Traditional versus modern Acupuncture

5. COMBINATION OF MODERN AP AND WESTERN MEDICINE

In the Veteran's General Hospital, a huge, excellently equipped Army-Navy-Airforce Hospital in Taipei, one finds specialists in Oriental Medicine, specialists in western medicine and (more significantly) specialists in both systems. It follows that the diagnostic and therapeutic methods depend largely on which doctors are consulted. All the standard lab tests, clinical and neurological tests etc, are available, if required.

In China, the Barefoot Doctor is a technician with limited training, capable of diagnosing and treating the common and simple day to day conditions with reasonable accuracy. Where treatment is unsuccessful or the case appears to be more complex, the patient is referred one step higher to persons who have a longer, more formal training in Oriental and/or western medicine. If they need help, the patient is referred further up the pyramid, which is topped by first rate physicians, surgeons and oriental medical specialists.

Effective therapy is more important than putting traditional or modern names on the origin and nature of the clinical condition. AP therapy, as is the case with diagnosis, is an art-science as varied as there are practitioners. However, most medical AP practitioners (including those at the Veterans General Hospital, Taipei) use pragmatic or Cookbook AP in the majority of their cases: knee problems GB34, SP09, ST35, Hsi Yen (Knee Eyes), BL40; sciatica BL23,37,40,60, GB30,34 etc. They use their favourite prescriptions for each type of case, always including any Ahshi points found. This is also the case with practitioners of western medicine or veterinary medicine.

Thus, we see marked similarities between the actual field problems of diagnosis and therapy in the East and West. The bottom line for all therapists is "what will I use to treat this case of osteoarthritis?" etc, or "My patient's sciatica did not respond to BL23....GB34; what should I try now?".

6. THE FUTURE ?

Computers have invaded social, academic, professional and business aspects of our lives. Information technology is likely to become a commodity as valuable as oil or gold.

Clerics are using databases of the Gospels/Bible to construct sermons on "war", "love", justice" etc. Summaries of research papers on medicine, vet medicine, biology etc are already on databases and available to database subscribers for searches using any key-words of interest.

In the near future, we will have access at reasonable price to computers of enormous speed and storage space. Voice input and output will replace/supplement the keyboard/screen. With advances in computer graphics, the receptionist will be capable of taking a preliminary case history, to indicate the location of lesions (by interaction with the database and graphic display unit) and to generate a list of possible diagnoses (from by comparison of signs/lesions with the database lists). He/she will be able to output graphic charts of relevant points for the patient's complaints on the plotter.

At that stage, the patient and charts will be presented to the doctor, whose job will be to check (or alter) the facts on the computerised case-history. The doctor will scan the patient, using computer-controlled Kirlian-Voll-Akabane methods to determine which Channels are imbalanced.

When the most appropriate diagnosis is selected, the appropriate therapy (including the AP point prescription) will be selected and the patient will be directed to the therapy room for treatment. There, computer-controlled robots, assisted by optical scanners, will insert the needles at the appropriate points and will monitor the clinical response using electro-magnetic measurements of the vital energy at the AP points. George Orwell, eat your heart out!

Joking aside, to get the best mental satisfaction from Cookbook AP, the practitioner must know the basic rules of choosing points, so that the Cookbook recipe can be best modified to the patient's needs. Computers can store vast amounts of data (more than a human brain can recall accurately) but the "dead" information must be assessed and adapted by a trained human mind to be made really "alive".

Finally, the computer can not give the most vital of all therapies: the gift of unselfish love and compassion in response to the plea for help from a suffering patient.