Interesting that we're sitting here talking about "traditional Chinese medicine" and I can't help but wonder why some people would say such positive things about it when the Chinese themselves are scrambling to get their hands on the much more effective Western , scientific medicine some so seem to despise.
I'm here in China and access to Western Medicine is limited at best. In some areas it's prolific but in much of this country it's still the old medicine cabinet trying to relieve the ills. Rest assured , if you've got a headache , you want a couple of Motrin or Tylenol. You can try the "traditional" medicine if you want and it can occasionally prove effective but seriously , you're better to have some Advil shipped in at some crazy inflated price.

Western medicine has evolved with a sort of "puncuated equilibrium". It has advanced rarely, usually because some physician discovered something by accident, and often the physician was an independent, who was not part of the main medical establishment, like Jenner. However, Western society in the last 500 years has had two main things that worked for its benefit. First, when a new medical treatment had been discovered, they shared their discovery with other doctors in the West that the discoverer knew, and they shared this same discovery with the other doctors that they knew, until 90% of doctors in the West all knew of the discovery. So although discoveries are quite rare, what is discovered, is known by many doctors, if not most, and nearly every doctor knows of every medical discovery up to the last 15 years ago. The second, is that when a new medical treatment is found, there have been LOTS of people willing to produce it en masse, to sell it for as much as they could get for it. In the beginning, when it is first discovered, only a few rich people can afford it. But as more and more rich people buy it, the price comes down, and eventually, it gets cheap enough that everyone can afford it, and that guarantees an industry that produces thousands of these treatments for a small price. So capitalism and collaboration have both ensured that medical discoveries are shared and made known to nearly all doctors, and medical treatments are shared and made available to nearly all people. These 2 things have allowed the few discoveries that we have, to be available to billions, and to be able to be administered by every doctor who treats those billions. As a result, there is very little headway in a field like curing smallpox, for hundreds of years, but when one country doctor like Jenner discovers a vaccine to protect against it, it becomes made known and available to everyone in the West, in only a few decades, and suddenly, everyone has it.

If China had that model of spreading medical discoveries, and of producing medical treatments, then all the special treatments that each Chinese doctor alone knows, would be spread right throughout China, and would be available right throughout China. But as it stands, it seems to me that they just didn't yet have that model for Chinese medicine, and still don't, but rather, that it's an art that can only be discerned by an individual doctor. It seems to me that if any doctor of Chinese medicine discovers a special way of treating patients, one that would make him far better at healing, and would garner him far more money from his patients, then he is apt to keep it from himself. The other thing that occurs to me, is that Chinese doctors prepare their own medicines, and so it is not so much in their interest to hand such preparations over to another company like the West did with apothecaries, because that would lose them a lot of revenue. So they keep it in-house, and that means that medicines for standard problems like headaches are not mass-produced. But it is entirely possible that if doctors of Chinese medicine would elect to share ALL their discoveries with each other, and turn over their medical preparations for standard treatments over for mass production, then they would gain the same advantages that we see in Western medicine, at least for standard complaints and illnesses.

Okay...which of your orifices did you pull this out of ?
Chinese traditional medicine only exists to this day because up until fairly recently , Western medicine was shunned and too expensive for the masses anyway. The only reason it was shunned had to do with politics and not much else.
Don't forget , we had our own "traditional" medicines and we threw them out for a reason too. The Chinese may have taken their "traditional" medicine a little further in development than most other places did with their's but in the end it always comes down to what works and what doesn't. You can speculate all you want (however erroneous and misleading your conclusions might be) but basically that's all you're doing.

Hmmm... funny thing is, 8 weeks ago, I died at the tender age of 45.

Or, I would have, under the tender auspices of Chinese Traditional Medicine.

However, you could be right, that if someone from your country believed in Chinese medicine at all, then you'd be dead. In your country, you're either Republican or Democrat, pro-Life or pro-Choice, liberal or conservative. People in your country seem to leap for the extremes. In the UK, people in the UK don't vote for one side of a debate.

I just look at the bashing of "Western" (i.e. scientifically-based) medicine and am forced to laugh at the idiocy that claims it doesn't save huge numbers of lives. Reliably. Repeatably. Predictably.

Don't forget , we had our own "traditional" medicines and we threw them out for a reason too.

The only reason Westerners are clamouring for Chinese "traditional" medicine is because they've become too ignorant of science and , frankly , pathetically illogical when it comes to what they'll believe and what they won't.

In your country, you're either Republican or Democrat, pro-Life or pro-Choice, liberal or conservative. People in your country seem to leap for the extremes. In the UK, people in the UK don't vote for one side of a debate. They simply go with whatever is going to serve them the best. When Western medicine can treat their illnesses, they use that. When it can't, and Chinese medicine can, they simply go with that. Brits are far more practical about what serves them best.

Look at the hate campaign against science in here.

It'd be great to see these anti-science types use non-scientific alternatives to health and medicine all the time - that way there'd be way fewer anti-science types.

There is no logic in forcing to people to use a system that fails consistently a large percentage of the time.

Thinking science has all the answers is as ignorant as thinking the bible does. At least real scientists know how much there is still left to know, and have the humility to accept their own limitations.

At least real scientists know how much there is still left to know, and have the humility to accept their own limitations.