Medicinal Plants and the Meeting of Two Traditions

Abstract

It is evident that Western and Oriental medical traditions differ, and it is largely beyond the scope of this chapter to explore in detail their philosophical bases. For that purpose the reader is referred to Needham et al (1986) quoted above or, more recently, Mills (1996). The objective of the present chapter is to consider the plants themselves, the active principles they contain and the extent, in selected examples, to which Chinese plants have added to the resources of Western medicine. Even so it will be necessary to indicate some points of contrast between Western and Oriental traditions. Beyond this, since the herbs used in Chinese medicine are gathered rather than farmed for the most part, demand tends to exceed supply and the consequences for conservation will eventually be considerable.

“...For since professional practice chiefly consisted in giving a great many drugs, the public inferred that it might be better off with more drugs still, if only they could be got cheaply”.

George Eliot, Middlemarch (1871)

“Now on modern ideas one would expect that all the most powerful drugs, whether botanical, animal or mineral, to have been grouped together in the princely class, but this was not so at all; the mentality of the ancient Chinese naturalists was more sophisticated than that, health and hygienic — minded, less pharmacodynamic, so to say. For the princely drugs were defined as those which were good for general health, containing no dangerous principles and capable of being taken constantly without untoward effects. The adjutant drugs, on the other hand, were available for therapy in acute infections, contained dangerous active principles, had to be prescribed in small doses, and should not long be continued. The ministerial drugs occupied an intermediate position.”

Needham et al (1986)