Bokert, a modest, friendly, elderly German man, is a respected sinologist. He has given himself a Chinese name: Manchu Biao, which means “to refute with a full sense of responsibility the shortcomings of Western lucid science”.
He was the director of the Institute of East Asian Studies at the University of Munich, Germany, and is known in Europe not only as a sinologist on par with Joseph Li, but also as a Chinese medical scientist. He was fluent in German, French, English, Latin, and Russian, and spoke Chinese quite well. He had an extensive book collection, with nearly 10,000 volumes of Chinese books. He read the Four Books and Five Classics, Laozi and Mencius, Tang poems and Song lyrics, Red Mansions, Water Margin, and even the biography of the Ping Demon, all the books of Cosmos. He also read many Chinese medical texts and modern Chinese medical works, including the Yellow Emperor’s Classic of Internal Medicine and the Compendium of Materia Medica.
During his 40 years of teaching and research, he has edited and published books on Chinese medicine, including Clinical Pharmacology of Chinese Medicine, Prescriptions of Chinese Medicine, Acupuncture and Moxibustion of Chinese Medicine, Assertion of Chinese Medicine, Traditional Chinese Medicine, and Basic Theory of Chinese Medicine. Among them, his book “Basic Theory of Chinese Medicine” was popular in Europe and America, translated into many languages and published many times.
He has come to China five times since 1979 for the revitalization and development of TCM. His Chinese colleagues and friends affectionately call him “Lao Man”, or “Professor Man”, “Mr. Man”. He has been described as a living Baikouen. His views on the development of Chinese medicine have been widely quoted by scholars in China. Not long ago, Professor Birkut was invited to Beijing. He gave a lecture on “Why Contemporary Humanity Cannot Live Without Chinese Medicine” at the “Seminar on Chinese Medicine Development Strategy” sponsored by China Institute of Science and Technology Information, which was widely recognized and highly praised by the participants. After the meeting, he was interviewed by a reporter from Science and Technology China.
I hope China will not cultivate fake TCM doctors” Science and Technology China: Professor Mann, you said in your lecture that without TCM, I would have ceased to exist long ago. Is it that you consider the study of TCM as a lifelong career and as important as your life, or is it that TCM has greatly benefited your health and even saved your life?
Paukert: I should say that both meanings are present. Back in the 1950s, I was overwhelmed by the depth of traditional Chinese culture. I made many Chinese friends and learned Chinese from them. Studying at the University of Paris, I was fortunate to meet Dr. Joseph Lee, which deepened my interest in Sinology. My doctoral dissertation was on the study of the Daozang. After obtaining my doctorate, I returned to Germany to study Western medicine and at the same time studied the Introduction to Chinese Medicine compiled by the Nanjing College of Traditional Chinese Medicine. Since then I have had an inseparable relationship with Chinese medicine, which has become the main cause of my life.
As a TCM practitioner, I certainly know the health care methods of TCM and have applied them widely in practice. One year when I was out in the cold, my shoulder hurt so much that I couldn’t lift my arm after getting off the plane. At first, I was treated with Western medicine, but I couldn’t see any effect for a long time. In 1989, I suffered from knee osteoarthritis and was first given cortisone by a Western doctor, which did not work. A Chinese herbalist named Zhou gave me acupuncture and moxibustion with Chinese herbs, and I was completely recovered in less than 6 months.
Technology China: Do your wife, family and friends also believe in TCM, and do they also ask TCM practitioners to see them when they are sick?
Boket: Of course! This time I came to Beijing and gave my wife a Chinese herbal medicine from Pingxin Tang in Wangfujing, and brought back some Chinese medicines that are not easily available in Europe! Technology China: I heard that you can use Chinese medicine to diagnose illnesses and prescribe Chinese medicine?
Paukert: Of course. I have been studying Chinese medicine for decades, and in the 60s I studied with an old Chinese doctor in Taiwan, who had a very special pulse diagnosis and a good diagnosis. I’m also a good Chinese medicine practitioner.
Technology China: In Germany, how many people recognize TCM?
Bockert: Germany is the European Community country that uses the most botanical medicines, occupying about 70% of the European herbal market. According to the survey, 58% of Germans take natural medicines, and 85% of Germans think that natural medicines are effective and have low toxicity. However, most of the Chinese herbalists who come to Germany and other European and American countries nowadays are not of high level. Some of them go to China to study Chinese medicine for a few years or even a few months and then open a Chinese medicine clinic. There are not many Chinese medicine practitioners who can really use Chinese medicine theory and methods to diagnose and treat diseases, and many of them do not know how to look, smell and treat. They are actually fake TCM doctors.
Chinese medicine is a science, and I hope that China will strictly control the training standards and not train such fake TCM practitioners, which will have a bad impact on the spread of TCM in the world. Really good Chinese medicine is also not easy to buy, and some of them are still imported from other countries, and the efficacy of the medicine is not guaranteed, which very much affects the reputation of Chinese medicine in foreign countries. Chinese medicine is a mature science
Technology China: You have said on various occasions that TCM is a mature science. We believe this is the result of your years of research and deep understanding of Chinese medicine. In your opinion, do Chinese and Western medicine each have their own strengths and weaknesses, and what are their main strengths and weaknesses? Paukert: This is a very interesting question, and I would like to say a little more about it. There are many people abroad who think that Chinese medicine is not scientific. Strangely enough, there are actually many Chinese herbalists who are skeptical of the scientific nature of Chinese medicine. I have lectured in many parts of the world, and I have repeatedly emphasized that Chinese medicine is a mature science. This is the conclusion I have reached after decades of research.
What does it mean to be scientific? In my opinion, science must meet three criteria.
First, it must be based on positive experience. “Positive experience” is the actual results achieved in response to solid facts. Positive facts are opposed to subjective speculation, leaving the facts, science will lose the necessary conditions for the formation. Therefore, “positive experience” is the accumulation of empirical factual information that can be repeated and verified.
Second, the singularity of the statement. That is, in a certain context, the meaning of a specific term is single. The content of the stated are consistent provisions, and exclude other meanings, that is, even slightly similar meaning.
Third, the strict and reasonable synthesis of empirical information. “Rigorous” means not arbitrary, vague and approximate; “reasonable synthesis” means a logical connection from the collected empirical information. This logical connection is the theoretical system of the discipline. This theoretical system enables people to make confident and flexible inferences about future events quickly, and to recreate the original results.
According to these three criteria, the various sciences of the twentieth century can be roughly divided into exact sciences, primitive sciences, and pseudosciences. A few disciplines belong to the exact sciences, such as physics, chemistry, and astronomy, which almost fully meet the three criteria and are exact sciences. Most disciplines meet only the first one and can be called primitive sciences. If they leave the hard facts of positive experience, they should be called pseudoscience. Except for a part of Chinese medicine, which is a remnant of primitive science and pseudoscience, the vast majority or the main body of Chinese medicine should be called a precise science.
The Yellow Emperor’s Classic of Internal Medicine, Shennong’s Classic of the Materia Medica, and the Treatise on Typhoid and Miscellaneous Diseases, among other ancient Chinese medical books, show that China has formed a more complete theoretical system of Chinese medicine more than 2,000 years ago, and has its own pharmacological monographs early on, establishing the theoretical system and therapeutic principles of Chinese medicine in the diagnosis and treatment.
Chinese medicine considers the human body as an organic whole, and the internal organs, meridians, limbs and bones are all interconnected and affect each other. TCM believes that the human body and the natural world are also an inseparable whole. The basic rules of diagnosis and treatment of diseases developed by TCM are the most outstanding features of TCM and the unique advantages of Western medicine that cannot be replaced. I fully agree with these concluding points. Chinese medicine is one of the most informative, organized and effective medical sciences. Western medicine, on the other hand, is only a few hundred years old and has developed in great strides for only a few decades. It should be seen that it was developed only with the help of the methods and theories of physics and chemistry, as a technique for its own use, and in fact it has no basis in pharmacology in the true sense.
Fundamentally speaking, Western medicine is still only a typical biomedicine or animal medicine, and is far from developing into human medicine in the real sense. It applies the results of experiments on rats to humans. After all, there is a world of difference between humans and rats. Of course, the medical technology developed by Western medicine based on physical and chemical methods is very valuable, but technology and science are two different things.
Western medicine has entered a methodological dead end, and it cannot make precise and specific judgments about individual dysfunctions and treat them as Chinese medicine can. It is common for Western medicine to use drugs blindly, using antibiotics and hormones at every turn, and taking them regularly can easily cause drug dependence and destroy the body’s own immunity. The abuse of antibiotics and hormones has led to hypertension, heart disease, blood clots and other conditions being seen everywhere.
I started out as a Western medical student, and I am also qualified to practice medicine, having been a teacher at the medical faculty of the University of Munich. I am not qualified to criticize Western medicine if I do not understand it. Of course, I am in no way saying that Western medicine is useless, but here I am speaking from a comparison of science and technology. In the long run, Chinese medicine should have a broader prospect than Western medicine. Therefore, TCM is not only the pride of China, but also the common wealth of all mankind. Contemporary mankind cannot do without Chinese medicine
Technology China: Since TCM is a mature science with a broad future, shouldn’t it have the conditions for globalization? Are you optimistic about the globalization of TCM?
Bockert: It is difficult to answer this question with a simple conclusion like optimistic or not optimistic. At the moment, the situation is not optimistic. In the long run, if Chinese colleagues and Chinese leaders are sufficiently aware of the current problems and start to correct them, it is inevitable that Chinese medicine will go global. As the theme of my speech is, “Contemporary mankind cannot do without Chinese medicine”! China is throwing away its own treasures as garbage
Technology China: In your opinion, what are the main problems in the current development of TCM, or what are the factors affecting the globalization of TCM?
Boquete: The biggest problem is that China itself has ignored or even thrown away its own treasures as garbage. This is very distressing.
Chinese medicine is valued by the national authorities in China, but there is not enough awareness of the scientific principles of Chinese medicine. This is the essence of the problem, as I said earlier: there are actually many Chinese doctors who doubt the scientific nature of Chinese medicine. China has so far failed to conduct epistemological research and sound scientific inquiry to determine the status of its scientific tradition, and has failed to give humanitarian attention to the well-being of all mankind.
For nearly 100 years, many people have stubbornly believed that Western medicine can be used to discover and improve Chinese medicine, and in doing so, Chinese medicine has been subjected to dogmatic contempt and cultural destruction. The Chinese authorities and many physicians have shown incomprehensible national nihilism, failing to recognize the scientific nature of their own national medicine, failing to seriously evaluate and determine the value of Chinese medicine, and pursuing the fashionable, Western standards and terminology to transform Chinese medicine and stifle it.
Sadly, this situation continues to be a vicious circle: in China, although there is an administrative regulation that “Chinese and Western medicine are of equal importance”, in fact, Chinese medicine does not enjoy the same academic status as Western medicine in terms of medical treatment. There are few institutions dedicated to the study of TCM, little funding, and, more dangerously, a biased approach to research. Researchers have failed to conduct in-depth research on the basic methodology and epistemology of TCM, and cannot substantiate the scientific characteristics of TCM with profound and convincing arguments.
In China, discrimination against TCM is evident everywhere. There are 1.57 million Western physicians in China and only 270,000 Chinese physicians. In general hospitals, the ratio of Chinese to Western doctors is about 1:9 or even 5:95. Even stranger, this problem exists in TCM research institutions and TCM schools, where 90% of medical records are written in Western diagnostic and pathological terms, and less than 10,000 people can diagnose and prescribe using traditional TCM theories and methods, according to one account, and these people are old. If this is true, it would be tragic!
All indications are that Chinese medicine is on a steady downward spiral toward decline. If this tendency is not reversed quickly and forcefully, this medicine, which once reached the most mature and effective level in theory and practice, will become obsolete. This would be irresponsible not only to the Chinese people, but also to the people of the world. Because the decline of Chinese medicine is not only a medical problem, but also a severe social problem that will have a great impact on the economy of a country. China should overcome its cultural inferiority complex
Tech China: If you were to write a prescription for the problems you see, what would you write?
I believe that China is capable of solving these problems, but I have a few comments to make.
The root cause of China’s own failure to treat TCM as a science and to pay attention to its development is a sense of cultural inferiority. In fact, China should not have a cultural inferiority complex. China has a long history and a splendid traditional culture. For thousands of years, China has been a cultural powerhouse in the world and has made significant contributions to human civilization. China has fallen behind only in the last two hundred years, but this is a social backwardness, a backwardness in management, and a backwardness in economy, not a backwardness in cultural traits.
The Chinese people should overcome their cultural inferiority complex, carry forward their excellent traditional culture with integrity, vigorously promote and develop TCM, and “give TCM a proper name” in the world.
China should strengthen the teaching and research of TCM. China should train a large number of herbalists who can really use the theory and methods of TCM to diagnose and treat diseases, not 10,000, but 500,000 or 1 million people. In this way, there will be fewer fake TCM doctors sent to countries around the world. China should set the standard of Chinese medicine, certainly not the standard to be judged by Western medical methods, and make it gradually the only standard to be followed internationally. This will eliminate the confusing situation in the international market where traditional Chinese medicine is delineated by plant medicine, or western medicine standards. TCM has its own standard, and using someone else’s standard is not TCM anymore.
There are three urgent things to do now.
One is to try to make some first-class scholars in China master the epistemology, that is, the epistemology about modern science that is methodologically compatible with Chinese medicine.
The second is to inherit and develop the treasures of traditional Chinese medicine.
The third is to systematically develop modern techniques belonging to Chinese medicine itself. For example, the development of new techniques for the identification of Chinese medicine; new techniques for the functional assertion of drugs; methodologies and specific methods for the treatment of functional or degenerative diseases in Chinese medicine that have not been included in the medical literature so far, etc. These tasks depend on Chinese colleagues and require extensive international cooperation.
STC: Have you been communicating and collaborating with the Chinese units for a long time?
Bockert: Yes. I have been cooperating and exchanging with China for many years. I have signed several protocols with the Chinese side, cooperated in the compilation of the Chinese and English “Dictionary of Chinese Medical Norms”, adapted the “Tutorial of Traditional Acupuncture”, wrote the “Introduction to Chinese Medicine”, and so on. I am very enthusiastic about these efforts because the only way to get things done in Chinese medicine is to get it right first.
I am often willing to say: I don’t know. That seems to be my mantra. But really, I don’t know why many people in China are so slow to change when they already see the problems with TCM; and I don’t know what else I can do for TCM in my lifetime. But one thing is for sure, I will keep trying.