When it comes to cultural medicine, we have to mention chinese medicine and western medicine. This article will analyze these two culture that the differences. The following points are some of my personal views.
Traditional Chinese medicine has been practiced in China for thousands of years. traditional Chinese medicine, is a label that covers a broad range of traditional medicine practices spread throughout Asia, including various forms of herbal medicine, acupuncture, massage therapy, and dietary therapy. In the past decade, there have been intensive debates in China about the nature of this ancient practice and its future development. Some critics argue that Traditional Chinese medicine theories are inaccurate descriptions of the human body that verge on imagination, and so have no place in modern healthcare systems. Other, however, say that Traditional Chinese medicine has a lot to offer to Western science and medicine and that emerging analytical tools hold great potentials in bridging the gap between the two worlds with contrasting philosophy and approaches.
Western medicine is the term used to describe the treatment of medical conditions with medications, by doctors, nurses and other conventional healthcare providers who employ methods developed according to Western medical and scientific traditions. Other names for Western medicine include traditional medicine or allopathic medicine. It differs from Eastern, or alternative, medicine, in its approach to treatment, which relies heavily upon industrially produced medications and a strict adherence to the formal scientific process.
A Chinese medicine doctor treats illness by the way of generalization, emphasis entirety and dialectical treatment, so some people view it as holistic medicine. A western medicine doctor treats illness by the symptoms. For instance, if you have a sore throat, the western medicine doctor consider it as a throat problem, while a Chinese medicine doctor may link it to your stomach trouble.An objective comparison of Eastern and Western approaches to medicine is necessary to further evaluate the validity of Oriental medical techniques such as acupuncture. The development of medicine in Western nations follows the way of hypothetical deduction and the Eastern approach uses the inductive method. The Western approach clearly divides the health from the disease, yet the Eastern approach considers health as a balanced state versus disease as an unbalanced state. The Western approach tends to change the environment and the Eastern way is to prefer to adapt to the environment. There are numerous difficulties in comparing these two approaches. The same terminology may apply to entirely different facts, the teaching and learning methods are quite different, and the evaluation of the treatment is almost not comparable.