THE HERBS: A pharmacist weighs herbs according to prescriptions (CFP)

The principle of "keeping balance" can be viewed as the main principle behind TCM. It is explained in the earliest text on the subject, Yellow Emperor's Inner Canon. The more than 2,000-year-old book features the Yellow Emperor, the ancestor of all Chinese people, discussing with his minister how to improve people's health.

TCM adopts the traditional Chinese definition of yin and yang, which states that opposing principles or forces exist in nature and human bodies, and claims that a healthy person balances those two opposing forces. Diseases occur only when the balance is broken and treatment should be given according to symptoms rather than the name of the disease. For the common cold, "the treatment differs according to whether the patients cough or not, have fever or not, sweat or not, etc. Even whether the patients feel thirsty or not, and if they do, whether they want to drink hot water or cold water leads to different treatments," said Fan.

TCM is largely based on the philosophical concept that the human body is a small universe with a set of complete and sophisticated interconnected systems, and those systems usually work in balance to maintain the healthy functioning of the body.

"According to TCM, the internal organs of human beings are a whole. When something is wrong with the lung, for example, probably it is not just the problem of the lung. The disease might originate in the liver, but it finally influences the lung," said Hao Wanshan, a Beijing TCM University professor. "It is just like in a company. When a person makes a mistake, normally, it is not just the fault of this person, as several others might be involved. If you want to manage the whole company well, you have to figure out the origin of the mistake. For diseases, different origins show different symptoms."

Instead of putting all the attention to a new virus and how to invent new medicine to stop it from becoming pathological, TCM just prescribes treatments according to the symptoms.

"It proves to be right in the long history of China," said Hao, who is an expert in another classic of TCM, Treatise on Cold Damage, a book written by Han Dynasty (202 B.C.-220 A.D.) doctor Zhang Zhongjing. At that time, people all over China suffered from the plague and many died. Zhang, a TCM doctor, treated many patients and categorized them by different symptoms. He then tried different prescriptions on different categories and compiled the most effective into his book.

"Compared with Western medicine, TCM has already been tried on so many people and this is more persuasive," said Hao, who is also a Tongrentang pharmacy clinic TCM doctor. Tongrentang is a well-known Chinese medicine maker. "Even now, all his prescriptions work well on modern people. I can say that TCM was developed while dealing with epidemics through different periods of Chinese history."

TCM philosophy

In the book Yellow Emperor's Inner Canon, Yellow Emperor and his minister do not spend much time talking about how to cure diseases. Instead, they discuss how to preserve health in different seasons of the year and different times of day. They speak about how to keep a calm and quiet mind. "The essence of this book is just to teach people how to follow the rules of nature," said Qu Limin, a Beijing TCM University professor.

This book regards the harmony of man and nature as the basic condition for preserving health. For example, people should get up at sunrise and go to bed early at night. In summer, when the daytime is much longer than the night, people should get up earlier and sleep later. In winter, it is just the opposite. In spring, when the temperature is unstable, people easily catch cold.

To prevent diseases, not just the flu, people should know their own physical conditions and have their own way to keep healthy. "TCM uses the way of dialectic treatment methods and gives different instructions to patients even with the same disease according to their ages, jobs and other characteristics," said Guan Qingwei, Director of Tongrentang clinic.

The four types of TCM diagnostic methods include observing the face, tongue and posture; hearing the voice; asking about the background of the patient; and feeling the pulse. Each step illustrates the way of dialectic treatment, according to Guan.

Chinese patients refer to going to the doctor as "going to have my pulse felt," in a sign of the relative importance of that measurement. Pulse feeling is based on the theory of meridians. TCM employs a unique model of the body that focuses on a so-called meridian system. Unlike the Western anatomical model, which divides the physical body into parts, the Chinese model is more concerned with function. For example, the TCM spleen is not a specific organ, but an aspect of function related to transformation and transportation within the body, and of the mental function of thinking and studying.

"I hear doctors giving instructions through the television to those infected with the common cold that the infection, no matter whether you take medicine or not, will be cured by itself within seven days," said Guan. "It is ridiculous, since the body already suffers from the imbalance, if you don't take some measures, the imbalance will influence other organs in the body, and cause more severe diseases. This also has been proven by Western medicine."

In order to help people keep away from the flu, Tongrentang gives different prescriptions for people with different physical conditions. People who are not sure about their own condition can ask the doctors to figure it out.