We had our introductions to Anatomy and Physiology today. And stuff about how Western science actually works and what in it that doesn´t – ways to program a better clarity into the students when it comes to seeing both systems clearly instead of basing their views on previous programming that bias either one. Chinese medicine and science has its flaws, just like the Western version. Neither system is perfect – but you can not use one as a filter for the other either, something that is sadly visible in all the ”conclusive studies” done about acupuncture in Western medicine over the last ten years. We will talk a lot about on the meeting of Chinese and Western medicine in this blog.
The classes on the Anatomy and Physiology-section will be quite extensive: the course has a total of about a third Western medicine. Further down the line we get into Pathology too, and we will do a research module that goes into how research into acupuncture or chinese medicine along Western models is done, if anybody wants to do that (I´m not interested, but everyone has their stuff).
The anatomy-classes will be geared towards working very actively with the other students. We were treated to a long discussion and some very good information on all the ethics and all the views behind this. The tutor stated quite simply that students learned the material much better if they had living bodies to work on instead of just dissecting dead ones.
The pass-grade for the Anatomy and Physiology-classes are fairly low. An overall grade of 40% is a pass. This reflects that the subject is important, but not the main one of Chinese medicine, like, say, it would be if the course was for Western nurses or doctors. In classical chinese medicine, Western anatomical knowledge basics can be useful to know but has ultimately very little to do with the efficiency of the treatment. In the West, many ”Western” acupuncture schools base all their points-knowledge on anatomy. In actual life, the points move, both horisontally and vertically in small amounts. Putting a needle somewhere and hoping won´t give what the old system can do. The old skill of finding them by feeling the qi (energy) in the point, is still the most effective one for treatment.
Classical chinese medicine has diagnostic skills of feeling the body that bypasses anything in the current Western medicine by lightyears. However, the practitioner has to be trained in them too, and not everybody is. The quality among acupuncturists and chinese medical practitioners vary widely, just like it does in Western medicine. Again, and I will say this over and over again, since it needs repeating, if you want good quality in chinese medicine, ask. You can see the post Some basic stuff about Chinese medicine that I´ll publish soon.
The robots have been taken down: tonight, Trafalgar Square is filled with a tribute to Malaysia: a stage, for dancers, spotlights on the lions and lots of small stalls from a zillion different London restaurants. The delicious smell drifts off the square and stops people on the side-streets with sudden pangs of hunger, and watering mouths.
