The Historical Evolution Of Traditional Chinese Medicine

The original thinking of a discipline determines its width and depth. One of the original thought mode of traditional Chinese medicine,body-spirit syncretism,is extended from the theory that man is an integral part of nature,and is closely connected with the ever valued somatopsychic illness.The meaning of medicine cannot be decided by its theory alone, but by society, religion,culture and politics, etc. all together. Hence, the development of holism of body and spirit should be discovered from the traditional Chinese culture thinking, society, and politics, etc..Research showed that the Chinese perspective of spirit and body originated from antient religious views and animism, it was believed that spirit and soul exited outside of the body and govern it. However, as civilization and ideology developed, the cognition transformed from spirit and soul into philosophy, that is mind and mentality. The debated started from the pre-Qin period, finalized in Huang Di Nei Jing, from the Western Zhou to the Spring and Autumn Period, god means spirit, but in the late Spring and Autumn Period, it evolved into the meaning of mystical and discriminated to represent hun, po*, and god, with the quality of Yin and Yang. In the Warring State Period, the word god more explicitly indicated spirit,consciousness, thinking, and considered human as the combination of heaven and earth, i.e.hun and po, spirit and body.In the ancient sorcery culture,god communicated with human through a witch,god transformed from deity to spirit,thus communicated with human through heart,the system transformed from god-witch-human to god-heart-body. From East Han to Wei-jin Period,minds were greatly pressured by withered lives thinkers draw back their focus on the nature of life. Under the collision of scholars, Budhism, and Taoism, the debate of nature of God,and eternity has come to a peak,and under the pursuit of resurrection and becoming immortal,spiritual body life maintaining system has made great progress.In Sui and Tang Period, the construction of theory of body and spirit has not changed much,but to summarize previous theories,which can be considered to be the integration period. Song-jin-yuan Period is a cumulative period, under the influence of idealist philosophy, the theory of emotional diseases has progressed greatly and the prototype of the emotional disease was built. In the Ming and Qing Dynasty, the emotional disease system was further consummated, plus the influence of western medicine, the debate of what controls the spirit prevailed.Under the interaction of cultural phylosophy and medicine, the word god has changed from the outer being that governs everything into the spirit, consciousness that governs the body. Their relationship was determined as a whole, co-dependant and coexisting.The word heart has an important part in the theory of body and spirit, in ancient times,oracle showed the word heart represent an organ reside in the center of a man's body and derived into the meaning of spirit and thinking. Before Spring-Autumn Period, heart has derived into the meaning of spirit and mind, after the Warring Period, scholars changed the meaning and connected with the spiritual aspect of activities, and became the medium of the body and spirit. In the Period of Wei-jin,the word heart is more of a abstract phylosophy term, meaning the consciousness of the Tao, not an organ.From the culture development, apparently heart is no longer an organ anatomically, but has a more abstract meaning endowed with phylosophy pointed out by Zhu Xi. In the thinking world, heart highlighted its meaning into spirit, consciousness and mentality. However, the word brain was left with only the anatomical meaning. Thus, the debate of what controls the spirit should avoid the western influence and revise the concept of heart in Chinese culture,accept the concept of heart controls the spirit.