The "Chinese Medicine and Culture" to be indexed in ESCI

Last week it was announced that the "Chinese Medicine and Culture" is to be indexed in ESCI, and become discoverable on the Web of Science. CMC will receive its first Impact Factor (IF) in 2025, and all articles published after 2022 will be counted towards the author's h-index. --- I have been involved with CMC since its launch in 2018, having being appointed as Associate Editor and Editorial Board Member from the very beginning. I think this is a great achievement for Chinese Medicine. The CMC is the first TCM Humanities publication to achieve such a status. - In March, Charlie Buck and I were guest editors in chief for a historical issue on the global cross cultural integration of TCM in the west, which made an enormous impact on the TCM world in China and abroad.

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How to explain Chinese medicine to your patients

Most new patients at the hospital, regularly ask for an explanation of Chinese medicine , so that they understand how the treatment works. In the United States, the religious, or those with a background in science are often very suspicious of a system that is being frequently advertised as the product of vague eastern practices , or is surrounded by mystery and/or encompassing near occult methods. Many of my acupuncture students, sometimes also find it difficult to come up with a clear definition that doesn’t include the keywords: qi, energies, yin and yang, five elements , and 5000 years of TCM history . An attempt to explain it as a method of using needles to stimulate “channels and meridians” , or using herbs to access the internal organs according to ancient experiences of the Chinese people, again doesn’t sound scientifically convincing. From my experiences in a hospital setting, when the religious or t...

Historical traumatology and making wooden splints at the hospital

I t was back in 2018, and I was still working at the Sports Trauma Hospital in Guangzhou, China. That day, a young gentleman comes to the clinic with a martial arts injury. Physical examination/palpation of the limb and also an x-ray revealed a fractured ulna. Typically, in these types of situations, the standard of care at the hospital, required that the patient moves to the inpatient department for further evaluation, processing and to await surgery. During the surgery, the specialist would open a small incision, realign the bone and then secure it in place with pins or metal implants. However, this approach is not always necessary. In the not-so-distant past, for a simple fracture of the ulna with less than 50% displacement and less than 10% angulation, a simple cast and plenty of rest would be sufficient. In any case, the patient outright refused surgery and casting. He simply asked that we use traditional bone-setting to realign the bone, and then secure it in place with wood...

The closing down of US Acupuncture Schools

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Navigating through the sea of medicine

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