How to treat folk medicine

I don't know what you mean by folk medicine, if it is Chinese medicine, Tibetan medicine and Miao medicine.

As a surgeon, my opinion is that these medicines should be regarded as a culture, not a science.

I remember an old Chinese doctor (who also studied western medicine) said a fatal sentence. Don't underestimate Chinese medicine. Its achievements are tens of thousands, which have been tested by China people with time and health, and have been tested by thousands of years of practice. So we can't deny the function and curative effect of traditional medicine, especially the conditioning effect of acupuncture and traditional Chinese medicine.

Culturally speaking, traditional medicine has been integrated into China's traditional culture, which is a theory based on China's primitive materialism, like Yin-Yang and Five Elements, like dialectical therapy. Some of its essences even conform to the contemporary new medical model to treat health and diseases from the perspective of physical and mental society. This is worth carrying forward and being proud of.

However, from a scientific point of view, the theory of traditional medicine is untenable in many parts of science. For example, the etiology of diseases is often caused by multi-factor and multi-level pathological conditions, which can not be explained only by yin exuberance and yang decline, and the five elements coexist. Moreover, for the basic anatomy of medicine, traditional medicine only defines the five internal organs with the simplest anatomical way and the position relationship. For example, when the spleen is just near the stomach, it is considered that the function of the spleen is to transport Shui Gu (i.e. digestion), so there is a saying that the spleen is only a lymphatic organ, and the largest metabolic organ in the body is the liver, but because the liver is far away from the stomach, it is considered that the liver is only used to store blood. These are all manifestations of pseudoscience.

In fact, in recent years, the state is also supporting the development of Chinese medicine. Many projects are supporting the modernization and theorization of traditional Chinese medicine to protect traditional culture. My view on traditional medicine is that traditional medicine should be vigorously applied to the rehabilitation of some chronic diseases and serious diseases, but many emergencies (appendicitis, pancreatitis and severe trauma) should be treated with western medicine even with a scientific attitude, otherwise delaying the illness will be an infringement on people's right to health and life.