What is meant by Chinese medicine? Is a Chinese doctor called a Chinese medicine practitioner?

China is one of the earliest countries in the birth of medical culture, from the dawn of civilization in the canopy of Asia, the land of Asia, prehistoric cultural bonfires throughout the land of God, from point to point connected to form a prairie fire, gradually melted in the civilization of the age of light. From then on, the civilized history of Chinese medicine began.

China's 5,000 years of written medical history, due to the development of oriental cultural characteristics of the formation of China's unique theoretical framework, and the modern impact of Western science and the introduction of Western medicine, there are two distinct levels, in the intersection of Eastern and Western medicine, presenting a complex and polymorphic state.

In Chinese traditional medicine, Han Chinese medicine has the longest history and the richest practical experience and theoretical understanding.

Chinese medicine originated in the Yellow River basin of China and established its academic system very early. In the long process of development of Chinese medicine, there have been different creations in different generations, and many famous doctors have emerged, and many important schools of thought and masterpieces have appeared.

The legend of "Shennong tasted a hundred herbs ...... one day and encountered seventy poisons" in Chinese history reflects the painstaking process of discovering medicines and accumulating experience of ancient working people in the process of fighting against nature and diseases, and is also a true depiction of the origin of traditional Chinese medicine in the production and labor.

As early as the Xia, Shang and Zhou periods (about the end of the 22nd century BC - 256 years ago), China has appeared in the medicinal wine and soup. The Western Zhou Dynasty (ca. 11th century BC - 771 BC)'s "Book of Songs" is the earliest surviving book in Chinese literature to record medicines. The Neijing, the earliest surviving text on Chinese medicine, puts forward the doctrines of "the cold is hot, and the hot is cold," "the five flavors enter," and "the five organs are bitter and want to be tonic and diarrheal," laying the groundwork for the basic theory of traditional Chinese medicine.

The earliest existing pharmacological monograph, Shennong's Classic of the Materia Medica (神农本草經), was written during the Qin and Han Dynasties (221 B.C. - 220 A.D.), when many medical practitioners collected and summarized the rich medicinal information since the pre-Qin Dynasty. This book contains 365 kinds of medicines, which are still used in clinical practice. Its introduction marked the initial establishment of the science of traditional Chinese medicine.

In the oracle bone inscriptions of the Yin and Shang dynasties more than 3,000 years ago, China already had records of health care and more than 10 kinds of diseases. The Zhou Dynasty already used methods of diagnosis such as looking, smelling, questioning and cutting, as well as therapeutic methods such as medicine, acupuncture and surgery. During the Qin and Han Dynasties, works with systematic theories such as the Yellow Emperor's Classic of Internal Medicine were formed. This book is one of the earliest surviving theoretical classics of Chinese medicine. Zhang Zhongjing's "Treatise on Miscellaneous Diseases of Typhoid" was devoted to the identification and diagnosis of various miscellaneous diseases and the principles of treatment, laying the foundation for the development of clinical medicine in later generations. Surgery in the Han Dynasty was already at a high level. According to the Records of the Three Kingdoms, Hua Tuo, a famous physician, began to use general anesthesia, "Ma Zuosan" to perform various surgical operations.

From the Wei, Jin, and North and South Dynasties (220--589 A.D.) to the Sui, Tang, and Five Dynasties (581--960 A.D.), pulse diagnosis made outstanding achievements. The Pulse Classic by Wang Shuhe, a famous physician of the Jin Dynasty, summarized 24 types of pulse signs. The book not only had a great influence on Chinese medicine, but also spread abroad. The specialization of various disciplines of medicine had matured during this period. Acupuncture and moxibustion monographs are "Acupuncture and Moxibustion A and B Jing"; "Holding Park Zi" and "After Elbow Fang" are the representative works of alchemy; Pharmaceuticals have "Lei Gong Gun Baking Theory"; Surgery has "Liu Juan Zi Ghost Legacy Square"; "the origin of the disease and the theory of the etiology of the disease" is the cause of the monographs, "Cranial fontanel scripture" is the pediatrics monographs; "Newly Revised Materia Medica" is the first Pharmacopoeia of the world; ophthalmology monographs have "Yin Hai Jing Wei", and so on. In addition, the Tang Dynasty, there are Sun Simiao's "Thousand Golden Essentials" and Wang To's "Secret Essentials of Wai Tai" and other large square books.

The economic boom of the Tang Dynasty (618--907 AD) promoted the development of traditional Chinese medicine. The Tang government took the lead in completing the compilation of the world's first pharmacopoeia of herbs, the Tang Ben Cao. The book contained 850 kinds of medicines, and drug atlases were also added, further improving the scale pattern of Chinese pharmacology.

In the Song Dynasty (A.D. 960--1279), there was a major reform in the teaching of acupuncture and moxibustion. Wang Weiyi authored "copper acupuncture points acupuncture chart", and later, he designed and manufactured equilibrium large acupuncture bronze two, teaching for students to practice operation. This initiative had a great impact on the development of acupuncture and moxibustion in later generations. During the Ming Dynasty (1368 - 1644 AD), a group of medical doctors proposed to separate the areas of typhoid fever, warm disease and warm epidemic. By the Qing Dynasty, the doctrine of warm disease reached a mature stage, with the appearance of monographs such as the Treatise on Warm Fever.

Beginning in the Ming Dynasty, Western medicine was introduced to China, and a group of medical doctors advocated the "convergence of Chinese and Western medicine", which became the precursor of the contemporary combination of Chinese and Western medicine.

During the Ming Dynasty (1368--1644 AD), Li Shizhen, a medical scientist, completed the Chinese herbal medicine masterpiece "Compendium of Materia Medica" (本草纲目), which contained 1,892 kinds of medicines and became the greatest work of synthesis in the history of Chinese materia medica.

After the founding of the People's Republic of China (PRC) in 1949, extensive research was carried out on the botany, identification, chemistry, pharmacology and clinical medicine of traditional Chinese medicine, which provided a scientific basis for the establishment of the sources of medicines, the identification of the authenticity of medicinal materials, and the explanation of the mechanism of action. On the basis of the national census of the sources of medicines, the national and local "Chinese Medicine Journal" was prepared in 1961, and the publication of "Dictionary of Chinese Medicines" in 1977 made the number of Chinese medicines recorded in the dictionary reach as many as 5,767 kinds. At the same time, a variety of Chinese medicine tools, many local herbal monographs and Chinese medicine related newspapers and magazines have appeared one after another, a variety of Chinese medicine research, teaching and production organizations have been established.

All of the above is a synopsis of the magnificent history of ancient Chinese medicine. The culture and civilization of medicine, which has been uninterrupted for thousands of years, is rare in the history of medicine in the world. The large number of classical Chinese medical books, the number of famous doctors and the number of people in the same period of time in the world is also rare. Chinese traditional medicine has a strong vitality, which develops with the advance of the times. After the impact with modern medical culture, confrontation to the combination, but also pay attention to the advanced culture from abroad to learn useful things, so there is a Chinese and Western confluence of the exploration of codification. Traditional medicine is moving towards modernization.

In the past hundred years, China's modern medicine, traditional medicine and the combination of Chinese and Western medicine will be the pattern of more than a hundred years of China's modern medical history to make an objective reproduction and comment.

The history of Chinese medicine is indispensable to the study of ancient Chinese medicine, to the study of modern medicine, to the comparative study of different systems of medicine, and to the study of medicine, teaching, research, and health management. It covers a wide range of time and space involved in the long and broad, not other disciplines can be replaced.