Traditional Medicine in Asia

After the early 20th century, once the
rule of the feudal dynasties came to an end,
this education system stopped operating.
This had little impact on the health services
available to the common people, as most
of the practitioners they consulted were
trained in the master–apprentice style, or
had learnt from their family members or
elders. The latter type of practitioner was
held in high esteem by the people. There
were other practitioners who studied
medicine on their own. These included
literati who had failed the imperial
examination for officialdom, or shifted their
interest from the management of state
affairs to the management of diseases. The
large volume of medical literature was of
great use to those who wanted to teach
themselves. According to the catalogue
compiled jointly by the China Academy of
Traditional Chinese Medicine and the
Peking National Library, the number of
medical works collected before 1959 was
7661. 14 Most of them were written in the
classical literary style, which ordinary
people could not follow easily, but the
literati could. Since the Chinese literati were
Confucian scholars, those who practised
medicine were also called Confucian
physicians.
In the 19th century, modern Western
medicine was introduced into China,
posing a serious challenge to TCM,
including the TCM educational systems.
Private medical schools of TCM, run by
famous physicians, began to appear by the
end of the 19th century. The schools of
Western medicine – initially the missionary
medical schools, and later public and
private medical schools – soon surpassed
the TCM schools, both in number and in
scale. In the late 1940s, TCM schools were
on the verge of extinction.
Harmonization of traditional and modern medicine
Establishment of colleges and
universities of traditional
medicine
After the founding of new China in 1949,
in order to implement the new policy of
developing traditional medicine, it was
urgently felt that the educational system for
TCM should be promoted to a higher level.
In 1956, four TCM colleges were established
in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou
and Chendu, four big cities situated in the
northern, southern, eastern and western
regions of China. Since then, a regular
higher educational system has been
developed for the training of traditional
medical personnel. The single-minded
devotion of the Government resulted in the
rapid expansion of the number of TCM
colleges, which increased from five in 1957
to 30 in 1995. The number of students
enrolled increased from 1021 in 1957 to
39,786 in 1995 (Table 2). Furthermore,
since the late 1990s, some TCM colleges
have been promoted to university level. The
duration of training has been extended to
seven years for the specialty of general
medicine, and five years each for
acupuncture and traditional health
protection and rehabilitation. It should be
noted that China’s traditional medicine is
not limited to the traditional medicine of
the Han nationality; it also includes the
traditional systems of medicine of minority
nationalities, such as Tibetan medicine.
Among the traditional medical colleges,
one is a college of minority medicine.
Parallel to the growth of colleges and
universities, secondary schools of TCM were
also established, and there has been a
steady increase both in the number of
schools and of students enrolled. Other
than the regular schools, correspondence
schools have also been started for
paramedical professionals to give them the
opportunity of receiving practical training.
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