What is Traditional Chinese Medicine?

TCM, or traditional Chinese medicine, has been in the headlines since the awarding of the 2015 Nobel Prize in Medicine to researcher Youyou Tu for her discovery of the malaria drug Artemisinin from Artemisia annua described in ancient Chinese literature.¹

The Nobel prize award signals long-deserved global acceptance of TCM, which is beginning to take a place alongside orthodox medicine as a viable and life-saving medical modality.

While the word “traditional” (as opposed to “alternative”) is sometimes used to designate modern orthodox medicine, with respect to Chinese medicine it refers to millennia-old practices that include diagnosis, the prescription of herbs, …read more