Ancient and modern-day practice of Medicine

The famous "Hua Tuo" suddenly came into my mind while I was going into a daze after a long day's work. My family mentioned his name once when I was very very young, telling me that he's a famous physician in Ancient China, but I never asked more about him. Neither did I bother to find out more even after reading this Chinese textbook story about him doing a surgery for General Guan Yu when I was in primary school.

I have always been extremely proud of being Chinese, and am even more proud of it after coming to the UK abt 6-7 years ago. Having a bf from China influenced me further, and from someone who didn't appreciate the Mandarin language much and not being used to speaking it, I have gradually grown to love my own mother tongue. Being a Singaporean Chinese, my mandarin proficiency cannot be compared to my bf, who knows quite a bit abt ancient China's history, read numerous famous Chinese literature, able to recite poems and write profoundly. Also, not forgetting, even my pronunciation isn't right to begin with, and Dearie had to make me repeat it after him just to get my pronunciation right. You bet it is a chore for him, and many times, he ended up laughing and giving up.

Due to my increasing interest and love for my own roots and ancestry, I have been taking out the map of China which Dearie gave me, and trying to locate places, especially where my grandpa came from. The map wasn't detailed enough to let me locate the village which grandpa mentioned before, but at least I roughly know where it is in China. Just by looking at the map, it made me happy.

I have also tried to read Chinese poems, but can never remember them. But it does keep me happy just by reading it and trying to appreciate the beauty of the language.

Anyway, back to Medicine.

I did a search for Hua Tuo since I wanted to know more about him, and I am indeed impressed! He's well known for creating an anaesthetic called "Ma Fei San" using the combination of herbs and wine. He's the first person to create this, and the Westerners only started using anaesthetic 1600 years after the "birth" of "Ma Fei San". Hua Tuo was also an expert in acupuncture, and the famous "Hua Tuo Jia Ji" which he discovered was named after him. I did some reading on this, and learning briefing about the angle of insertion, the distance away from the spine and the depth of insertion were really interesting. It's amazing how these 3 can make a difference and the theory of it all.

I also read abt the descriptions of some of Hua Tuo's encounters. There are 3 most commonly mentioned ones. The first is about him getting a patient who was really ill with abdominal pain to adminster "Ma Fei San" before he did an abdominal surgery on him. Hua Tuo removed the diseased part of the bowel, sewed up the wound, and applied some ointment on it to encourage recovery. The patient recovered soon after. The diagnosis is our modern day appendicitis, and what he had performed during then was what we know today as appendicectomy.

The second is about his expertise at diagnosing if a woman is pregnant and being able to tell the sex of the fetus through feeling the pulse of the pregnant patient. There was a description of him diagnosing a retained fetus in a General's wife who had a miscarriage. The General's wife had injured herself during pregnancy and as a result, had a miscarriage. The baby delivered was dead, and caused extensive haemorrhage. However, after the delivery, she deterioriated in her condition, and Hua Tuo came to a conclusion that the lady had twins, and the 2nd fetus which has died within her, has not been delivered, and therefore causing her deterioration. He did all this by feeling only her pulse. True enough, with instructions given to another lady, the dead 2nd fetus was removed by hand from the General wife's body.

The thired encounter is about him using acupuncture to regain a patient's ability to walk.

I am amazed by the above, because Medicine is those days are primitive. Everything was done by through thorough history taking and careful examination. The examination skills of the physicians then were so brilliant that diagnoses can be made, without the need of any other invasive or sophisticated investigations. Medications given were from nature.

But in modern day medicine, even though we still take histories and examine patients, our skills are no where comparable to physicians of those days. Our examination skills aren't as fine as theirs, and I'm sure our history taking aren't as detailed as them too. We are able to come up with diagnoses and differentials, and be highly suspicious of whatever, but we cannot confirm anything for sure unless we have blood results, xrays, and other types of sophisticated investigations. We have become so reliant on today's technology that doctors have lost quite an extent of skills we should possess as a true practitioner. We also rely so heavily on pills and medications produced by pharmaceutical companies, that we have neglected what nature has to offer (TCM still uses herbs, but they have turned quite commercialised now too). It would be extremely interesting to see how a modern day physician survives if he goes back to the past, into the ancient days where there's nothing to rely on except history and examination.

I have always been amazed about how fascinating ancient medicine is, and TCM is something I'm quite interested in even though I don't have any knowledge of it. I just personally feel that traditional/ancient medicine holds a lot of value, and it would be very beneficial and handy.

A brilliant physician who will send others going "wow" in today's medicine is one who can diagnose a rare disease after doing all types of investigations and treating it. But I think a true physician who really deserves saluting is one who can diagnose diseases (common and rare) without a doubt and without any investigations and treat it successfully with plain herbs.

Unfortunately, I don't think such a physician exists now....or perhaps...maybe they still do in the extremely extremely rural places which I believe must be still practising proper medicine primitively.