At the heart of all traditional systems of medicine is the idea of an animating force that underpins wellbeing. In Chinese medicine, the term is ch’i (pronounced ‘chee’), in Ayurveda (and yoga) it’s called prana, and in western culture the closest translation is ‘vital force’.
Hippocrates, who is considered the father of modern medicine, was an avowed ‘vitalist’, meaning he believed there was an animating force that made living organisms fundamentally different to, and subject to different forces than, non-living entities.
We have record of many failed experiments that tried to measure this vital force, such as weighing an animal just before being killed and again immediately afterwards to ascertain if the vital force weighed anything. However, a bit like the search for the legendary Loch Ness Monster, there has never been a conclusive sighting. As science was increasingly able to explain more about the physical and chemical functioning of the body (and nature as a whole) the idea of vitalism became superseded by a mechanistic model.
Now we have a schism between traditional forms of medicine, rooted to their tenets of vitality, and western medicine firmly in the camp of considering vitalism a pseudoscience.
What is interesting, however, is that many practices that come from these traditional models are still thriving in the West. Yoga and meditation have never been more popular, and healing arts like acupuncture are firmly entrenched in our allied health landscape. What has underpinned acupuncture’s acceptance in the West is the high-quality evidence of clinical efficacy. What that means is that even if you don’t accept the theories that underpin acupuncture practice, a fair-minded person, who is up to date with the research would have to accept that it can work. At the same time, it’s fair enough to say we don’t understand how it works from a Western scientific paradigm. So, we have a gulf between the traditional philosophies and the modern perspectives.
Personally, I’m quite comfortable with that gulf (as an acupuncturist, of course I should be!). It seems entirely rational to me that our current understanding of the human body, whilst mesmerisingly impressive, is still a long way from complete. Who would have thought a generation ago that studying the gut microbiome would yield such medical riches?
The idea that there is a fundamental difference between inanimate and living beings that we have not yet found a way to measure seems not so far-fetched. Further, I would say that treatments and practices that cultivate vitality and its associated wellbeing, like yoga and acupuncture, meet a very important need that in many ways western medicine has until recently largely neglected – the cultivation and promotion of wellbeing.
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