Have you ever noticed that everything in China has a 5,000 year history? Chinese medicine is said to have started 5,000 years ago-it says so on most practitioners’ websites. Qi Gong also has an apparent history of 5,000 years. According to a quick google search, art, massage, tea, calligraphy, culture, government, farming methods, herbs, language, and probably a few more things I am missing share this. It seems everything in China started in about 3,000 BC.
One would guess, given this claim, that museums are filled with medical artifacts from 3,000 BC. Books galore, right? Bowls, pottery, inscriptions-all of this would prove the 5,000 year history. So what do we have? Nothing! Not one known piece of writing, pottery, needle, or even a lone bowl exists to my knowledge.
Starting in 2,500 BC, there is the period known as the Xia Dynasty. Even calling this period a dynasty makes little sense, as there was no cohesive government nor was there any known unified culture. The people in the area we now call China knew little of people in different regions at this time. In fact, if you look at this map of the Xia and the later map of the Shang, you will see that the region covered by these “dynasties” is tiny compared to the ever expanding China we know of today.
The earliest medical records I know of come from the late Warring States period. The earliest ones I have read come from the early Han Dynasty and include texts excavated from the Mawangdui and Wuwei tombs. People who study Chinese medicine today would be quite disappointed with the contents of these books, as there is no real cohesive theoretical underpinning in them. From what I have read, problems are described with very clever adjectives (such as “A person coughs ‘wee wee like a bird’ then give them XYZ herbs).
The 5,000 year history of China is a complete fabrication. I do not know exactly when medicine in China began, but I’m pretty sure that as long as there have been people they have been trying to find ways to relieve themselves of illness and lengthen their lives. The bigger question for me is, why do we need to justify our practices with a time frame? Do we feel better thinking we have time on our side?
I beg the thousands of you who have this on your websites: delete it for the sake of the credibility of our profession (or your own profession). Anyone with access to wikipedia, which is everyone, will potentially know you are off by several thousand years.
7 responses so far ↓
Chris Bennett // July 8, 2009 at 11:08 pm |
Good points. Something I had not thought about but what you have written is logical. Rather than 5000 years ago would you describe the history in more general terms, such as 1000’s of years ago?
rlgoodman // July 8, 2009 at 11:39 pm |
Hi Chris,
I knew this question would be asked! I find this hard to answer concretely. As I said, as long as there have been people they have probably been trying to find ways to heal their illnesses. Otzi the Iceman is a great example of this (potentially). If I were to use texts alone, saying that it began in the late Warring States period with jade inscriptions is reasonable. Personally, I prefer to define it in terms of the first texts with a theoretical basis. That puts the written history at about 200 AD, when much of the Nei Jing was written. Saying 1,800 years seems safe, but who knows if future discoveries might make it earlier. I know it doesn’t sound as impressive as 5,000!
Yael Ernst // July 9, 2009 at 12:12 am |
Hey Richard,
If this what comes out of all your rants- by all mean- rant on!
2 points came to mind as I was reading your post:
1. Just because there’s no proof, it doesn’t mean that there was no Chinese medicine 5,000 years ago. Maybe we didn’t look in the right places, maybe nothing was left- could be many reasons.
2. I think that this 5,000 years thing is more of a defensive phrase, when people say that CM is no scientific enough, you know what I mean? When a person from the medical world or a patient who is just very used to think in the western frame of mind, when this person comes and says that CM is really nonsense, we can say “ah, but we have 5,000 years of experience, the medicine you say is nonsense lasted so many years, this has to count for something, don’t you think?”. It’s not a bad come-back. So maybe this is where it all comes from?
Personally, I don’t use the 5,000 years statement, whether it’s right or wrong.
Thanks for the thought-provoking post,
Yael
rlgoodman // July 9, 2009 at 12:39 am |
Hi Yael,
I agree with #2 above 100%, and I’ve always had a feeling this is where that statement comes from. I remember feeling some sense of relief at this idea when I first started studying Chinese medicine, and I also remember the disappointment when I found out it wasn’t true.
As for #1, I would say there couldn’t have been Chinese medicine 5,000 years ago because there was not even a China 5,000 years ago. Even China itself claims that China started with the Qin dynasty. I was at the National Palace Museum just a couple of weeks ago-it really is an amazing place. I was in awe staring at some of the artifacts, yet nothing about them strikes me as “Chinese.” It’s hard to describe, but much of what we consider Chinese today was not considered such at the time.
I suppose it depends what we are looking for, but I am pretty sure we will never find evidence of “Chinese medicine” much earlier than around 200 BC. The reason I say this is because having read those texts that came before the Nei Jing, there is just nothing there that could have been just as easily written in any other geographical region. But trust me, I would be just as excited as anyone else if they dig up another tomb and find evidence to the contrary.
Yael Ernst // July 9, 2009 at 5:25 am |
hmmm…. well, I still think that 5,000 years ago what we know today as CM could have existed.
But it doesn’t really matter, at least to me.
I also think, to continue the line of thinking of option #2, that maybe it also helps students and practitioners who aren’t so sure this CM thing really works. Maybe it helps them to feel more confident?
rlgoodman // July 9, 2009 at 6:23 am |
I realize what I’m about to write could be beating a dead horse, but eh…As far as “could,” sure they could have been doing it. Anything is possible, it’s just not likely based on our knowledge now, and of course our knowledge now is limited about what people did then. Donald Harper and Unschuld are much more familiar with those earlier texts than I am, and they make a very strong argument that the theories did not really come together until the Han. I wonder if anything could be the same 5,000 years ago and today. Han and Song medicine in China are very different. And then enter the Qing people who had completely different takes on the classics. It’s a big topic, and 5,000 years is a really long time!
I think it probably does help them feel more confident. Whether they were doing Chinese medicine 5,000 years ago or 200 years ago doesn’t really matter to me, either. I love studying all of the periods and try to store as much as I can in this little brain of mine.
Yael Ernst // July 10, 2009 at 5:31 am |
Yeah, I know we agree, but since you ranted…
I love talking about these kind of things too.