With all due respect, "traditional Chinese Medicine" was invented by Mao because he couldn't afford to give his half billion strong agrarian proletariat actual medicine and didn't want them to notice.
>“Even though I believe we should promote Chinese medicine,” Mao told him, “I personally do not believe in it. I don’t take Chinese medicine.”
> In 1923, Lu Xun, China’s most famous man of letters, reflected critically on his father’s visits to a Chinese doctor, visits that bankrupted the family and failed to produce results. “I still remember the doctor’s discussion and prescription,” Lu wrote, “and if I compare them with my knowledge now, I slowly realize that Chinese doctors are no more than a type of swindler, either intentional or unintentional, and I sympathize with deceived sick people and their families.”
>...Mao’s strategy to deal with these criticisms was quite deliberate—and clever. It consisted of two strategies, both designed to mythologize TCM as being a scientifically sound and harmonious “whole medical system” and to provide “evidence” in the form of testimonials that it worked...
"Textbooks were written that portrayed Chinese medicine as a theoretical and practical whole, and they were taught in newly founded academies of so-called “traditional Chinese medicine,” a term that first appeared in English, not Chinese. Needless to say, the academies were anything but traditional, striving valiantly to “scientify” the teachings of classics that often contradicted one another and themselves..." The second part of the strategy was the dissemination of spectacular anecdotes to “prove” the efficacy of TCM.
It's interesting how we have this cohort of people who don't use TCM, have strong opinions about it, and have no trouble finding sources to back up their claims.
I don't argue with them. Because at one time I knew TCM was bullshit too.
Then we have this other cohort of people with chronic issues who exhausted, or are unsatisfied with, the treatments offered by western medicine. They go on to discover TCM, are healed and then swear by it.
I can't explain this stuff. I think it's weird, but it works.
I mean, you could say I'm a hypochondriac or I have some sort of psychosomatic illness... but I have the scans, labs, and diagnosis to prove it.
> Then we have this other cohort of people with chronic issues who exhausted, or are unsatisfied with, the treatments offered by western medicine.
Except... I'm in that cohort. I've been through the gauntlet too - years and years and thousands of dollars of both real medicine and what I now accept to be fake, that I reached for in desperation. So, I see your anecdata, and raise mine. If only we had some rigorous methodology for determining which conclusion is the correct one, as far as we can tell from the current evidence...
Moveover - trying to present evidence for a field that >specifically< shies away from evidence-based conclusions is a rather silly, IMNSHO. It worked for Mao because he wasn't trying to cure anyone: he was explicitly trying to fool people.
Western medicine may be incomplete, ineffective and often wrong, but it's not founded in willful bullshit.
That being said, there are many ailments that aren't adequately treated by Western Medicine - either because we don't know enough yet or are still constrained by the profit motive to find solutions to symptoms, not cures and whole well being.
>“Even though I believe we should promote Chinese medicine,” Mao told him, “I personally do not believe in it. I don’t take Chinese medicine.”
> In 1923, Lu Xun, China’s most famous man of letters, reflected critically on his father’s visits to a Chinese doctor, visits that bankrupted the family and failed to produce results. “I still remember the doctor’s discussion and prescription,” Lu wrote, “and if I compare them with my knowledge now, I slowly realize that Chinese doctors are no more than a type of swindler, either intentional or unintentional, and I sympathize with deceived sick people and their families.”
http://www.slate.com/articles/health_and_science/medical_exa...
>...Mao’s strategy to deal with these criticisms was quite deliberate—and clever. It consisted of two strategies, both designed to mythologize TCM as being a scientifically sound and harmonious “whole medical system” and to provide “evidence” in the form of testimonials that it worked... "Textbooks were written that portrayed Chinese medicine as a theoretical and practical whole, and they were taught in newly founded academies of so-called “traditional Chinese medicine,” a term that first appeared in English, not Chinese. Needless to say, the academies were anything but traditional, striving valiantly to “scientify” the teachings of classics that often contradicted one another and themselves..." The second part of the strategy was the dissemination of spectacular anecdotes to “prove” the efficacy of TCM.
http://scienceblogs.com/insolence/2013/10/25/chairman-mao-in...
https://www.google.com/search?q=traditional+chinese+medicine...