Is there a difference between Oriental Medicine and Traditional Chinese Medicine, or Classical Chinese Medicine?
These terms are often used interchangeably, even by people who would define them as different things. Oriental Medicine is the broadest of the three terms, and may be used when a person wants to include traditions from Japan, Korea, China and other Asian countries under the same heading. Traditional Chinese Medicine (or TCM) limits the scope to Chinese traditions. Classical Chinese Medicine limits this even further to those techniques and products with centuries of testing, rejecting ‘modern’ developments such as electro-acupuncture, and herbs brought onto the world market in the 1970s (there is some merit to this last perspective, as the Chinese government enlarged the number of medicinal products hugely during this period as an economic strategy, often including less that well-documented medicinals).
