Brief History of Traditional Chinese Herbal Medicine

The origin of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) can be traced back to three legendary Emperors/mythical rulers: Fu Xi, Shen Nong, and Huang Di.

Shen Nong and Fu Xi are believed to be early tribal leaders. Fu Xi developed the Yi Jing (I Ching) or Book of Changes.

Shen Nong was known as the "Divine Cultivator" by the Chinese, because he is considered the founder of herbal medicine, and taught people how to farm. In order to determine the nature of different herbal medicines, Shen Nong sampled various kinds of plants, ingesting them himself to test and analyzed their individual effects.

Shen Nong is believed to have tasted a hundred herbs, including 70 toxic substances in a single day, in order to rid people of their illnesses. As there were no written records, the discoveries of Shen Nong were passed down verbally from generation to generation. Many years later, the oldest known book on agriculture and medicinal plants was compiled - Shen Nong Bencao Jing.

In 1578, Li Shizhen completed the Bencao Gangmu, also known as the Compendium of Materia Medica, which has been translated into 20 languages and used as a Chinese herbal reference until today. Clinical diagnosis and treatment in TCM are mainly based on the yin-yang and five elements theories. These theories use natural laws to study of the physiological activities and pathological changes of the human body and its interrelationships.

TCM diagnostics are based on overall observation of human symptoms rather than laboratory tests. There are four types of TCM diagnostic methods: observe, hear and smell, ask questions and palpation.

The diagnostics of an ailment includes its cause, mechanism, location, and nature, and the confrontation between the pathogenic factor and body resistance. Treatment is not based only on the symptoms, but differentiation of specific patterns.

Consequently, those with identical ailments may be treated in different ways, and on the other hand, different ailments may result in the same syndrome and are treated in similar ways.

Acupuncture and Chinese herbal medicine comprise one of the oldest organized systems of medicine the world has ever seen (8000 years) and has been used to address nearly every health concern that allopathic medicine traditionally has been treating the last 200 years.

Meridian Harmonics