Volume 3, Number 2 | Summer 2008

Foreword
Oriental Medicine and Nature
Oriental medicine was developed over 2000 years ago, when human beings were living their lives
under greater influences of natural surroundings than those in the modern age. Those days were also theage when people began to construct megalopolises and the social surroundings began to have significant
influences on people’s minds and bodies; as a result diseases occurred and they were becoming
therapeutic objectives. In other words, when you think of health and diseases, those ancient days werearguably the period in which people began to look for a balance between people’s lives and nature andthe way how the social environment should be. And then, the scale of urbanization began to expand at anaccelerated speed. Human history is the history of overcoming nature’s challenges and constantly
destroying nature.
The environments of 2000 years ago generated oriental medicine. The original classic of oriental
medicine Suwen (Plain Questions) includes the description of changes in the natural and social
surroundings and of the thought toward the way how humans should be or live. Even though written
2000 years ago, this classic book points out the problems concerning the way how the people’s lives
should be in those days and how they set the frame of their minds, and explains ideal attitudes of theirminds and desirable ways of people’s living. The classic book further mentions that compared to thedistant past, people has begun to lead their lives of a large scale separated far from nature, tend to become
jealous of others, and exert themselves to succeed in life or satisfy their desires or ambitions –all thesefactors have brought people mental stresses, psychosomatic illness, autonomic dystonia, and othervarious disorders in return, which can only be relieved by the therapy of acupuncture, moxibustion or
herbal decoctions; therefore, people should try not to satisfy their personal or social desire more than isnecessary, avoid competing with others, and lead their lives by means of rising above the trivia of life andremaining calm and selfless.
As seen above, while the body and mind of an individual and the way the society should be arequestioned in the classic book, a more important viewpoint about oriental medicine will be that it is themedicine deeply rooted in spontaneous remission or natural healing ability the human body has.
Although such expression is usually used as cure by acupuncture and moxibustion, in effect the body thathas been stimulated by acupuncture or moxibustion heals itself. It is not by acupuncture or bymoxibustion that healing occurs. This is the point that makes a wide gap between oriental medicine andWestern medicine in the way each medicine should be, theories and philosophy of each medicine. Whenboth medicines are compared without giving consideration to the origin or construction of both
medicines, opinions tend to be unilateral. In short, if the expression “medicine cures” is used plainly, itgives us a sense of a little bit hesitancy as oriental medicine is based on the notion that humans curethemselves. And if medicine does not cure, medical practitioners should be humbler towards the humanbody. They should assume an attitude of asking or speaking more to the body, like what kind ofstimulation or treatment you want. Instead of the attitude of I will cure you, it may be good if there issuch attitude that medical practitioners and patients follow together the processes to achieve cure. It willbe the time for us to reconsider the relationship between illnesses, treatment, and to heal.

Shuichi Katai, Ph.D., L.Ac., Professor
Department of Acupuncture and Moxibustion
Tsukuba University of Technology, Ibaraki, JapanThe Journal of Kampo, Acupuncture and Integrative Medicine (KAIM)

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