What I learned

   Today, I learned about Chinese and Western Medicine. Every culture or society, even very ancient ones that pre-date written history, seem to have had some form of medicine that has been used to heal the sick among its members. There are some remedies that are no longer around, perhaps because they were based on superstition or maybe the details of the technique are now lost to modern doctors. There are some forms of medicine, however, that have stood the test of time and are still used today. Two of the most popular and commonly used forms of medicine used by modern doctors are what can be called traditional Chinese medicine and Western medicine. Although these two systems share the goal of making people better, they can be quite disparate when it comes to how patients have their illness diagnosed and more particularly, who these physicians view the nature and source of illness in general as well as the techniques they use reach the diagnosis itself. Much of this can be put down to differences in culture and philosophy and the overall theme of health versus healing can been seen in these two aspects.