Chinese medicine is often referred to as a “5000-year-old” system of healing. Most of what we call Traditional Chinese Medicine (TMC) today is not that ancient, but Chinese culture and philosophy from which the medicine grew is that old or older.
As an example, the concepts of Yin and Yang are very ancient and rooted in observations of Nature by Chinese philosophers, scientists, farmers, and doctors. Yang represents the principles of light, sun, male, surface, hot, dryChinese tonics from Barefoot Doctor Herbs for impr0oving your healthness, and activity. Yin represents the principles of dark, moon, female, internal, cold, wet, and stillness. These are equal and opposite forces that portray how all of Nature is based on polarities and cycles.
The dualities of Yin and Yang were also applied to herbs and their properties. Herbs came to be classified as hot, cold, wet, or dry and known to affect the internal or external parts of the body. As this knowledge accumulated, it was handed down from master doctor to student. Eventually ideas about the practice of medicine were written down, and this was the beginning of Traditional Chinese Medicine as we know it.
The first Chinese medical book was called the Yellow Emperor’s Classic of Internal Medicine (Huang Di Nei Jing, composed 400 BC–275 AD). The Yellow Emperor’s Classic explained the basics of acupuncture, herbs, and medicine. It is considered the foundation book of Traditional Chinese Medicine.
The next most important book on Chinese Medicine was the Ben Cao Jing by Shengnong (Shengnong’s Herb Book, 250 AD). Shengnong was the semi-mythical “divine farmer” who taught the Chinese people farming and medicine. The book attributed to him mostly dealt with superior tonic herbs that strengthened the body, although there were herbs for disease listed as well.
Most of the herbal formulas used by practitioners today, and many of the ones sold from our website, are Barefoot Doctor Herbsformulas for Chinese herbal tonic help heal the body heal fasterbased on a book called Shang Han Lun (Treatise on Cold Damage, 220 AD) by Zhang Zhonjing. The formulas in the Shang Han Lun also greatly influenced Japanese traditional herbal medicine, and are used today as part of Japan’s modern health care system.
While there are other important books after these, one of the most important for today’s practitioners is Treatise on the Spleen (Pi Wei Lun, 1275 AD) by Li Dong-Yuan. He developed formulas that help digestion, improve immune function, build energy, and strengthen the organs. Here is an example of a formula based on Li Dong Yuan’s writings called Ginseng Elixir.
Finally, because tea is so important in Chinese culture and medicine, The Classic of Tea (Cha Jing, 760 AD) by Lu Yu should be mentioned. This book is the first to discuss the cultivation and preparation of tea–knowledge that eventually spread around the world to all cultures.
While Chinese Medicine is “ancient,” it was and is an integral part of Chinese culture going back thousands of years before it began to be written down. Over many centuries it was evolved and refined until it became the effective system of natural healing we have today. And like tea drinking, Traditional Chinese Medicine is a gift to the world, having come down to us through what we in the West think of as peculiarly dressed, bearded old doctors who spent their whole lives improving their art.