TCM Case Studies: External Medicine by Qinghu He & Pär Rufus Scott & Yanhong Zhang

Author:Qinghu He & Pär Rufus Scott & Yanhong Zhang [He, Qinghu]
Language: eng
Format: epub, pdf
Publisher: PMPH-USA
Published: 2016-12-28T16:00:00+00:00

SECTION V Peripheral Vascular Diseases

Introduction

The treatment of peripheral vascular diseases with Chinese medicine is historically present from early periods, where bleeding of specific points and vessels was indicated. The use of the term “vessel” (mài, 脉 which also means “pulse”) predates the use of the term “channel” (jīng, 经), as the word used to describe the channels or “meridians” of acupuncture. This fact, and the early use of bian stone bloodletting, has led to the belief that acupuncture to some degree originates in a therapy applied to the anatomical vessels.

The term “network” (luò, 络) is commonly used in modern acupuncture to describe vessels which connect the longitudinal channels of the body with one another, but it also can mean the smaller superficial capillaries, which were used as a diagnostic tool (by their prominence and color) and as a treatment (through bloodletting). Additionally, the term for varicose veins used in some texts is “blue/ green sinew” (qīng jīn, 青筋).

The term “vessel” is applied to a variety of pathways, including the eight extraordinary vessels, but the vessels are also an extraordinary organ unto themselves, storing the blood. This points out the fact that the ancient Chinese classed the vessels as: tube-like, in that the extraordinary organs are compared to the bowels as hollow organs, and that they stored the blood and did not allow it out, so structurally they are responsible for retaining the blood within themselves.

The concept of static blood has also been a part of Chinese medicine more or less since its inception. The term “blood stasis” (xuè yū, 血淤/瘀) is composed of the character for “blood” and the term yū, which can appear as 淤, containing a water radical 氵(shuĭ, 水) and yú (於) as a phonetic. It can also appear as the phonetic component under the “disease” radical (bìng, 疒 ‘sick’). The term with a water radical is probably the root of the medical term, meaning “to silt up” as a river would. The use of hydrological metaphor is in large part due to the relatively advanced acumen of the ancient Chinese around water management due to their need for irrigation, as well as the potential for the fickle Yellow River to flood. In early texts, the channels and vessels are described as the rivers of the internal landscape, and it is apparent that the metaphor of water in rivers is commonly used as a way of understanding the movement of qi and blood in the channels. The presence of the disease radical in the second character takes the term out of the general vocabulary and makes it distinctly medical, yet the other character persists in a medical context, making it plain that the original metaphor was useful to later authors.

Since there was little substantial anatomical exploration of the body, the nature of circulation was not explicitly known, but blood was understood to move within the body, and that its movement was vital to maintaining its healthy status. Wang Qingren, the Qing Dynasty physician who developed many of

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