Sunday, March 13, 2011

Western and Chinese medicine studying acupuncture: Difference

For a long time, I've noticed one big difference betweeen traditional Chinese medicine and western medical science in studying acupuncture: the latter almost always fails to specify the acupuncture points. People with basic knowledge of acupuncture, in fact, both acupuncture and moxibustion (AM), know that different acupuncture points serve different purposes, much like different drugs treat different diseases. Since western science publications list herb names when they're used in the research, and names of the AM points are already internationalized, I don't see why the names are not generally listed in equally scrutinized research papers.