 |
| traditional-chinese-medicine-science-history-myth |
Traditional Chinese Medicine: What Does the Evidence Say?
Traditional Chinese Medicine is one of those subjects that can quickly turn into an argument.
For some people, it represents thousands of years of accumulated medical wisdom that modern science is only beginning to understand.
For others, it is an outdated system based on qi, meridians, yin and yang, strange animal ingredients and remedies inherited from a time before modern anatomy, microbiology and chemistry.
Both positions contain a problem.
They treat Traditional Chinese Medicine as though it were one thing.
It isn't.
Chinese medicine has changed enormously during its long history. It contains philosophical theories, accumulated clinical observations, herbal and mineral medicines, acupuncture, moxibustion, massage, dietary practices and numerous regional and folk traditions. Modern institutional TCM has standardized and reorganized parts of this enormous inheritance, while modern scientific research has investigated some traditional practices much more thoroughly than others.
Some traditional treatments have produced useful leads for modern medicine.
Some have little convincing evidence behind them.
Some historical remedies are potentially dangerous.
Some modern practices appear to provide benefits for particular conditions, although the reasons they work may not correspond to their traditional explanations.
And for many claims the evidence remains uncertain.
So instead of asking:
Does Traditional Chinese Medicine work?
perhaps we should ask a better series of questions:
Which treatment? For which condition? What evidence supports it? What are its risks? What did people historically believe it was doing? And does modern evidence support that explanation?
Those are very different questions.
First Problem: What Do We Mean by TCM?
The English expression Traditional Chinese Medicine, usually abbreviated TCM, can create the impression that China possessed one unified medical system that was transmitted essentially unchanged from antiquity to the present.
Chinese medical history is considerably more complicated.
Texts such as the 黃帝內經 — Huangdi Neijing, the 傷寒論 — Shanghan Lun, the various materia medica traditions, later medical schools, regional practices and popular healing traditions emerged in different historical environments.
Chinese physicians did not spend two thousand years simply repeating one medical textbook.
Ideas changed.
Medicines changed.
Interpretations changed.
Doctors disagreed.
New substances entered the pharmacopoeia.
Old theories were reinterpreted.
Methods were standardized and reorganized.
The modern system internationally called TCM is therefore related to historical Chinese medicine, but the two should not simply be treated as identical.
The process of standardization has continued into the modern period. Modern China has developed standardized terminology, disease and syndrome classifications, technical standards and institutional systems for TCM.
This gives us at least three categories that should not automatically be collapsed together.
Historical Chinese medicine consists of medical theories, texts, drugs and practices documented in particular periods of Chinese history.
Modern institutional TCM is a contemporary medical system incorporating selected and standardized elements of that historical inheritance.
Chinese folk and popular medicine includes practices found among communities that may be called “traditional” but are not necessarily representative of either classical learned medicine or modern institutional TCM.
This distinction becomes extremely important when extraordinary examples are discussed.
Finding an unusual remedy somewhere in Chinese history does not establish that it is routinely used in a modern TCM hospital.
Likewise, finding somebody practicing an illegal or local folk remedy does not establish that the practice is accepted by contemporary Chinese medical institutions.
Before evaluating a treatment, we should first establish what it is, when it was used, and in what medical context it belongs.
The Traditional Chinese Body
Historical Chinese medicine developed without knowledge of cells, microorganisms, hormones, neurotransmitters, molecular genetics or modern biochemistry.
But this doesn't mean Chinese physicians had no systematic conception of the body.
They developed their own conceptual vocabulary for organizing observations of health, illness and the relationship between human beings and their environment.
Among its best-known concepts are:
氣 — qi
陰陽 — yin and yang
五行 — Five Phases
經絡 — channels or meridians
精 — essence
神 — spirit
and systems of organs whose functions do not always correspond neatly with the anatomical organs bearing the same names in modern translations.
These concepts formed sophisticated historical explanatory systems.
But historically sophisticated and scientifically demonstrated are not synonymous.
We should therefore avoid two opposite mistakes.
The first is to assume that because a concept is ancient, it must describe an objective physiological structure.
The second is to assume that because it doesn't correspond directly to modern physiology, it has no historical or intellectual value.
Historical medical concepts should first be understood in their own language and context.
Only afterward should we ask what claims derived from them can be tested scientifically.
What About Qi?
Qi is particularly important for martial artists.
The term 氣 existed in Chinese thought long before modern TCM and appears in philosophy, cosmology, medicine, breathing practices, martial arts and ordinary language.
It did not necessarily mean precisely the same thing in every context.
This makes statements such as:
“Science has proved qi.”
or
“Science has disproved qi.”
much less straightforward than they appear.
What exactly are we testing?
A particular physiological claim can be tested.
A particular treatment can be tested.
A measurable effect attributed to qi can be investigated.
But first we need to establish what the author or practitioner actually means by 氣.
The same caution applies when modern explanations identify qi with electricity, oxygen, fascia, the nervous system, blood circulation or some other scientific concept.
Finding a modern mechanism capable of explaining an observable phenomenon does not demonstrate that historical Chinese physicians secretly meant that mechanism when they wrote 氣.
Traditional explanations and modern scientific explanations can be compared.
They should not simply be declared identical.
Ancient Medicine and Modern Science
There is another danger when discussing Chinese medicine.
It is easy to compare historical Chinese medicine with modern European-derived medicine.
That is not a fair historical comparison.
Premodern medicine in Europe and elsewhere also operated without modern microbiology, genetics, molecular pharmacology, controlled clinical trials and much of our present understanding of physiology.
Modern biomedicine is not simply “ancient Western medicine.”
It is the product of centuries of change, experiment, error, technological development and scientific revision.
Chinese medicine should receive the same historical courtesy.
But historical understanding does not mean exemption from testing.
If a treatment today is claimed to cure disease, alleviate pain or alter physiology, that is an empirical claim.
And empirical claims can be investigated.
Tradition Can Be a Starting Point
One of the most remarkable examples is 青蒿 — qinghao and the discovery of artemisinin.
During research into new treatments for malaria in the twentieth century, Chinese scientist Tu Youyou and her colleagues investigated an enormous collection of traditional prescriptions.
Tu later explained that her team collected more than two thousand herbal, animal and mineral prescriptions and summarized 640 of them for further investigation.
A crucial clue came from the fourth-century physician Ge Hong 葛洪.
His Zhouhou Beiji Fang (肘後備急方) described soaking qinghao in water and squeezing out its juice rather than boiling it.
Tu reasoned that heating might destroy an active component. Her team changed the extraction method, eventually isolating the antimalarial compound that became known as artemisinin.
Tu received the 2015 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine for her contribution.
This is sometimes presented as proof that Traditional Chinese Medicine works.
But the real story is considerably more interesting.
The historical literature provided a lead.
Scientific investigation then had to identify the correct plant species, determine which part of the plant contained the useful substance, establish appropriate collection conditions, develop extraction procedures, isolate the active compound, determine its chemical structure and test its biological effects. Tu herself notes that the historical category qinghao encompassed several Artemisia species, while the researchers established that Artemisia annua contained meaningful artemisinin.
Traditional knowledge and modern science were not opponents in this story.
One provided information worth investigating.
The other determined which part of that information survived testing.
That is perhaps one of the best models for investigating traditional medicine.
A Treatment Can Work for the Wrong Reason
Artemisinin also illustrates an important principle.
Suppose a historical treatment genuinely produces a beneficial effect.
That does not automatically demonstrate that the historical explanation for the effect was correct.
Imagine that a traditional physician uses a plant because it is believed to correct an imbalance between yin and yang.
Modern investigation subsequently discovers that the plant contains a compound that inhibits a particular biochemical pathway.
The discovery of the compound establishes something about the plant.
It does not automatically establish the entire theoretical system originally used to explain the treatment.
This is not peculiar to Chinese medicine.
The history of medicine contains many treatments discovered before anyone understood their mechanisms.
People can discover that something happens long before they understand why it happens.
Herbal Medicine Is Not One Medicine
The phrase Chinese herbal medicine is itself enormously broad.
Plants are chemical factories.
Different species contain different substances.
Different parts of the same plant may contain different concentrations.
Growing conditions, harvesting, processing, storage, preparation and dose can affect the resulting product.
A statement such as:
“Chinese herbs work.”
is therefore almost meaningless.
So is:
“Chinese herbs don't work.”
The useful question is:
Which preparation, containing what substances, at what dose, for what condition?
Clinical studies of Chinese herbal products have produced mixed results, according to the U.S. National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health.
That shouldn't be surprising.
Thousands of substances grouped under one cultural label should not be expected to share one pharmacological verdict.
When Traditional Medicine Becomes Dangerous
Traditional origin does not guarantee safety.
Neither does natural origin.
Plants evolved chemicals for their own biological purposes, not for ours.
Some are useful medicines.
Some are harmless at ordinary doses.
Some are poisonous.
Some can be both medicine and poison depending on dose and circumstances.
One particularly important example is aristolochic acid, found in certain Aristolochia-derived herbal medicines.
Evidence linking aristolochic-acid exposure to kidney injury and urothelial cancers is exceptionally serious. Research in Taiwan has been particularly important in establishing the association.
This should not be hidden because the substance belongs to traditional medicine.
But neither should it be used to prove that every Chinese herbal preparation is dangerous.
It establishes something much more specific:
Certain Aristolochia-derived medicines can cause severe harm.
That is precisely how evidence should work.
Poison as Medicine: Cinnabar
Historical Chinese pharmacology becomes especially fascinating when we encounter substances that modern readers immediately recognize as potentially toxic.
One famous example is:
朱砂 — cinnabar.
Cinnabar consists principally of mercury sulfide, HgS.
Mercury is well known for its toxicity, so it is tempting to stop the discussion there:
Cinnabar contains mercury. Mercury is poisonous. Therefore cinnabar is simply poison.
Chemistry makes the situation more complicated.
Different chemical forms of the same element can behave very differently in the body.
Cinnabar is poorly soluble and poorly absorbed through the gastrointestinal tract. Its toxicological behavior is therefore not identical to methylmercury or soluble mercury salts. Nevertheless, prolonged or excessive exposure can still produce toxicity, particularly affecting the kidneys, and heating cinnabar can release mercury vapor.
Similar questions surround 雄黃 — realgar, an arsenic sulfide mineral historically used medicinally.
Modern research into cinnabar- and realgar-containing traditional preparations therefore examines chemical form, preparation, absorption, dosage, toxicity and possible pharmacological effects rather than simply counting the total amount of mercury or arsenic present.
This does not demonstrate that these minerals should be used therapeutically.
Nor does their traditional use demonstrate efficacy.
It demonstrates something more interesting:
toxicology requires more than recognizing the name of an element.
Chemical form matters.
Dose matters.
Preparation matters.
Route of exposure matters.
And ultimately the potential benefit must justify the potential risk.
I will resist going further into the inorganic chemistry.
This is, after all, an article about Chinese medicine.
Dragon Bones
And then we come to one of my favorite examples.
龍骨 — longgu — literally “dragon bone.”
Dragon bones appear in the history of Chinese materia medica and were used in preparations associated with calming or stabilizing effects and other traditional indications.
But what exactly were dragon bones?
They were not bones from mythical dragons.
Materials sold as longgu included fossilized animal remains.
To a person living centuries before modern paleontology, enormous mineralized bones emerging from the earth presented an obvious interpretive problem.
What animal had they belonged to?
 |
| dragon bones |
Chinese culture already possessed the dragon as a powerful category of extraordinary creature.
Calling mysterious fossil remains dragon bones therefore makes considerably more historical sense than it may initially appear to a modern reader.
And then the story takes an extraordinary turn.
In nineteenth-century China, objects sold as medicinal dragon bones included ancient animal bones and turtle shells carrying inscriptions.
In 1899, scholar Wang Yirong 王懿榮 recognized markings on such material as ancient writing.
These became central to the modern study of the oracle bones — 甲骨, which preserve some of the earliest substantial bodies of Chinese writing and enormously expanded knowledge of Shang China. Scholarly histories of oracle-bone research confirm the connection between inscribed bones found around Anyang, their sale or use as medicinal “dragon bones,” and their eventual recognition as ancient written documents.
Think about what happened.
An ancient object was interpreted through one intellectual framework as medicine.
Later investigators recognized some of the same class of material as archaeological evidence.
The object had not changed.
Our understanding of it had.
That is a wonderful example of why traditional knowledge deserves to be studied historically even when we do not accept its original explanation scientifically.
Acupuncture: Does It Work?
Acupuncture is probably the best-known Chinese medical practice outside China.
It is also one of the most heavily debated.
The traditional practice involves stimulating particular points, commonly with needles, within medical frameworks historically associated with channels and qi.
Modern research has investigated acupuncture for many conditions.
And the results are not adequately summarized by either:
“Acupuncture works.”
or:
“Acupuncture is fake.”
The NCCIH reports evidence suggesting possible benefit for some chronic pain conditions, including low-back and neck pain and osteoarthritis-related knee pain. At the same time, some studies find that genuine acupuncture and sham procedures produce similar results, making the contribution of point specificity, physiological effects, expectation and contextual/placebo effects difficult to separate.
This creates an interesting distinction.
Even if inserting or stimulating needles produces measurable physiological effects, that would not by itself establish the traditional meridian system as an anatomical structure.
Conversely, failure to demonstrate traditional meridian theory would not establish that inserting needles into the body can have no physiological effect.
Again:
effect and explanation are different questions.
Is Acupuncture Dangerous?
It can be.
But that answer requires context.
Properly performed acupuncture appears to have relatively few serious complications. Improper practice can cause infection, organ puncture, pneumothorax and other serious injuries. Modern systems therefore regulate needles, sterilization and practitioner standards in various ways.
The old version of this article presented adverse effects almost as evidence against acupuncture itself.
That reasoning was too simple.
Risk does not automatically demonstrate ineffectiveness.
Modern pharmaceuticals and medical procedures also produce adverse effects.
The appropriate question is whether the expected benefit for a particular condition outweighs the known risks.
Modern Medicine Is Not Harmless Either
This point deserves emphasis because discussions of alternative medicine often compare the worst examples of traditional medicine with an idealized version of modern medicine.
That isn't useful.
Modern pharmaceuticals can cause serious adverse reactions.
Medicines can interact.
Doctors can prescribe incorrectly.
Patients can take medicines incorrectly.
Polypharmacy creates additional risks.
Manufacturing and dispensing errors occur.
The World Health Organization considers medication-related harm a major global patient-safety problem and reports that medication harm accounts for a large share of preventable harm in medical care.
This does not make modern pharmacology pseudoscientific.
It demonstrates that effective biological interventions can also cause harm.
The same standard should therefore be applied to traditional medicine:
What benefit?
What risk?
At what dose?
For which patient?
Supported by what evidence?
Modern TCM Products Are Not Ancient Pharmacy
Another distinction is essential.
A historical materia medica tells us what people used historically.
It does not necessarily tell us what a patient receives from a regulated modern pharmacy.
Contemporary countries regulate traditional medicines in different ways. Products may be legally classified as medicines, traditional medicines, supplements, herbal products or sometimes foods, and the requirements consequently differ.
Being outside the pharmaceutical-drug category does not mean that anything may legally be sold.
Modern regulatory systems can impose standards involving manufacturing, ingredients, contaminants, quality and safety. WHO reports extensive national regulation of herbal medicines and promotes quality control, good manufacturing practice, contaminant monitoring and pharmacovigilance for traditional medicines.
Clinical efficacy is a separate question.
A product can satisfy applicable safety and manufacturing requirements without having the same level of evidence required to approve a new pharmaceutical drug for a specific disease.
Likewise, an illegally adulterated or counterfeit product should not automatically be treated as representative of legitimate modern TCM practice.
Safety, quality, efficacy and legal classification are different questions.
We don't need to turn this into a pharmacology article, but the distinction matters.
Contamination Is Not the Same as an Ingredient
This distinction also changes how we should interpret reports of heavy metals, pharmaceuticals or other unexpected substances in herbal preparations.
Several possibilities exist.
The substance may be an intentional traditional ingredient.
It may be an accidental contaminant.
The wrong plant may have been substituted.
A manufacturer may have illegally added a pharmaceutical drug.
The preparation may have been produced incorrectly.
Or a legitimate ingredient may itself present an intrinsic toxicological risk.
Those are different problems.
NCCIH notes documented cases involving contamination, undeclared drugs, heavy metals, pesticides, microorganisms and mistaken substitution of herbs.
Such findings are important.
But we need to identify what failed before deciding what the failure tells us about Chinese medicine.
Moxibustion, Cupping and Gua Sha
 |
| Usual effect of cupping |
Not every Chinese medical treatment involves ingesting a substance or inserting a needle.
Moxibustion — 灸 uses burning moxa, usually prepared from mugwort, to heat or stimulate particular locations.
Cupping — 拔罐 applies negative pressure to the skin.
Gua sha — 刮痧 involves repeated scraping or rubbing of the skin.
These practices can produce obvious physical effects.
Cupping changes local tissue pressure and commonly leaves temporary marks.
Gua sha produces visible redness and sometimes bruising.
Moxibustion applies heat and produces smoke.
But observing a physical effect is not the same thing as demonstrating a therapeutic effect.
Once again, the useful question is not whether something happens.
Something obviously happens.
The question is whether the intervention produces a clinically meaningful benefit for a specified condition beyond comparison treatments, and whether that benefit outweighs its risks.
Each practice therefore needs to be evaluated separately.
 |
| Gua Sha massage aftermath |
Folk Medicine Is Not Automatically TCM
The distinction becomes especially important when discussing some of the stranger remedies attributed to Chinese medicine.
Historical and folk practices have included an extraordinary variety of animal, mineral and human-derived materials.
Some are documented in historical materia medica.
Others belong primarily to local folk practice.
Some survive in modified form.
Some have disappeared.
Some are prohibited.
And some continue through illegal markets despite modern regulation.
We should not take every unusual practice ever recorded among Chinese communities and put it into a box marked “TCM.”
That would be historically careless.
At the same time, we should not erase uncomfortable historical practices simply because they look embarrassing today.
They are part of medical history and deserve investigation.
Animals, Medicine and Conservation
Animal-derived medicines present another problem that is partly independent of medical efficacy.
Historical Chinese pharmacology made use of many animal substances.
Modern demand for certain materials has also contributed to conservation concerns involving species such as rhinoceroses, tigers and pangolins.
 |
| Tiger penis |
Here several separate questions need to be asked.
Was the substance historically used?
Is it part of modern institutional practice?
Is its trade currently legal?
Is there evidence of therapeutic efficacy?
Does an effective substitute exist?
What ecological cost is associated with obtaining it?
Even a hypothetical demonstration that an endangered animal product had pharmacological activity would not automatically justify destroying a species to obtain it.
Medical efficacy and conservation ethics are separate questions.
What About the Really Strange Remedies?
Some historical remedies inevitably sound bizarre to modern ears.
Fossilized “dragon bones.”
Minerals containing mercury or arsenic.
Animal secretions.
Insects.
Unusual biological materials.
It is easy to laugh.
But ridicule teaches us very little.
A better question is:
Why did people believe these substances worked?
Sometimes the answer may involve symbolic associations.
Sometimes traditional medical theory.
Sometimes repeated observation.
Sometimes coincidence.
Sometimes placebo and natural recovery.
Sometimes a substance may genuinely contain an active compound.
And sometimes the treatment may simply have been ineffective or harmful.
Premodern people did not possess our scientific tools for distinguishing these possibilities reliably.
That is not uniquely Chinese.
It is the history of medicine.
Personal Experience: “It Worked for Me”
One of the strongest arguments for traditional treatments is also one of the most difficult:
“I tried it and it worked.”
That experience should not simply be dismissed.
If someone was in pain, received treatment and subsequently felt better, the improvement is real to that person.
The problem is determining why improvement occurred.
Many illnesses fluctuate naturally.
Symptoms can improve spontaneously.
Expectation can influence subjective symptoms.
Regression toward the mean can make treatments administered at the worst point of an illness appear effective.
Other treatments may have been used simultaneously.
And some interventions may genuinely have therapeutic effects.
Personal experience tells us what happened after treatment.
It does not always tell us what happened because of treatment.
That is one reason controlled clinical research exists.
But Clinical Trials Have Limitations Too
Scientific medicine is not a machine that instantly produces certainty.
Studies can be poorly designed.
Sample sizes can be inadequate.
Outcome measures can be inappropriate.
Publication bias can distort the literature.
Different studies can reach different conclusions.
Complex interventions such as acupuncture can be particularly difficult to blind and create convincing placebo controls for. WHO itself recognizes methodological challenges in evaluating some non-medicinal traditional therapies while emphasizing the need for rigorous evidence.
The appropriate response is not to abandon science.
It is to improve the evidence.
Science is valuable precisely because its conclusions can change when better evidence appears.
So Is Traditional Chinese Medicine Scientific?
We can finally return to the question in the title.
And perhaps the question itself is wrong.
Traditional Chinese Medicine is not one scientific hypothesis.
It is a historical medical tradition containing thousands of claims, practices and substances.
Some of its classical theoretical concepts do not correspond directly to the models used by modern biomedical science.
Some traditional therapeutic claims have not survived rigorous investigation.
Some remain uncertain.
Some practices may provide modest benefits for particular conditions.
Some traditional substances contain demonstrably active pharmacological compounds.
Some contain substances capable of causing serious harm.
And some historical knowledge has provided important leads for modern medicine.
WHO's current approach similarly does not treat “traditional medicine” as something that must simply be accepted or rejected. Its 2025–2034 strategy calls for strengthening evidence, improving regulation and safety, and integrating appropriate traditional practices on an evidence-based basis.
That seems a considerably more useful position than choosing between belief and ridicule.
Why Does Any of This Matter to Kung Fu?
Because Chinese martial arts did not develop in isolation from Chinese culture.
Martial traditions borrowed language from philosophy, medicine, religion and systems of bodily cultivation.
Martial-arts texts and teachers speak about:
氣 — qi
丹田 — dantian
經絡 — channels
陰陽 — yin and yang
五行 — Five Phases
精氣神 — essence, qi and spirit
and other concepts also encountered in Chinese medicine.
Modern martial artists therefore face exactly the same problem.
Should we accept these concepts literally because our teachers inherited them?
No.
Should we delete them because they don't correspond neatly with twenty-first-century physiology?
Also no.
We should first determine what the terminology meant within the tradition that used it.
Then identify the observable phenomenon being described.
Then investigate that phenomenon using whatever modern tools are appropriate.
If modern biomechanics explains a particular aspect of power generation, describe the biomechanics.
If traditional practitioners described their experience using qi, preserve that historical description.
But don't pretend that proving the biomechanics proves the existence of qi.
And don't pretend that questioning qi makes the physical phenomenon disappear.
Tradition Is Evidence of Tradition
This may be the most important distinction in the entire discussion.
A medical text written 1,500 years ago is excellent evidence that a particular medical idea existed 1,500 years ago.
That does not automatically make the medical claim biologically correct.
But demonstrating that the biological claim is wrong does not make the historical document worthless.
It answers a different question.
The same principle applies to martial arts.
Traditional knowledge can tell us how people understood their bodies.
Science can investigate what those bodies were actually doing.
Sometimes the two descriptions may overlap surprisingly well.
Sometimes they will not.
Sometimes traditional practice may point toward something science subsequently finds valuable.
Sometimes modern investigation will show that an old treatment simply doesn't work.
We should be comfortable with all four possibilities.
Neither Worship Nor Ridicule
Traditional Chinese medicine deserves neither automatic reverence nor automatic dismissal.
Its history is too long.
Its practices are too diverse.
And the evidence is too complicated for either response.
We should be able to look at 龍骨 and appreciate the extraordinary journey from medicinal “dragon bones” to the discovery of ancient Chinese writing.
We should be able to examine 朱砂 without either screaming “mercury!” and ending the discussion or declaring centuries of traditional use proof of safety.
We should be able to acknowledge the contribution of Chinese medical literature to the discovery of artemisinin without claiming that this validates every traditional medical theory.
We should be able to acknowledge aristolochic-acid-induced cancers without turning them into evidence that every Chinese herb is poisonous.
We should be able to find evidence that acupuncture helps some patients in some circumstances while still questioning whether traditional meridian theory explains the result.
And we should hold conventional medicine to the same fundamental standards of evidence, benefit and risk.
That is not sitting on the fence.
It is applying the same rule consistently:
Do not decide what the evidence should say before looking at the evidence.
Traditional medicine tells us something extraordinary about the long human attempt to understand illness and the body.
Modern science gives us tools those earlier physicians did not possess.
We don't honor either tradition by forcing them to agree.
We learn more by allowing each to tell us what it actually can.
Tradition deserves to be understood.
Medical claims deserve to be tested.
Successful treatments deserve to be recognized.
Dangerous treatments deserve to be identified.
And uncertainty deserves to remain uncertainty.
References and Further Reading
For Blogger, I would use these as the core references rather than retaining the old collection of miscellaneous links.
National Center for Complementary and Integrative Health — Traditional Chinese Medicine: What You Need to Know
NCCIH: Traditional Chinese Medicine
World Health Organization — Traditional Medicine
WHO: Traditional Medicine
World Health Organization — Global Traditional Medicine Strategy 2025–2034
WHO Global Traditional Medicine Strategy
World Health Organization — Global Report on Traditional, Complementary and Integrative Medicine 2024
WHO Global Report
Tu Youyou — Nobel Prize biographical account of the discovery of artemisinin
Tu Youyou and Artemisinin — Nobel Prize
Tu Youyou — “Artemisinin—A Gift from Traditional Chinese Medicine to the World,” Nobel Lecture
Tu Youyou's Nobel Lecture
Jing et al. — Aristolochic acid-containing Chinese herbal medicine and upper urinary tract urothelial carcinoma in Taiwan
PubMed: Aristolochic Acid and Cancer in Taiwan
Jadot et al./review literature — Mercury in traditional medicines: Is cinnabar toxicologically similar to common mercurials?
PubMed: Cinnabar Toxicology Review
Liu et al. — Review of cinnabar- and realgar-containing traditional medicines
PubMed: Cinnabar and Realgar Review
Wang & Lai — Scholarship on oracle bones and oracle-bone inscriptions
Oracle Bones, Dragon Bones and Early Scholarship
World Health Organization — Medication Without Harm
WHO: Medication Without Harm