GEC1044 Lecture One Part 1 What is Medicine?

[Music] hello welcome to the first lecture of Chinese medicine theory and practice uh I will first begin this lesson with a question humans are biologically identical across cultures so why not mine before we attempt to answer this question that was um raised um originally by H unud the famous German scholar of chines Life Sciences we must examine the premise of the question and that is there are many different medicines or systems of medical knowledge now despite the uity of Western biomine we know that other systems of medical knowledge um exists and were relevant and still

relevant all right to different people living on this planet um take for example Chinese medicine right the subject of our course um it one of them at the same time um there are um Malay medson India's aeda tradition Indonesia's jamu U African Med Etc all right there there's many of them and these um frequently group together as alternative medicine which is um really a very broad term encompassing a variety of medical modality that are at the end of the day nonwestern and so yes uh we have um a case of Western medson and the others

now here's the disclaimer we are not interested in finding out which system of medical knowledge is better right or even the best that's not what we uh interested in doing but that's not our objective of course we all have our own answers our own convictions and even beliefs and um at this point I would like to talk a little bit about belief so in the early 20th century when China was going through a turbulent period of national reform and National Awakening in the face of Western imperialism intellectualists uh at a time they questioned everything I

mean everything that was part of Chinese tradition as they were ready to embrace Western progress all right so they thought that um um it was the Chinese tradition that was holding China back right to on on its on her road to Greatness and one of these intellectuals was um a person by the name of CH very famous historian and linguist um he came from a family of Chinese medical doctors right they so um they practice Chinese medicine for many generations sh her um taugh long and hard right about Chinese medicine versus Western progress Western science

and he concluded that Chinese medicine has effective medication but it theories like coherence right so that's in his own wordss um to CH inur Chinese medine actually work for a lot of people many people but it has terrible theories okay and so he went on to embrace Western medicine now not all Chinese intellectuals uh actually all fought long and hard or as long as and hard as sh in her because of their background um um about abolishing Chinese medicine alog together they ready to do that so um for example adminon Scholars such as f um

he actually St that you know he would rather die than to see a Chinese physician so if he's sick and the Las thing that's available Chinese doctor um he wouldn't see the Chinese doctor he would rather like perish um the geologist s even said that uh scientist should not destroy his belief and integrity in science he would never see a Chinese doctor or consume Chinese medication all right so Chinese intell lectures were fast abandoning their faith in Chinese medicine and became um firm Believers in Western medicine in this new era in this new religion of

scientism henan and other intellectuals they all attack Chinese mine because it contains inang the five elements the six t important Concepts that we'll be discussing in our future lessons but in those days they were regarded at best as metaphysics um and at worst pure Superstition such thinking about traditional Chinese knowledge was really based on the assumption that science was uniquely a western product and could not be found in the long history of Chinese civilization you might think that those ideas expressed by these great Chinese intellectuals of the early 20th century really had nothing to do

with the modern educated People Like Us do think again why do most of us visit a Western Medical Clinic or for some of us uh TCM Clinic when we are sick essentially we visit these clinics because we trust in their medical interpretation of our Unice many prefer Western doctors because they trust in the Western Medical interpretation of their unit is the same for Chinese doctors or Malay doctors now what lies behind this trust do some of us think like f for example that we would rather die than to see a Chinese doctor or to see

a western doctor or Malay doctor how did we arrive at this level of trust and confidence and what is the foundation Behind These medical interpretations now in the case of West medson the French philosopher Michelle fuk um attempted to provide the answer in his work Lon clinic or the birth of the clinic and archaeology of medical perception that was um completed in 1963 now according to U Misha Fuko in the Years immediately proceeding and during the French Revolution men began to assign to Medicine of Central role in the reconstitution of society doctors were seen as

successor to the church or rather successor to the clergy of the church science was now the new um religion the medical clinic was in invented around this time to facilitate this social transformation the clinic thus became the primary instrument of medical instruction and of the advancement of medical knowledge it embodied a new grammar of medical perception disease can now be observed and studied without relying too much on classical medical texts this led to the rise of pathological Anatomy which is the observation of corpses in order to trace the history of a given disease Michelle fuku

used the term the medical gaze to identify the Doctor's practice of objectifying the body of the patient as a separate entity from his or her personal identity the clinic became a material and intellectual structure that allows and uh eventually monopolize the inspection the examination and the analysis of the human body when the patient's body ENT entered the field of medson um which in this case um was a new social construct in the N uh in the 18th century sorry it also entered the field of power where the patient can be manipulated by the professional Authority

the medical gaze is an act of um selecting what medical doctors considered to be the relevant elements of the total data stream available to their senses biomedical bits of the patient problems were selected to be focused on while the rest um are ignored in time a new esotericism was created to replace the old esoteric medical knowledge the new medicine required a new medical language that was increasingly precise and refined but unintelligible to all but the initiate the privilege view since the modern clinic or hospital is where the doctors um are doctor oriented not patient oriented

thus medon creates an abusive power structure okay by now you know that this is very Michelle for right because he was particularly concern with uh the exercise of power within social systems right hence the language power um and since since then since the 18th century scientists were seen as sages in the new matter narrative the medical doctors are the most visible representatives of the modern scientists as they would end sickness and resolve the problems of humanity the doctor now had total power over our bodies right this matter narrative is still relevant today especially in times

of worldwide medical crisis so you don't have to think too far just think of covid-19 pandemic uh and the power of um doctors right the power that they um exercise over um our medical bodies so according to for Co um it could very well be the foundation of our trust in Western medon so if the Western medicine and the concept of the medical clinic hospitals the medical doctors all these things are relatively modern social cultural construct then what was Metson like before the 18 century and even earlier modern medine which is really Western medicine is

based on observing and seeing hence the medical gaze mentioned by Michelle fuk it is scientific um empiricism taken to the extreme because now it is the material that really matters to scientists or the medical body that matters to uh the medical doctors but the is that everyone um experiences uness at some point in their lives um whether it is us living in the present or many others who lived thousands of years in the past our ancestors realize that many times we couldn't help ourselves and so they had to rely on something called medicine I've mentioned

that modern hospitals and doctors interpret our unus it wasn't so different a long time ago when our ancestors turned to medon for help because essentially when that happens we are all trusting in the medical interpretation of our unit whether it is in the present or in the past this interpretation is a complex um theoretical edifice as it explains the healthy and the diseased states of the human organism the thinkers and Scholars of the history of medon have asked these questions how do such theoretical edifices um come into being in the first place can an observer

identify the ca functions of the body merely by just looking at it does the body have sufficient force of expression to um tell us to disclose to us um the explanations backing up medical thought and practice the answer to these questions is offered by the past two Millennia of both Western and Chinese medicine yeah yes the old medicine before it um transform into what we have today for the last 2,000 years fundamental theories about the functioning of the um of the human organism cannot have a reason solely from observation of the body the image we

construct of um the body invariably requires a model that's external to that body and what is this model that is external to the body it's actually life experience in an actual or desired living environment as mentioned by Paul a medical theory is plausible only if it our own life experience and an actual or desired living environment while integrating knowledge of the body's uh verifiable structures now this basically means that there is or there must be a close bond between medical thought and the prevailing social and economic conditions governing our living environment let's now turn our

attention to the human body so how do we view the medical body when we want to understand various functions and wish to explain these functions to other people what does the body disclose to us actually there are a lot that our body can tell us by the simple Act of observing and seeing anyway that was what our ancestors did thousands of years ago but make no mistake even in the present the diagnosis of our bodies begins um the second we walk into a clinic and our doctors set their eyes upon us we can all self

diagnose as our senses um tell us much colors of our faces and body odors that we smell with our nose sounds in the chest and the abdomen that we hear with our ears none of this is static and we receive this information all the time observation of the living body is not the only way to find out what's going on with a person medically the date also disclose a fair amount of information to us in an open corpse in addition to the external organs that we can see in a living person there are also the

internal organs that's what happens in an autopsy and the 19th century was a time of countless surgical pathology dissection because modern medicine's Foundation was built on seeing and observing simple observations reveiew to us that there are conditions that prevent us from pursuing our daily activity we denote some of these conditions as units our ancestors from 2000 years ago also did the same they as much as we wanted to know why such conditions arise in the first place we need to know what is healthy before we can find out what is not we came up with

various criteria for separating the normal from the abnormal and healthy from the sick but here lies a problem it could be a philosophical problem or a religious one but one that modern science has yet to provide a conclusive answer to we all know that humans like every living organism have a material body but at the same time there is also something intangible which is life itself for a long time in human history the human body seems to a lot of people to be directed by life that's life with a capital l when life can escape

um a person his or her body ceases to function modern medicine with its focus on the material body suggests that when the heart stops pumping the person is dead we call this death um by cardiopulmonary criteria and it is how death is defined for more than 95% of people in this world a person stops breathing and their brain shuts down causing all life processes to cease but these are merely symptoms or physical indications of death they are not the cause of death we perceive or see the material body we assume that in this um material

body certain process es occur that we can classify as normal or abnormal at the same time there seems to be something that directs the body in its functions something is responsible for certain processes occurring in the body when the body lost this something it dies what then is this something first we cannot see it and it has many names a different one in every culture a commonly used name for the invisible something is the spirit in different religions it is called soul in modern times it's also known as Consciousness it is assumed that Consciousness is

a product of the brain but scientists have began to explore the possibility that Consciousness might be an entity that is independent of the brain people from different cultures used to or still think that a soless body is a dead body Corpus is visible while spiritous is invisible if you look at a peacefully dying or newly deceased person it will be difficult to tell the difference between life and death the diseased seems to be missing something something seems to have escaped from the dead body what is missing used to give the person the ability to live

it is not visible or tangible in fact when a person dies no material tangible substrate actually leaves the living body today we still do not know exactly what threshold separates life from Death what element of Life must be lost for death to occur this idea that the human body is not just material but actually contains something that is immaterial invisible intangible has been around since prehistoric times even though we are uncertain of its Origins and Paul should suggest the the possible for formula which I personally find very useful um life is a body augmented by

X or body plus X I must emphasize that the identification of X has come no further than an assumption or construction different cultures use Soul Spirit or the psyche for X whether we believe there is actually an X in the present does not diminish its importance because for a long time in human history X seems to be a necessary element of life and indispensable attendant to the living body we if if we want to explain the functions of the living body we cannot do without X because modern science has yet to prove otherwise um the

construction of tea now widely accepted in Europe and North America was conceptualized in China about two Millennia ago as a fine material breath a kind of life force or energy T contributed to the further differentiation of the invisible X when we talk about the body and X um are we talking about body and spirit Body and Soul or body and cheat meaning there are different axes or are all these AES essentially the same thing even though it has different names in different cultures everything points to this the loss of the ability to participate in daily

life unhindered the loss of the ability to accomplish one's task and to fulfill routine duties this this was the earliest Criterion for the identification of the condition categorized as unus there is a more differentiated perspective in the present as we differentiate between underlying diseases on the one hand and visible or tangible ailments on the other and invisible disease can be the cause of a visible or tangible ailment for example fever is not a disease in itself it is a symptom of a more profound disease the underlying disease is not necessarily detectable by the patient at

least not in the beginning stages even in very early times a differentiation between uness of the tangible visible body and uness of X the intangible invisible Spirit already existed to many people in the past and even in the present X although hidden from perception by the eye and other sensory organs actually exist it is so real to us that we grant that eggs can be healthy or sick just like the body can be healthy or sick if the body is in a condition that prevents us from fulfilling our daily task then it is sick if

the body is apparently unharmed but a person's behavior is such that he's unable to fulfill his daily task and acting at normal then X is sick this is when we give x a name such as insane mentally ew and emotional emotionally disturbed or unstable some of you might know this Chinese expression Jang who um fion is translated into Spirit mind um Consciousness or Ence um and it is IMM material pangu means trans disarray semiconscious when this expression is used on a person it is understood that the person's body um may look fine but the accompanying

Act is not therefore X is sick however it is still an assumption a construct um stemming from the parallel to harm of the body which um basically means that if the body can be harmed so um uh so is X such assumptions about the body and X can be traced back to Antiquity and the idea that a body and is X could seem totally normal or healthy to naive Observer but still be classified by experts as sick or abnormal appeared a long time ago it is possible that the earliest record of these conceptual expansion is

found in the records of the grand historian or G written by stin um around the turn of the 2 to the 1st Century BC during the Han Dynasty in China um in this historical work um stin included a biography of the um itary physician named b b had an audience with Maki Juan of the state of Chi or chiho during the Waring States period B at once informed the mar that um he was sick and he required treatment but the Marquee and his Royal household did not suspect any humanness um the story ends with the

death of the Marquee and the itiner Physicians explanation of the Hidden cause of unus now it is interesting to note that in ancient times being able to detect a disease invisible to lay man was clearly an exceptional skill it is no big deal today since well it happens almost every day for example it doesn't take a medical expert to know that the body can be sick with a hidden tumor growing in a lung without the affected person having any discomfort uh B um DET detected the maris's unit and today's physician can diagnose early lung cancer

because of something at their disposal that was unavailable to their predecessors that is a theory of the process in the body this theory is also known as medicine only with the emergence of medicine one could recognize early processes in the body as pathological they are classified as pathological because the expert knows something the lay man doesn't the physician armed with his or her theoretical education is able to predict the way that these processes invisible to the untrained eye will eventually develop so that the original Criterion of unus will be fulfilled medicine then provides um the

theoretical foundations for bent in ancient China to make his prediction and for today's doctors to make his or her evaluations medicine is the Endeavor to understand both the Normal and abnormal states of the body and of Acts in their Origins and development to attain the knowledge that is required to promote the normal states and to prevent the normal states and to really alleviate um the effects of the abnormal States the end goal is to preserve life to attain this knowledge medicine uses the scientific study of nature the nature of man and his habitat the science

of nature in turn assumes laws of nature are valid independently of time space and person it doesn't matter if you are Caucasian or Chinese or you live in Asia or in Europe as such medicine is merely a part of healing healing is the overarching concept that includes all efforts to heal the body and acts these efforts might be prayers to a god or Gods Exorcism of demons massage or administration of substances known to influence certain functions of the body yes not exactly the kind that you receive when you check in at and H I must

emphasize that the healing um of this kind is not medicine healing becomes medicine only when its practitioners recognize laws of nature and use only these laws of nature to investigate possible explanations of the body's functions when a certain type of healing has a theoretic interpretative aspect which relies solely on the laws of nature for its interpretations it becomes medicine medicine is a relatively young cultural construct healing has existed um since the prehistoric era its Beginnings are lost in the darkness of a time from when no documents remain in ancient Egypt and prehistoric China healing existed

but not medicine medicine in Europe um began to emerge around the 5ifth or the 4th Century BC in China um it only emerg two or 300 years later out of the older healing in the next part of the lecture we shall examine the origins of mson in China [Music] [Music]