East v. West: An Informal Case Study in Approaches to Wellness

Modern medicine.  Naturopathic medicine.  Ayurvedic medicine.  Allopathic.  Pharmaceutical.  Holistic.  Wellness.

The list goes on.  

We have included such a vast vocabulary for health practices that it is often difficult to know one from the other.  As such, the umbrella terms ‘Eastern’ and ‘Western’ medicine have been popularized.  ‘Eastern' is taken to imply the natural approach to health, such as the use of herbs to treat sickness or the routine of wellness-creating habits to ward off bodily ailments.  Whereas ‘Western’ implies what is deemed as a ‘scientific’ approach, using technology and chemistry solutions to identify and treat ailments.  

Eastern medicine receives praise for its holistic approach, viewing the body, mind, and their circumstances in totality.  Supporters of Eastern medicine celebrate the use of natural remedies, spanning from ginger for alleviating digestive issues to burdock leaves for treating wounds.  The Eastern tradition takes every factor into account when evaluating a patient - work and home environments, family history, personal habits and hygiene, diet, and practically anything else that is known to influence the body’s self-regulation.  

However, some oppose natural health practices due to concern about consistency of results or lack of major scientific studies.  Even the persistence often necessary to maintain wellness without intervention from ‘advanced’ tools and medicines raises opposition, as many don’t believe that the majority of people have the time and mental energy to foster such regularity in their healthy habits.  In short, Eastern medicine is subject to doubt because it doesn’t often offer a ‘quick fix’.

Western medicine, on the other hand, has become the trusted preference of mainstream culture, due to its academic foundations and the mass of resources devoted to its research and development.  Drugs tailored to every ailment and symptom or tools designed for precision and super-human observation have positioned Western medicine as the most thorough and reliable of approaches.  

Yet, the modern school of medicine also receives widespread pushback, increasingly so in recent years, as it often treats patients with a “one size fits all” solution, rather than attending to the unique body of each individual.  This lends diagnoses and treatments to error, as there will always be outliers even amidst the most convincing of scientific data.

History paints a different story of medicine; not one of opposing traditions, but one of a continuum of progress, with important developments and practices studding the timeline in each era.  Eastern medicine as we know it is not anymore from the ‘East’ as from modern day Europe.  It is the composite of knowledge from early civilizations including Rome, China, Greece, India, and several others.  Western medicine, on the other hand, may be traced most closely to the practice of chemistry arising in the Persian empire, spanning as far East as modern day Pakistan. Western medicine was enhanced by the later spread of Judeo-Christian and Islamic pursuits of science. 

Despite the slight distinctions between early medicine, each of the aforementioned empires contributed discoveries to both the holistic tradition of health and the allopathic.  Rome, China, Greece, and India all honored some idea of balance in the body.  Though balance was represented differently in each culture, it had the same impact of encouraging practitioners to view patients in totality.  Recognition of the interconnectedness of the body was central to each ideology.

In India, patients were not only prescribed herbal or lifestyle treatments, but were directed specifically in when to eat or drink certain things, when to sleep, how to wash eyes and teeth, and even what oils to put on their body.  All factors were to be accounted for.  Physicians determined what was needed using all possible senses, even listening for changes or abnormalities in a patient’s bodily functions.  Yet, even as early as the 1st century CE, surgeries as advanced as cataract and tumor removal and even nose jobs were practiced in India, thoroughly documented by the surgeon Sushruta.

Similarly, almost four thousand years before the advent of modern medicine, China was developing practices such as acupuncture, which are still in use today.  The original use of acupuncture was to balance yin and yang, the opposing life forces honored in Chinese philosophy, differing from its modern application for stress and pain management.  The early development and continued practice of acupuncture suggest that changing language surrounding any effective medical practice might be nothing more than a reflection of cultural changes, rather than a shift in the practice itself.

China, still standing millennia later, also began early pharmaceutical practices, such as the use of iron to treat anemia and Chaulmoogra oil to treat leprosy.  Both treatments have since been globally employed and are still in use today.

The ‘Western’ empires of Greece and Rome may have been even more holistic in their nature than their Eastern counterparts.  In Greece, Hippocrates proclaimed the Hippocratic Oath of goodwill and sincere human-interest.  He turned his attention away from drugs and other such additional health measures and towards diet, occupation, and climate.  His medical wisdom, which he recorded thoroughly, was held as the ultimate word in the west until the Renaissance nearly two thousand years after his death.

Later, the reigning Roman Empire made little progress in medical science but began a golden era of public health advancement.  Institutions such as hospitals, gyms, and public baths became commonplace.  Clean water and waste disposal systems were developed.  Mental health was treated with soothing music and mental exercises for the first time.  Massage therapy and related treatments were used as a proactive measure to encourage bodily balance, ‘opposing’ the laid back Greek approach of only lifestyle changes.

Meanwhile, the Persian empire was on a quest for gold.  Chemistry became a prominent study, as scientists fought to find a way to create gold from other materials.  As a byproduct of this experimentation and the knowledge it brought with it, they were also able to create new pharmaceuticals, diverting from the use of herbs and other raw materials for the first time.  An expansive book of surgery, the first illustrated volume, was compiled in what is now Spain, the western boarder of the Persian empire.  Such achievements suggest that Persia may have laid the foundations of what is now known as ‘Western medicine’.

These early empires are the foundation upon which all medicine now stands.  So where do ‘Western’ and ‘Eastern’ medicine actually start to diverge?  The shift began, perhaps, at the Renaissance in 1500s Europe.  For the first time, cutting into bodies post-mortem was permitted, allowing significant growth in the understanding of human anatomy.  This was also an era of innovation, resulting in the creation of advanced tools such as thermometers and microscopes.

Each century thereafter came with its own achievement.  The Scientific Revolution ensued, continuing through the 1700s, leading to more thorough practices for testing and collecting scientific data, as well as the advancement of tools to assist with this.  The 1800s produced the Germ Theory, shedding light on infections and the need for preventative measures.  Later in the century, anesthesia was developed, allowing surgery to go beyond any prior limitations.  

All of this specialization created a need for medical schools and the uniform education of practitioners.  In the 1900s, higher education became a requirement for doctors and other healthcare professionals.  This was accompanied by a wave of technological development in medical tools and instruments as well as pharmaceuticals.  This both required and allowed more rigorous studies to be done for diseases and treatments, leading us to Western medicine as we know it today.

The medical revolution of the past three centuries has been a sweeping benefit to mankind.  Yet, it must not be forgotten that the roots of modernity in the naturopathic history of health are still an essential foundation.  If Western medicine is the icing, Eastern medicine is the cake.  Incidentally, icing and cake are not recommended by either.

Even a glimpse at the history of medicine demonstrates that concerns for the balance of the body and the external and dietary factors that affect it are so essential to health that this was the central practice of medicine globally, for several millennia.  To remove knowledge of the natural world and the way our body depends on it from medicine would be to take the wheels off a car - the wheel was a benefit to society for more than five thousand years before the car became the normal mode of transportation, incorporating the wheel into something faster and more complex.

In an outcry against modern medicine, many voices have come forward to express that it has gone too far.  Some looser applications of modern medicine have endorsed the falsehood that it can fix any ailment even when the environmental or dietary factors of a person’s wellbeing are working against them.  

Perhaps the early empires were onto something important in their belief that health requires balance.  Yes, health requires balance internally and environmentally.  But now, with the vast and wondrous application of technology to health, balance is also required between holistic and modern health.  Eastern and Western medicine must meet in the middle and shake hands, to allow each to help where it is strongest.

The regular habits and self-care encouraged by so-called Eastern medicine must be normalized, so that everyone can have a foundation of health to stand on.  Without mindfulness regarding how we can best care for ourselves, we open our bodies up to an attack of new and foreign entities.  In a time when every development is something totally new to the human body and the hundreds of thousands of years of evolution that have gone into building it, it is more important than ever to connect with what the body knows.  With this, we can fortify ourselves.

There is a time and a place for Western medicine.  The job of Eastern medicine is to delay that time and diminish the need.  When Western medicine becomes necessary, the Eastern practice of attending to the whole body and listening its response must not be forgotten.  When the Western power of technology and the Eastern power of nature work together, our health has a better chance of success than history could ever have suggested.