Hey dear community, first of all I would like to welcome you all to my new post and hope you had a day that was full of positive experiences! In this post, I would like to discuss an important topic in the history of medicine and hope you can learn new things.
You can see here pictures of plants as well as vital mushrooms which are used in traditional Chinese medicine or TCM for short, which is already thousands of years old and in the 17th century increasingly spread in Western countries. During this time much knowledge from the Western culture about medicine also came to China and it came to an exchange of old healing methods and in Europe it did not take long until more and more people dealt with this topic and practiced this healing method in the shadow of conventional medicine and the essential difference is the point of view and conventional medicine focuses more on the direct treatment of diseases while in traditional Chinese medicine the whole body or balance is more in the foreground and nowadays both exist parallel to each other. When exactly the TCM was created is not entirely clear, but the first documented traces of this procedure can probably be traced back to the Xia dynasty and already before that, this important healing method was strongly associated with mythology and people asked oracles at the time how best to deal with their diseases and it was similar to shamanism, where it was much about healing diseases with songs, dances or other magical and occult practices and from China it spread to Japan and other Asian countries. The focus of this form of medicine is the balance of the Body as well as the mind and there were numerous practices to strengthen the harmony of the body and one of the oldest of them is the acupuncture which is about stimulating certain areas of the body through needles to start different healing processes and according to tradition, the body consists of different meridians which are also seen as energy points which are distributed over the body and each meridian has its own task in the regulation of the body and are associated with the physical as well as psychological aspects.
In traditional Chinese medicine, it was assumed that the body is only in a healthy balance when the mind is and this spiritual teaching was formative for the development and the path of healing was closely related to the recognition of the own self and much of these views are also closely linked to Chinese alchemy and for a better understanding of this whole topic, I can recommend this article here. The people were of the opinion that if there are imbalances in the body, this is also the basis of the development of diseases as well as certain symptoms and all kinds of negative feelings can be attributed to a blockage and one of the most important factors is also the right food to bring the body into a good balance. It can be said that it is the motto that you should do what is good for the body and here heat, massages, meditation and many other practices were very popular and much of the spiritual way of thinking is also associated with the Yin and Yang and you have to make sure that both come into a positive balance. In general, a lot of work is done with plants or vital mushrooms which also play an important role and many rather unknown plants are used here and there is such an enormous knowledge in this old Chinese healing method and as always I would like to mention at the end that in case of illness you should always ask your doctor or pharmacist of trust for the right medicine or use!
Thanks for stopping by and I hope you could learn something new about this important topic! I captured these pictures with my Camera Sony Alpha 6000 plus 55-210 mm lens.