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Science is great, but ...
Research protocols and statistics are already well covered in the other journals. And while contemporary research can be seductive, we should never overlook one of Chinese medicine's great strengths — its recorded clinical history, its notes, memoirs and essays from scholar–practitioners with extensive breadth and depth of experience in using the same tools we use now — herbs, needles, hands and minds.
We at The Lantern are dedicated to preserving a balance in the resources available to Chinese medicine practitioners in the West. Analytical studies and finely tuned investigative research hone the mind with the sharpness of statistics, and this is a useful aspect of thinking, but it can be overdone. As one author put it, "a screwdriver sharpened to a point becomes useless". Equally useful in clinic is the quiet observational openness that allows us to recognise patterns in the constellation of signs and sensations in the patient facing us. We have to know what patterns could be there, however, and this comes from exposure to clinical experience, either one’s own or another’s.
Because reading — essays, case histories, memoirs, even journals — has been a primary mode of exposure to the pattern concepts that appear in the living clinic, Chinese medicine has been described as "not a science, but a literary endeavour". This goes right back to the Shang Han Lun 18 centuries ago.
It is also said ...
"Medicine is concept" (Yi zhe, Yi ye): if you are unaware that a certain pattern may apply (such as yang deficiency for nightsweats), you could attempt to apply a more familiar pattern — familiar, but wrong. You could, too, be creative and recognise the pattern and its physiological and pathological mechanism of action on the spot. Or you could read somewhere that, way back in the Ming dynasty, ol’ Zhang Jing-Yue had an idea ...
