A Dialogue Between Chinese and Western Medicine

Acupuncture is the earliest form of Chinese medical treatment. It is also the form most respected in the West. In the monumental Science and Civilization in China, Professor Joseph Needham of Cambridge University discusses several books on acupuncture. He further mentions a Frenchman who studied acupuncture in China in 1901. According to Needham, his return to France 30 years later to promote the technique brought acupuncture to Europe.

"The event that most amazed the West occurred during former US President Richard Nixon's 1972 visit to mainland China. While there, a reporter in the president's entourage underwent emergency surgery for acute appendicitis. Acupuncture was used as a post-operative analgesic. To the doctors who accompanied him on the trip, this was an earth-shattering experience. As a result, word began to spread about acupuncture [in the West]," says Julia Tsuei, general secretary of the Foundation for East-West Medicine, an organization dedicated to the integration of Chinese and Western medical practices. Tsuei says that not only have many doctors begun to study acupuncture, but over the last 29 years some countries, including the US, Germany and Spain, have gradually established acupuncture courses and colleges. In addition, the World Health Organization (WHO) has made acupuncture one of its research foci, carrying out research on techniques, translating classics, setting international standards for the names of acupuncture points and holding global academic conferences.

"The problem is that Chinese medicine's theoretical underpinnings are relatively abstract. This makes it difficult to understand for students of modern medicine, used to the concrete nature of anatomy and physiology. And this is especially true of the meridian system, which is their biggest headache," says Tsuei.

What is the meridian system? China's earliest medical text, The Yellow Emperor's Canon of Internal Medicine, says at its outset that the meridian system is the most fundamental system of the body. The jingmai are the vertical meridians (channels) through the body. There are 12 regular meridians in addition to a horizontal network which runs from the jingmai throughout the body. These horizontal meridians are collectively known as the collaterals.

In The Yellow Emperor's Canon of Internal Medicine, it states that the meridian system transports the blood, the chi and nutrition, communicating with the organs and systems of the body. If there is a problem with the body or an illness, treatment is administered via the meridian system. Chinese acupuncture and herbal pharmacology both treat the meridians. All acupuncture points, for example, are distributed along the meridians.

（far right） The West discovered Chinese acupuncture at a fairly early date. The picture shows the earliest known Western depiction of the acupuncture points. Based on Chinese materials, it was painted in 1683 in a European style. （from Joseph Needham's "Acupuncture: History and Theory"）

The body as a microcosm

How do Westerners understand this system? Joseph Needham explained the meridian system in the section, "Acupuncture: History and Theory," in his Science and Civilization in China. According to Needham, it is a kind of emanation from the capillaries, a great insight of the ancient Chinese, apparently derived from the observation of the arteries, veins and nerves. Modern books on acupuncture, whether written by Chinese or Westerners, lay a chart of the meridian system on top of a modern anatomical illustration for contrastive purposes.

But Needham also pointed out that the ancient Chinese conception of physiology differs from the modern one in that it envisages two parallel systems, the existence of one of which (for the blood) can be demonstrated by anatomists, while the second (for chi) cannot.

The circulatory system for blood was viewed as a hydraulic system containing rivers, tributaries, canals, reservoirs and lakes. However, the channels and collaterals of the meridian system are invisible. Needham describes them as being like the underside of a city, existing in the dermis rather than the epidermis. Collaterals, too, are not limited to those which connect the regular meridians (channels), but also include "grandson" collaterals which branch off of the regular meridians and disappear into the surface structure of the body. Needham says that it is this that creates the impression of abstractness and makes the system difficult to understand.

Most modern explanations of the meridian system go at it from the perspective of the body's physiological structure, dividing it into a system for the circulation of blood, and another for the circulation of breath (chi). But there are some scholars who take a different approach, tackling the problem from the perspective of physics. The have found a great deal of evidence to support their view, and in doing so have pulled Chinese and Western medicine closer together, perhaps even giving them a basis for communication.

Though the Western medical community is intrigued by acupuncture, its lack of understanding of the basic concept of the meridian system is often a barrier to learning.

Points and paths of low resistance

"This research began with the discovery of the 'bioenergy' of the human body," says Julia Tsuei, who heads the Clinic for East-West Medicine in addition to her responsibilities with the Foundation for East-West Medicine. Tsuei says that modern science has already confirmed that every living being contains electrical charges within its body. The human body is no different. Modern physiology shows us that although these charges are very small, we can nonetheless measure their strength and distribution. In fact, a number of modern medical devices, including the electrocardiogram, electroencephalogram, electromyogram and nuclear magnetic resonance imaging, all rely on the distribution of electromagnetic charges in the body in order to function.

In the West, it was a German, Dr. Rein-hold Voll, who was the first to systematically record the electrical energy of the human body. Voll used an electrical probe to measure electrical resistance at points all over the body. He discovered that there were numerous locations which gave unusual readings, that is, which had lower electrical resistance, and that the distribution of these points delineated several fixed routes.

At the same time Voll was carrying out his research, a Japanese doctor named Nakatani was using an electrical device to test patients. Nakatani also discovered numerous points of low electrical resistance which he connected into pathways.

"The electrical pathways these two men discovered are in almost complete accord with the meridians of traditional Chinese medicine. Moreover, the points of low electrical resistance exactly correspond to the acupuncture points of traditional medicine," says Tsuei. In the 1970s, Tsuei herself became interested in traditional Chinese medicine and began researching acupuncture. This sparked her research into the meridian system and Voll's electrical probes.

From 1970 to 1979, Tsuei traveled frequently between the US and Taiwan promoting acupuncture. She also introduced Voll's device to the staff at the Traditional Medicine Research Center at Veterans General Hospital. She and Chung Chieh, the center's director, refined the machine, incorporating a computer and adding more functions. They called their device the "Qin Value Detector" after a unit of measure of chi, the "qin," defined by Chung. Chung felt that this device marked a huge advance in the integration of Western and Chinese medicine, and to commemorate this chose to name it after the Qin dynasty, the first to unify China. Although there are now other devices on the market, all are designed on the same premises.

"In fact, no matter what the researcher calls this kind of machine, all measure the resistance to a small amount of DC current run from probes on the skin through meridians associated with particular organs. The results are used to make a diagnosis. For this reason, all machines of this type are known as Electrodermal Screening Devices," says Tsuei.

Western medicine prioritizes anatomy and physiology and seeks clear physical evidence. It has a difficult time with the "invisible" meridian system.

Headache? Check your feet.

The invention of the Electrodermal Screening Device (EDSD) had a number of positive results, not least of which was that it proved the existence of the meridian system and lent credibility to the practice of acupuncture. However, most importantly, research with the device has provided evidence that the "pulse diagnosis" of traditional Chinese medicine is more than just wishful thinking; it has an objective basis.

Tsuei led an experiment at the University of Hawaii branch of Center for East-West Medicine in which she carried out examinations in the clinic of a doctor of family medicine. Eleven patients underwent her Electrodermal Screening Test (EDST). They were then examined with modern medical methods, which confirmed the EDST's diagnosis. Of these patients, six had malignant tumors, three had bleeding in the digestive tract, one had an acute infection and one had a chronic illness which was in remission.

The same group of researchers also used the EDSD to test for allergies. A group of 30 volunteers agreed to undergo the EDST for allergies, as well as the five allergy tests currently most commonly used in clinical practice. A comparison of the results revealed that EDST's 80+% rate of accuracy was closest to that of the most sensitive of the standard tests, the food rechallenge test.

A Schematic Drawing of the Electrodermal Screening Device Source: IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Magazine, May-June, 1996 graphic by Tsai Chih-pen.

The body's communication network

Chen Kuo-gen, a professor in the department of physics at Taiwan's Soochow University, began his research into the meridian system with the traditional chikung exercise routine. "Many people who practice chikung say they suddenly feel chi flowing through their bodies. Surprisingly, the pathways that they describe for this flow are the meridians of the traditional Chinese medical system. Their own bodies bear witness to the existence of the meridian system."

Ten years ago, the National Science Council became curious about chikung, which was then widely popular. It gathered together a number of local scientists, among whom were Julia Tsuei and Chen Kuo-gen, to do some research. It was through this research that Chen met Tsuei, who was then teaching at Yang-Ming Medical College. Chen remembers the first time he met Tsuei; she gave him a complete physical examination using the EDSD at the medical school. "Over the course of more than three hours, Professor Tsuei told me many of the things that had happened to my body from childhood to that time. It made me extremely curious about the device. Since then, I've been completely wrapped up in this research."

The major thrust of Chen's research is to understand the fundamental electrical characteristics of the meridian system. His first order of business was to confirm the findings of Voll and Nakatani, to prove that the meridian system was a better conductor of electricity than the rest of the body.

Next, he discovered that the meridians were not only good conductors of electricity, but also of electromagnetic waves. "Electrical current is carried by a charged ion. With electromagnetic waves, [the mechanism] is not certain. For example, light and heat are not electrical, but they can carry information in their frequency and wavelength," says Chen. He states that this discovery is evidence for a claim often made by practitioners of chikung, that "hot" chi passes through the entire body's jingmai (channels). Some even say that light is emitted.

In addition, in observing the statistical data, Chen also noted that the electrical currents and electromagnetic waves both have very regular directional characteristics. "This is exactly what is described in The Yellow Emperor's Canon of Internal Medicine when it speaks of the movement of 'meridian chi' and 'subtle nutritious chi' along the 12 channels. I think that the 'meridian chi' of the ancients is electrical current and that the 'subtle nutritious chi' is electromagnetic waves."

A Schematic Drawing of the Electrodermal Screening Device Source: IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Magazine, May-June, 1996 graphic by Tsai Chih-pen Names of the Meridians Chart by Tsai Chih-pen.

A measure of chi

Chen thinks that the statement, "Channels carry blood and chi, and circulate yin-yang; they moisten the tendons and benefit the joints," in The Yellow Emperor's Canon of Internal Medicine is describing the communicative role that the meridians play in the body. The openness or obstructedness of these physiological communication lines is related to health and illness, and life and death. This explains why the ancients placed such emphasis on the meridians.

"I went through many years of scientific training and used experimental devices to come to this conclusion. The ancients were amazing. Without any equipment, they were able to discover the electrical current and electromagnetic waves within the body, and to clearly distinguish one from the other. It's incredible. How did they know? I haven't verified it, but I suspect that they did it by means of chikung," says Chen.

The long involvement and research of these scholars has given the meridian system a clearer form, more in keeping with modern science. It is as if they have crafted a scientific "ruler" by which Chinese medicine can be measured.

Now, perhaps the dialogue between Western and Chinese medicine will go beyond two sides babbling at one another in mutual incomprehension.

Names of the Meridians