10．Scientific Characteristics of Traditional Chinese Medicine

Both Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) and Western medicine are involved in physiology and pathology for human beings and aim to prevent and treat human diseases. After Western medicine came to China, the dispute on whether the Chinese medicine is scientific always goes on.

Some people believe that TCM treats illness effectively, and this can sufficiently prove that TCM is scientific and can also serve as the reason for its survival over several thousand years. Opponents think that TCM theory is not validated and not scientific because it lacks an experiment foundation. The third party thinks it is foolish to discuss the scientific nature of TCM and that we should not worship the scientific doctrine and not care about whether TCM is a science or not, since the effectiveness of TCM is the most solid foundation of its legitimate existence.

It is unable to confirm TCM theory using modern sciences or Western medicine methods. For instance, we cannot make the main and collateral channels become visible, we cannot accurately position or quantitatively study all kinds of TCM syndromes, and we find it difficult to detect and extract the active ingredients from TCM compound preparations. But this cannot lead to the conclusion that TCM is unscientific and we can never use scientific means to explain TCM theories. As a subject of studying human physiology, pathology, treatment and prevention of diseases, TCM not only has the same scientific properties as Western medicine, but also keeps developing.