Traditional Chinese medicine

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"Chinese Medicine" redirects here. For the practice of medicine in modern China,
see Medicine in China.
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Traditional Chinese Medicine

A prescription section of a pharmacy

in Nanning, Guangxi, China selling prepackaged Chinese and Western

medicine (left) and Chinese medicinal herbs (right).

Chinese name

Simplified Chinese 中医

Traditional Chinese 中醫

Literal meaning "Chinese medicine"

showTranscriptions

Vietnamese name

Vietnamese Y học cổ truyền Trung Quốc

Đông y
 thuốc Bắc

thuốc Tàu

Hán-Nôm 醫學古傳中國

東醫
𧆄北

𧆄艚

Korean name

Hangul 중의학

Hanja 中醫學

showTranscriptions

Japanese name

Kanji 中国医学

Kana ちゅうごくいがく

showTranscriptions

This article is part of a series on

Alternative medicine

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General information
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Fringe medicine and science

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Conspiracy theories

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Classifications

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Traditional medicine

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Diagnoses

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Part of a series on

Chinese folk religion

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Concepts
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Theory

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Practices

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Institutions and temples

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Festivals

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Internal traditions

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Related religions

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Traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) is an alternative medical practice drawn

from traditional medicine in China. It has been described as "fraught
with pseudoscience", with the majority of its treatments having no logical mechanism of
action.[1][2]
Medicine in traditional China encompassed a range of sometimes competing health and
healing practices, folk beliefs, literati theory and Confucian philosophy, herbal
remedies, food, diet, exercise, medical specializations, and schools of thought. [3] In the
early twentieth century, Chinese cultural and political modernizers worked to eliminate
traditional practices as backward and unscientific. Traditional practitioners then selected
elements of philosophy and practice and organized them into what they called "Chinese
medicine" (Zhongyi).[4] In the 1950s, the Chinese government sponsored the integration
of Chinese and Western medicine,[5] and in the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution of
the 1960s, promoted Chinese medicine as inexpensive and popular. [6] After the opening
of relations between the United States and China after 1972, there was great interest in
the West for what is now called traditional Chinese medicine (TCM). [7]