page_title: Traditional Chinese medicine
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Traditional Chinese medicine / History
caption_attribution_description: The Compendium of Materia Medica (Traditional Chinese: 本草綱目; Simplified Chinese: 本草纲目; pinyin: Běncǎo Gāngmù) is a pharmaceutical text written by Li Shizhen (1518-1593 AD) during the Ming Dynasty of China. This edition was published at AD 1593, therefore the copyright is expired.
context_page_description: Traditional Chinese medicine includes various forms of herbal medicine, acupuncture, cupping therapy, gua sha, massage, bonesetting, exercise, and dietary therapy. It has been described as "fraught with pseudoscience", and the majority of its treatments as having no logical mechanism of action.
  TCM is said to be based on more than 3,500 years of Chinese medical practice and works such as the Huangdi Neijing. The practice is widely used in the Sinosphere, where it has a long history; it is now also practiced outside of China. One of the basic tenets of TCM is that the body's vital energy is circulating through channels called meridians having branches connected to bodily organs and functions. The concept of vital energy is pseudoscience. Concepts of the body and of disease used in TCM reflect its ancient origins and its emphasis on dynamic processes over material structure, similar to European humoral theory.
context_section_description: TCM is widely used in the Sinosphere, where it has a long history. The doctrines of Chinese medicine are rooted in books such as the Yellow Emperor's Inner Canon and the Treatise on Cold Damage, as well as in cosmological notions such as yin–yang and the five phases. Starting in the 1950s, these precepts were standardized in the People's Republic of China, including attempts to integrate them with modern notions of anatomy and pathology. In the 1950s, the Chinese government promoted a systematized form of TCM.
caption: The Compendium of Materia Medica is a pharmaceutical text written by Li Shizhen (1518–1593 CE) during the Ming dynasty of China. This edition was published in 1593.
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