Sunday, April 16, 2017

Traditional Chinese Medicine

I was having lunch with my colleagues last week when one of them remarked that he doesn't believe in Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) because it is not scientific. This got me thinking: what is scientific? I remembered from my school days that anything that is scientific has to passed though the scientific process. So now I looked up Wikipedia and found the proper term is the "scientific method":

The scientific method is a body of techniques for investigating phenomena, acquiring new knowledge, or correcting and integrating previous knowledge. To be termed scientific, a method of inquiry is commonly based on empirical or measurable evidence subject to specific principles of reasoning.

So now, is TCM scientific? I would say yes as it has hundreds of years of clinical bedside tests that seems to follow the scientific method. The only thing that causes people to doubt it is that a lot of information about it and its remedies are not documented properly. China and other Asian countries that practices TCM should come together and publish in a systematic way, preferably online, for more people to understand.

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