How old is Chinese Medicine?
Chinese medicine is one of the oldest, best-documented and most highly developed medical systems in the world. The origins of Chinese medicine are said to go back a mythological starting point of about 5000 BCE, but there is little documentation to recommend this as anything beyond romantic imagination. A conservative presentation of the history of Chinese medicine, however, is still pretty impressive. The earliest surviving Chinese medical book dates to the middle of the 3rd c. BCE – a fairly early date, when you realize that this means that there is about 2300 of continuous medical dialogue, record-keeping and research behind Traditional Chinese medicine. Nevertheless, there is a story that goes along with this that puts that in an even more surprising context: in 221 BCE, the Emperor Qin Huangdi ascended the throne, unified the government of China, and established the Imperial systems under which China would be ruled until 1912. One can imagine that he would have been unhappy to hea
