Comments on Nigel Wiseman's A Practical Dictionary of Chinese Medicine (Ⅱ) ——On the Use of Western Medical Terms to Express the Concepts of Traditional Chinese Medicine

Mr. Wiseman believes that Western medical terms chosen as equivalents of Chinese medical terms should be the words known to all speakers and not requiring any specialist knowledge or instrumentation to understand or identify, and strictly technical Western medical terms should be avoided regardless of their conceptual conformity to the Chinese terms. Accordingly, many inappropriate Western medical terms are selected as English equivalents by the authors of the Dictionary, and on the other hand, many ready-made appropriate Western medical terms are replaced by loan English terms with the Chinese style of word formation. The experience gained in solving the problems of translating Western medical terms into Chinese when West- ern medicine was first introduced to China is helpful for translating Chinese medical terms into English. However, the authors of the Dictionary adhere to their own opinions, ignoring others＂ experience. The English terms thus created do not reflect the genuine meaning of the Chinese terms, but make the English glossary in chaos. The so-called true face of traditional Chinese revealed by such terms is merely the Chinese custom of word formation and metaphoric rhetoric. In other words, traditional Chinese medicine is not regarded as a system of medicine but merely some Oriental folklore.

On Standard Nomenclature of Basic Chinese Medical Terms(IV)

ETIOLOGICAL TERMSIn traditional Chinese medicine, etiology is commonly called "cause of disease". The various factors that may cause disease are called "pathogenic factors". In the past they were classified into three categories: "exogenous factors", "endogenous factors", and "non-exo-endogenous factors". In the modern textbooks this tri-causal hypothesis is not so widely used, while a new classification has been developed.

On Standard Nomenclature of Basic Chinese Medical Terms(Ⅲ B)

Blood in Western medicine and血〔xue〕inTCM refer to the same substance,but some writ-ers insisted the use of xue or hsueh for TCM be-cause the latter’s knowledge about blood is differ-

From solar terms to medical terms(PartⅡ):Some implications for traditional Chinese Medicine

In the traditional Chinese Medicine(TCM), the timing of performing the treatment during the year is always an important factor for maximizing its effectiveness. Based on over half a century of observational and reanalysis data, a modified calendric system, named the Twenty-four Medical Terms(24-MTs), has been established for China's Mainland following a systematic calibration and geographical adjustment of the classic Twenty-four Solar Terms(24-STs). In view of "adapting the human body to the changing universe", a core philosophy of the TCM, this improved medical calendar is expected to make a significant contribution to the development of precise Chinese Medicine in the big data era. Specifically, two maps of localized timings for the so-called Triple-Fu(TF) and Triple-Jiu(TF) defined using a joint heat index of air temperature and relative humidity are created as an alternative to the two nationwide unified timings representing the warmest and coldest periods of the year. These location-specific medical calendars, with a maximum regional time shift of one week for TJ and a systematic advancing of 3.6–28.2 days for TF in China's Mainland, are thought to be clinically useful for carrying out precise TCM such as"treating winter deceases in summer". In addition, similar maps of localized timings for peak spring and peak autumn defined as the days of fastest warming and cooling around the years are generated for China's Mainland, so as to provide a helpful guidance for practicing season(ST/MT) related and geographically dependent precise health care in the context of "born in spring, grow in summer, harvest in autumn, and preserve in winter", which is a key ideology in the TCM.

From solar terms to medical terms(Part Ⅰ): A first step with big data

The story of the Twenty-four Solar Terms(24-ST_s) is one of the most popular elements in Chinese culture, which has a profound influence on agriculture production, health care, and even daily life in both ancient and modern China. This traditional calendric system was invented by the Chinese ancestors through combining fundamental astronomical knowledge with climatic and phenological conditions in the Yellow River Basin some 2000 years ago. Although the basic philosophy of the 24-ST_s remains valid for the country as a whole to date, their regional robustness has been increasingly challenged by accumulating observational data in terms of temporal shift and spatial inhomogeneity. To tackle these issues, we propose to recalibrate the medically related critical timings of Great Heat and Great Cold in the classic ST system by using big meteorological data, and adjust them by introducing geographically correlated analytical models. As a result, a novel calendric system, called the Twenty-four Medical Terms(24-MT_s), has been developed as an upgraded version of the traditional 24-ST_s. The proposed 24-MT_s are characterized by two striking features with respect to the 24-ST_s: A varying duration of each MT instead of a fixed one for the ST, and a geographically dependent timing for each MT instead of a unified one for the entire nation. As such, the updated 24-MT_s are expected to provide a more realistic estimate of these critical timings around the year, and hence, a more precise guidance to agronomic planning and health care activity in China.

How do medical students understand disease behaviors?Evidence from event-related potentials

Objective: To investigate how medical students process Western medicine(WM) terms vs. traditional Chinese medicine(TCM) terms and how this is impacted by analogical priming from the perspective of cognitive neuroscience.Methods: The experiments were designed as a 2(TCM terms vs. WM terms) × 2(correct terms vs.incorrect terms) × 2(analogical priming task vs. non-priming task) scheme. A total of 26 medical students completed a non-priming judgment task and an analogical priming judgment task on medical terms. During the tasks, the participants were asked to make correct/incorrect judgments on WM terms and TCM terms, and their behavioral data and event-related potentials(ERPs) were recorded.Results: Behaviorally, the response speed and accuracy of WM terms were higher than those of TCM terms(both P <.001), indicating a prominent concreteness effect. Analogical priming shortened the response time to medical terms(P <.001), and the response time to TCM terms was shortened more significantly(P =.001). For ERPs, WM terms induced a larger P200(an early positive ERP component), a smaller N400(a negative ERP component), and a higher late positive ERP component, indicating superiority of attention adjustment, smaller-scale semantic activation, and a higher cost of late semantic analysis and integration. However, the analogical priming eliminated the difference between WM and TCM terms in P200 and N400 while maintaining it in the LPC. This suggests that WM terms are sensitive to analogical attention adjustment, and TCM terms are susceptible to analogical semantic integration.Conclusion: Our findings suggest that WM and TCM disease behavior terms may initially differ in concreteness or the use of a verbal-linguistic system. Analogy is more conducive to understanding TCM terms. This research provides important neuroscientific evidence of the difference in thinking between TCM and WM.