抄録
In comparing traditional Chinese (or Far Eastern) and modern Western medical theories we find decisive differences between both appraches. As far as I can see their different epistemological foundations are not specifically well understood or even overtly misinterpreted in the today's world of acupuncture. Thus, for instance, some Western doctors who have been exclusively trained in the Western so-called scientific way of medical thinking turn to Chinese medicine and acupuncture, treat patients, do research work and clinical trials without understanding the thoroughly different levels of awareness of the two medicines. The scientific outcome generally is poor or at least confusing. Moreover, by this one-sided interpretation Chinese medicine and acupuncture are seriously endangered to loose their fundamental significance and, of course, simultaneously much of their original forceful healing capacities. In the following paper I will give an explanation why this is so, and I will describe the classical rendering of the clinical effects of acupuncture points which are closely linked to traditional Chinese (or Far Eastern) syndrome or pattern diagnoses.
Most important for a proper understanding of Chinese medicine is to recog nize that it outlines the human being as a specific system which can be characterized as a feedback control system concerning itself with the organism as a whole. This means that it has reached a standard of quality which modern scientific medicine has yet to attain. The latter, because Western medicine is deliberately restricted in its methods to a knowledge of parts and isolated aspects. Although this in a few individual cases may be extremely important, it can never arrive at a rational, unified concept of health or sickness. With the help of Chinese diagnostics and as a result of examinating the patient directly the Chinese doctor is able to analyse the symptoms he finds in the light of his thorough understanding of the human organism as a unified system. On this way he comes to a genuine recognition of the various diseases of Man from the inside. Whereas the Western physician whose methods only supply him with partial perception gathered from a multitude of data based on measurements must, by this very fact, remain at a superficial level of understanding, namely at the outside. Establishing a diagnosis along the lines of Chinese traditional medicine is the actual medical task of the Eastern doctor and the logical point of departure of every sensible acupuncture treatment.
