative model to the traditional Galenic system of humoral imbalances during the Renaissance period in Europe. He was a Swiss physician who attempted to generate a mind-body medicine based on alchemical principles utilizing salt, sulfur and mercury in addition to maintaining a strong commitment to experimental medicine in an age of magic based healing. Born in Eisiedeln, Switzerland to a poor German physician and chemist he was home schooled in botany, chemistry, metallurgy and medicine and then graduated by the age of 17 from the University of Vienna with a degree in medicine. He then traveled as a student through Egypt, Arabia, Mesopotamia, and Europe seeking the knowledge in alchemy and medicine.
He gained much recognition using unconventional treatments that manipulated various minerals and is noted
for discovering the element zinc. For example, he treated and cured syphilis using mercury and also made pills that contained minute traces of a person’s feces in his remedy for plague. His opinion on trauma and wound care was to keep the area from becoming infected and mostly to provide proper drainage that would allow for the area to heal on it’s own. This was in contrast to the standard procedure of cauterizing with boiling water and amputation following gangrene.
He acknowledged a relationship between man and the planetary forces that surround us and used astrological information as an important component in creating his treatment strategy. His belief in the mind-body relationship is illustrated in the following statement,
“Man is not body. The heart, the spirit, is man. And this spirit is an entire star, out of which, he is built. If therefore a man is perfect in his heart, nothing in the whole light of Nature is hidden from him.”
In effect, he is stating in my opinion what many of the eastern philosophies propose, that the suffering of man, be it mental or physical, can be cured by discovering one’s true self, a limitless experience of wisdom and compassion which begins by opening or connecting to one’s own heart. This hypothesis for him, as an alchemist, was fueled by a search for the fundamental element of all creation that would prove to be a universal medicine.
He surely brings to the arena of Renaissance medicine a mixture of many elements both scientific and spiritual which is what surely sparked much of the controversy around his many writings. A great intellectual and to a certain extent, a theologian, Paracelsus was truly interested in creating a holistic approach to medicine. His interests ranged from miners diseases and venereal disease to theorizing about the etiology of the plague and the curative powers of mineral water. In addition, his notions about the spirit, astrology, and other unorthodox views in relation to medicine mixed together with his own reactionary temperament and anti-Galenic attitudes all lead to a life of mixed publicity and approval. His writings were difficult to have published and he in fact spent most of his life wandering from place to place studying and practicing a poor physician. Respect for his discoveries and chemical treatment of disease were not really respected and honored until well after his death.
For the last five hundred years, however, beginning with the work of Paracelsus, there has been a movement away from the concept of health as a natural extension of balance. Paracelus created a new concept of working with particular diseases treating with a specific remedy rather than treating from a humoral perspective. This shift initiated a new evolutionary trend that moved away from a holistic model of medicine into a reductionistic one. In addition, advancements in anatomy (Andreas Vesalius, 1453), in the physiology of the circulatory system (William Harvey, 1616), Pasteur’s Germ Theory (1822-1895), Joseph Lister’s contribution of connecting microbes with wound sepsis and developing the use of carbonic acid during surgery for prevention (1877), Robert Koch’s (1893) work in bacteriological research on anthrax, typhus and tuberculosis and Alexander Flemming’s (1929) discovery of penicillin all nurtured the new direction of medicine right into the twenty-first century.
Where does herbology fit into all this? The use of herbs in Western medicine has continued into the present but the focus of how herbs are used has changed and the form we take them in, as pills, fosters a disconnection with the original form of the medicine. The result is that we don’t know where our medicine is coming from and herbology itself, the use of these amazing substances in their natural state, gets forgotten, belittled and ignored. The following is a list of a few powerful and common medicines that have herbal roots:
Digitalis, purple foxglove was discovered by Dr. William Withering who learned of the herb from a local gypsy-herbalist. It is a cardiotonic drug, a steroid that effects the heart muscle and has been used since 1775. Today it comes in a form called Digitoxin or Digoxin and is used to control heartrate.
In Chinese Medicine, we use the root of the foxglove, sheng di huang, “fresh earth yellow” to treat conditions related to the blood.
Aspirin, originally from meadowsweet and white willow tree bark, the active ingredient is salicin which the body converts into salicylic acid. Salicylic acid in white willow bark lowers the body's levels of prostaglandins, hormonelike compounds that are associated with aches, pain, and inflammation. While white willow bark takes longer to begin acting than aspirin, its effect may last longer. In addition, it doesn't cause stomach bleeding or other known adverse effects that may occur with synthetic aspirin use. All aspirin is now chemically synthesized.
In Chinese medicine, white willow bark has been used for hundreds of years to relieve pain and lower fever.
Morphine, from the poppy, Papaver Somniferous, it is a potent narcotic analgesic, and its primary clinical use is in the management of moderately severe and severe pain. Morphine is isolated from crude opium, which is a resinous preparation of the opium poppy, and prescribed in drug form as Roxinal, MS Contain, and Morphine Sulfate.
Penicillin, produced from molds, kills by preventing some bacteria from forming new cell walls. In the Us alone, infectious bacterial diseases are only 1/20 of what they were in 1900 because of medicines like penicillin.
The first major Chinese text describing the actions and functions of herbs was compiled by a famous Taoist, Tao Hong-Jing (452-536A.D.) This text, the Divine Husbandman’s Classic of the Material Medica had 364 entries and described the therapeutic properties of the medicinals and the proper preparation for each. By 1596, the Grand Materia Media contained a thorough description of 1,892 substances and in 1977, the Encyclopedia of Traditional Chinese Medicinal Substances was published which includes 5,767 entries.
Herbs are categorized into eight different therapeutic methods. They are:
Warm the Interior, Increase Circulation
Clear Heat or Infection
Reduce or Eliminate Accumulations in the body such as clots, phlegm, or water
Tonifying or Nourishing Weakness in the body
Promote Sweating
Induce Vomiting
Induce Defecation
Herbal formulas are then designed to remove stagnation, support deficiencies, remove obstructions, weigh down anxieties, dry up damp conditions like edema and moisten dry conditions. With the exception of vomiting, we continue to use all of these treatment strategies in modern Chinese medicine.
Herbs are prescribed to exactly match diagnosed patterns of disharmony. Formulas traditionally include between 7 and 15 different herbs on average. The goal of any prescription is to address as many symptoms as possible while maintaining a balanced integrity. Chinese herbs when properly prescribed do not produce side effects. They can act very much like a dietary supplement with the strength and precision to eliminate our ailments, nourish our bodies and prevent illness.
There are many different types of herbal prescriptions. Herbs may be prepared as raw decoctions, that is, a grouping of twigs, leaves, roots, and flowers which are boiled in water until a thick soup is created. Prepared liquid extracts, pills, and powders are also available. Because there are many different kinds of people with different needs, Chinese medicine offers a wide range of options for treatment.
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