A new approach to Chinese traditional medicine

Traditional medicine in China has as yet been unsatisfactorily analyzed from the point of view of the history of ideas. It has come to be viewed as a monolithic system of therapy, and overlooked has been the fact that as time passed various originally different traditions and concepts were made to fit into all-embracing systems, intimately connected with a general way of thought. Theoretical superstructure in medicine has to be delineated from simple empirical observations. Only the latter can be a meaningful object for medical interest today--the theories are better studied within other disciplines.