What is the difference between Chinese medicine and Western medicine? Is Chinese medicine always etter than Western medicine?
The simplest way to contrast Chinese and Western medicine – aside from the fact that what is practiced as medicine in the West is of a much more recent development than Chinese medicine – is that Western medicine has less of an emphasis on maintaining health, and more of an emphasis on disease, than Chinese medicine. That is not to say that Western medicine has ‘no concept of health,’ as has sometimes been claimed: one has only to look at the pharmaceutical medications developed for diabetes, or epilepsy, to recognize the mistruth of that statement. However, there is a difference: Chinese medicine, largely because of the way it pays attention to all the signs of a patient’s body, mind and spirit, has a greater ability to discern when a patient is starting to become imbalanced in one way or another, which could lead to illness down the road. Western medicine does not usually apply itself to these nuances. Obviously, I am have a tremendous respect for what Chinese medicine can do – the k
