Milford chronicle., 1962-03-30
New Chinese Medicine
Greet Leap Backward

The health of Red China's 600
million people is in the hands of
perhaps the most undertrained,
medievally oriented, and politically
infected medical profession in the
world" according to Arturo F.
Gonzalez, Jr., creative director of
The Asia Magazine, Hong Kong.
Writing in the current Today's
Health, published by the Ameri-
can Medical Association, Gonzalez
said in 1858 the Red Chinese took
"a giant step backward-a step
they are still taking"
China's Western-trained physi-
clans, the cream of the country s
medical profession, in 1858 wer e
summarily ordered by Ho Ch'eng,
the army doctor who became the
head of Chinese public health, to
revert to traditional Chinese meth
ods in treating patients, he said.
Medically these men wer e
ordered back to the Dark Ages
and all were told to plan upon ex-
tensive training of up to two and
a half years in traditional medi-
cine, he said.
Traditional m edicine, prac-
ticed for centuries in China, en-
ploys acupuncture, lancing the
skin, muscle or tother tissues with
a long silver needle; the use of
herbs, said to cure everything from
appendicitis to fractures; b r tn
control, and shadow boxing, Con
zalez said. The traditional prac-
titioners blame internal diseases
on the ''seven passions" and ex-
ternal diseases on six excesses," /"
he said.
Until 1858, traditional practition-
ers worked side by side with Wes-
tern-trained physicians, he said,
and then the hammer fell.
"The new Chinese theories of
medicine read like an allegory out
of the time of Charlemagne heavi-
ly laden with Marxist dialectic," :"
Gonzalez said.
In recent Red Chinese medi-
cal journal, he said, specialists
were accused of hindering the de-
velopment of science and patients
were told to establish revolution
ary optimism and fight their dis
eases with strong will power"
Politics intrude on every dag
nosis," he continued.
"The most common ailments, af-
fecting perhaps 20 per cent of all
patients, are dropsy and liver in
flammation, caused by malnutri-
ton and vitamin deficiency. But
labelling the diseases for what they
are labels a doctor as a 'rightist.'
Surely he can't believe there's
malnutrition in the peoples para
disc? Is the patient possibly
malingering?"
The Party Line also breaches
that Western physicians study
medicine with the aim of gaining
personal fame and profit, he said.
This is one of the reasons why
Chinese medical men have cut
their ties with Western medicine
so completely that even faced with
massive cholera epidemic on the
mainland they could not bring
themselves to communicate the
simple facts of the case to their
Western colleagues beyond h e
Bamboo curtain, he said.
Seldom in history has a medi-
cal profession so reversed t h e
course of progress as has medi-
cine in Red China today" Con
ZaleZ said
When one realizes that h S
profession serves the worlds most
populous country, one can en-
vision an eventual medical disaster
which could make last years 50,-
600 cholera deaths seem like a
mere drop in the bucket
attempting to evaluate the i'm
pact on the world of China's great
leap backward in medicine is al
most impossible If the Reds per-
sist in ignoring epidemics and hid
ing their presence from the rest
of the unsuspecting world it is not
impossible to foresee some future
disaster outside the Bamboo Cur
tain.
But even if the free world es-
capes the perils of Chinese prac-
tice, what about the fate of the
600 million Chinese who today are
being treated by perhaps the most
undertrained, medievally oriented,
and politically infected m i c a
profession in the world? 1t is their
plight which commands our SYM
pathy and their fate which makes
China's great leap backward in
medicine the terrible human