In the current crisis, people are looking for ways to economize and are buying Thai products. More important, traditional Asian medicine is now being taken seriously by Western-educated physicians. Across Asia, hospitals and doctors are mixing their medicines, blending elements from both traditional and Western practices. Bombay-based pediatrician Deepak Tirthani prescribes a course of antibiotics, followed by traditional Indian Ayurvedic drugs, for children suffering from bacterial infection. In Thailand, over a hundred modern hospitals produce and distribute herbal remedies for everything from skin problems and obesity to kidney disorder and herpes.
Traditional therapies vary across the region, but they do have some principles in common.
While Western medicine generally treats the same illness the same way, Asian medicine operates on the principle that no two people are alike. The same ailment may therefore be treated differently in different patients. In traditional Chinese medical theory, the core concept is the qi, the vital energy that is believed to circulate throughout the body. When these elements are poorly distributed, the body's balance is disturbed and disease results. Diagnosis is the key to Chinese medicine's curative powers.