BEIJING, Sept. 21 -- Descending from a family of traditional Chinese doctors that goes back 400 years, Dr Stephen T. Chang was once a rebel.

    But his short detour to a career in Western medicine only made him determined in carrying on the long family tradition.

    He was one of the first to introduce traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) abroad.

    Now an internationally well-known scholar, Taoist and Chinese medicine expert in the United States, Dr Chang, now in his 70s, is strongly opposed to the Westernization of TCM.

    It is casting away the essence of its medical system by putting it in line with Western medicine, this will ultimately bring certain death to TCM, he warns.

    Family tradition

    His great-grandfather Cui Guoyin was a well-known doctor in the Huizhou area (today's city of Huangshan) in East China's Anhui Province.

    As a successor of a branch of old Chinese medicine called Xin'an, Cui put emphasis on enhancing the bodily immune system to keep numerous diseases at bay.

    Later, Cui became head physician to the imperial family during the reign of Tongzhi Emperor of the Qing Dynasty (1644-1911).

    He was responsible for determining the herbal formula prescribed by the imperial doctors. Cui passed on all his medical knowledge to his only daughter, Chang's grandmother, who went on to become a master physician.

    Grandma Cui wished to pass on her knowledge to her son. However, he, Chang's father, had no interest in medicine and went to Japan to study a military course despite his family's strong objection.

    Cui therefore laid all her hopes on her grandson, Chang.

    In his childhood, his grandmother often lectured him on how doctors could save lives and that practising medicine was the most promising career, Chang recalled.

    When he was 6 years old, Chang was made to sit and read classical books on TCM almost everyday. "At that time, I was a bit absent-minded," said Chang. "Sometimes I got really tired of reading the books. I really envied children my age who played games outside."

    As he grew into a teenager and became more rebellious, his grandmother invited Qian Boxuan, one of the most famous doctors in Suzhou, Jiangsu Province, to be his master.

    When he was in high school, his grandmother became terminally ill. She struggled to breathe for days until he promised to learn medicine, Chang recalled.

    However, his grandmother may still have been greatly disappointed with Chang since he later went to Japan to study Western medicine. Chang explained that there were two reasons for him to make such a choice.

    Firstly he didn't want to repeat his childhood experiences of being forced to study the dull and dry TCM books in ancient Chinese language.

    Secondly, he didn't want to appear to be clinging onto something old especially after reading articles by some well-known scholars who criticized TCM as unscientific.

    "At that time, we young people were easily influenced by the opinions of these great scholars. I didn't think they'd be wrong," said Chang.

    In Japan, Chang finished his doctorate degree on cardiology and then became a doctor.

    If everything had run smoothly for him, he might have been a famous surgeon. However, soon after he started working, he was diagnosed with bowel cancer.

    The head of the surgery department in the Japanese hospital where Chang worked favoured the promising young man and carefully studied Chang's case in the hope of determining a successful surgical procedure.

    However, it seemed that the cancer cells had already spread over his large intestine and no surgical procedure could save him. TCM became the last line of hope for Chang. He started to try different formulas to little avail.

    One day, the desperate young man stumbled on a formula called Xiao Chai Hu Tang from a TCM classic book. This formula functioned to regulate the spleen and stomach.

    After taking the herbal medical concoction for a few days, he felt the pain was alleviating and symptoms subsiding.

    Months later, when he for a check-up, the cancer cells had disappeared, as if by magic. However, many of his colleges questioned the previous diagnosis by the doctors. Chang also started to doubt how a simple TCM formula could cure his cancer.

    Even he forgot that it was TCM that had saved his life. "The diagnostic techniques in the 1960s were not as advanced as nowadays. So whether I had the cancer or not will remain a mystery forever," said Chang.

    A few years later, disaster struck again where he was diagnosed with a collapsed left lung and heart disease. Western medicine suggested surgery.

    However, he refused it. Again, he searched through his TCM books to seek out a formula for a possible cure. "A miracle occurred again and I regained my health. Till now, those symptoms never relapse," said Chang.

    From that day on, he was dead set on following TCM. He started by trying to explain the TCM theories in a more detailed and descriptive way, as ancient TCM classics had been written in archaic language that was difficult to understand.

    "The more I learned about TCM, the more fascinated I was with it," he said.

    Chang became an important person in bridging TCM and Western medicine. He is well documented in Western medicine literature to dispel Western medicine practitioner's doubts.

    A wrong direction

    With many successful years abroad, Dr Chang is now increasingly worried about the way some TCM practitioners have been attempting to modernize it. One such method is trying to extract the useful chemical substances from herbal medicines.

    "In this way, they cast away the traditional theory of TCM and manufacture the herbal drugs based on the Western medical theory," said Chang.

    He pointed out that the prescribed compound of herbs is a distinct feature of TCM.

    That is "Jun, Chen, Zuo and Shi" (monarch, minister, assistant and guide).

    To put it more simply, a TCM prescription is composed of several drugs playing different roles. Under the guidance of such a theory, a formula could not only address the major symptoms and complications, but also ameliorate the drugs' possible adverse effects to the body as the different drugs interact with each other.

    That is why TCM does not usually cause the severe side effects common to Western drugs, he said.

    Take for example "Ephedra," a kind of weight-losing chemical abstracted from the Chinese plant ephedra. Last year, the US Food and Drug Administration (USFDA) prohibited the sale and use of "Ephedra," as some users complained of headaches and sickness after taking it over a long period time.

    Chang explained that the idea of "Ephedra" came from Ma Huang Tang, a commonly used TCM concoction used to treat colds. The recipe for the formula includes Chinese ephedra, as well as almond, Gui Zhi (cinnamon twig) and Gan Cao (licorice).

    Patients who take the compound usually perspire a lot, thus discarding the virus in order to regain health.

    However, the TCM book also warns that the prescription should not be taken for a long period of time because it would make people weak.

    But the American drug manufactures lacked this knowledge of TCM theory only reading that it increased perspiration.

    "It is a good example to illustrate how without following the traditional theory of TCM, the medicine itself, once chemicalized through Western medical techniques, would only lose its original effect, almost becoming a poison," said Chang.

    TCM as an art

    Dr Chang does agree that TCM needs to be modernized.

    But its modernization should put more emphasis on improving prescription preparation with the help of modern science, he suggested.

    For example, traditionally, Chinese medicine has been made through decocting medicinal herbs and this is unscientific.

    First, the herb quality can't be guaranteed because there is a possibility that the herbs have been contaminated by blackbeetle, mice or dust in the purchasing and storing.

    Second, different herbal substances in a prescription may dissolve under different temperature or with different solvents.

    Thus, when mixing the herbs in the boiling pot, some medical substances may vaporize or dissolve while others may not.

    Chang once pioneered a medical programme to apply freeze-drying technology to improve TCM.

    Under his guidance, researchers tried to extract all the medicinal substances in the different solutions of water, oil, and alcohol. Then following the formula, the substances were mixed in varying proportions. The mixture was then frozen and dried at temperatures below minus 40 C. A powder then results easing the consumption of the medicine. "The method could save a lot of medicinal herbs because it could obtain the maximum amount of effective substances," Chang claims. "Also the quality of the medicine is much more consistant and increases its storage ability to 100 years," he claimed.

    Some other methods could also be applied, such as putting all the medicinal herbs together and leavening them to ferment.

    Despite the varying preparation methods, one thing is always the same: following the traditional basic principles of TCM.

    Chang believes medicine is a kind of art, not pure science, because the diseases doctors encounter are not like problems in non-living machines but live human beings.

    From the very beginning, the emphasis of TCM was on art and morals and the doctors' mission to diagnose the symptoms and prescribe a formula most suitable for their individual conditions.

    "TCM and Western medicine belong to different medical cultural systems. So the physical basis and working mechanisms of TCM should not be explained by Western medicine," he said.

    According to Chang, the spread of TCM medicine to the world has not followed the successful introduction of acupuncture.

    When Nixon visited China in 1972, he also took Chinese acupuncture to the United States, which later created a significant stir in the Western medical world.

    Each year, many overseas students have come to China to study acupuncture. Acupuncture schools and colleges have also opened throughout the world.

    "Acupuncture is one of the most indigenous arts of physical therapy in Chinese medicine. The success of its rapid spread in Western countries has been largely attributed to the conservation of its original cultural essence instead of being Westernized," said Chang. Enditem

(Source: China Daily)