Center for Chinese Medicine

Pharmacology talk

Chinese herbal medicine-

developed over thousands of years

as was western pharmacy, based on oral accounts, homeopathic and doctrine
of signature, shamanism, etc.

developed into what Joseph Needham has called ‘protoscience’ – rationally based

kind of like American Indian herbology if they had a written history and libraries, or Western herbolism if their wasn’t such a split between ‘mind’ and ‘matter’, or the Platonic Greek notion of an abstract ideal world/heavenly plane.

Based on yin/yang theory and five element theory – gradually codified from experience and many different schools into certain classifications. Original pharmacopoeia –
Shen Nung’s Ben Cao – herbs/substances were classified only as superior/middle/and inferior classes of herbs. Under the listing of ‘superior’ were indications such as ‘made the body light and able to fly’ indicating the early Daoist influence – an herb may not have been able to make you fly, but helped a cough, so it was recorded as a failure, but still became useful in a pharmacopoeia.

All things in nature have ‘qi’ – translated as ‘energy’, but maybe best thought of as ‘influence’, ‘vapor’…kind of like vital energy in the West, but different. More ordinary even – the character for qi indicates the steam arising from rice.

The body is seen as a part of Nature, no dualism is ever implied in the system. And a fundamental trust in Nature meant that the best way to live a ‘long human life’ and find full expression of humanness – was to live according to the natural cycle. This did not mean denying humanness and civilization – wearing clothes, being married, and cooking food were considered essential to civilization.

Although some Southern Daoists lived hermetic lives eating pine trees and being vegans – the View of health that was established over centuries of experimentation was that it was important to establish a flexible, yet stable internal energy. The use of primarily cooked foods – vegetable, grains, and small amounts of protein – was determined to be most useful for people living an agriculturally based lifestyle.

Diet is considered the foundation of health, and herbs/drugs a secondary measure. Although open heart surgery was able to be done in China around the time of Christ, surgery and especially dissection was rarely done. Most knowledge of the physiology of the body was done through careful observation, not only of well and sick people, but also based on the assumption that patterns of circulation found in Nature would hold true in the body. A lot of the development of the channel/meridian theory of Chinese medicine came about through the development and observation of waterways and
food distribution patterns that were in the culture at the time.

The first herbs were used as additions to rice soup or congee. Rice was a
foundational grain of the culture, a mild qi and blood builder that didn’t create
dampness or excess stagnation in the body – it didn’t over nourish or undernourish –
a family could get enough energy out of rice to keep getting out in the fields and plant more for generations. An herb added to rice soup was easily digested by someone who was sick. Very simple medicine appropriate to simple people living close to Nature.

As cities developed, and uncertain times arose with farmers taken away to be conscripted in small local armies as China headed into hundreds of years of civil war,
philosophical ideas and medical ideas began to get more and more complicated.

From the 3 classes of herbs developed many categories cataloging the use of many hundreds of herbs – and the beginning of theories that explained how they were utilized by the body. The herbs took all kinds of forms – plant, animal, mineral….at one point a famous physician died and in purgatory saved himself by rewriting the large pharmacopoeia he had composed in his lifetime so that the animal references were removed!

Enough of history – — the modern pharmacopoeia has been in existence for at least 500 years, a lot of the theory involving the centrality of the “spleen energy” in health, and cataloging the importance of “yin deficiency” was written then. Books of the last few hundred years can be read for present day knowledge, and are especially useful in considering modern chronic degenerative illnesses —- as the ‘Chinese’ experience really catalogs the experience of many different ethnicities across many different climates and terrains – and through many epidemics of one sort and another.

The pharmacopoeia we were taught for the California state boards, and now is used nationally, represents about 350 herbs that are cataloged by the way they are used in Mainland China. They are classified by these kinds of groupings: Herbs that treat External wind and heat or cold, herbs that clear heat at various levels, herbs that drain dampness, calm and nourish the spirit, clear phlegm and cough….etc….and most importantly and uniquely – herbs that tonify qi, blood, yin and yang.

The tonics are the ones that often appear as the ‘superior’ class in the old pharmacopoeia, and are the ones that often show strong biomedical promise for treating chronic deficiency and weakness. These herbs are often chosen when someone is fatigued or weak following an illness, or has a tendency to become ill when faced with an external (catching a cold) or internal (kidney disease) condition.

I spent many months in China, training especially with herbalists – as well as doing that with my acupuncture training. Traditional Chinese Medical theory encompassed the use of acupuncture, herbs, massage, diet, whatever will help to bring back circulation and balance in the patient .

Clear diagnostic knowledge is especially important in prescribing herbal formulas – they can act in very certain directions and, while certainly much more balanced and evenhanded than using modern medications on the body, need to be prescribed with knowledge.

Let it be clear that they are not dangerous anywhere near on a scale to the iatrogenic level of modern medicines – which are often given in haste and combined in a way that shows the physician really has no knowledge of their long term effects on the patient – and a great reliance on the all-knowing wisdom of drug companies. Allopaths who distrust herbal medicine seems to, rather emotionally, either think they are worthless or dangerous. As with anything, they have the potential to be that, but the experience of people taking them over millennia, and the natural buffering of being in (mostly) the plant form, attest to their usefulness.

As more and more Chinese herbs have been examined ‘scientifically’ many have been found to have extraordinary immune enhancing affects – also cholesterol lowering, cancer-reducing, bronchodilating, steroid-like,,,etc. etc. you name it.
And in China sometimes that modern information about an herb is used to decide to add the herbs to a formula, or to chemically extract and concentrate a certain part of that herb for a use entirely different from that which it was ‘traditionally’ indicated.

But the limits of modern analysis quickly hit the wall when faced with the huge number of compounds that make up an herb, and understanding the in-vivo and in-vitro effects of even those compounds that can be identified – upon a certain person with their certain assimilation and condition, over time. Very difficult to assess – and then on top of that, consider a typical formula of over 15 herbs, traditionally boiled for over 30 minutes with the herbs acting upon each other – and certain other herbs added at the end, or boiled first for an hour….No computer will be up to the job, and none need apply, if we can take a meta jump to a more systems approach than the one used by our present day ‘medical science’, which sometimes has less in common with present day ‘biological science’ than Chinese medicine does.

If we were to look at an ecosystem, say a mature riparian grassland surrounded by trees, rivers and ponds – how would we judge the health of the system? By seeing how well oxygenated the ponds are, by counting the diversity of native flora and fauna from the microscopic up the food chain, by assessing the stability of the system to resist pressure. If the river was being dammed up by overpopulated beavers, we wouldn’t nuke the dam, kill all the beavers, pave the river- and count it a success for still being alive for 5 more years, would we? Chinese medicine sees the body like this, there is cause and effect operating when the Lungs continues to be weak in a person, the Earth(Spleen) energy which allows Wood (Liver) to punish Metal(Lungs) using the 5 element system, so the herb formula chosen emphasizes tonifying the digestion, using a classic formula (4 gentlemen) as its basis, and so – clears up chronic bronchitis in a short amount of time. It isn’t ‘heroic’ medicine like taking an inhaler, but it works very well, and is understood if one understands the rational ‘protoscientific’ theory.