1. Traditional Chinese and Western medicine emerged in different historical contexts

1. Traditional Chinese and Western medicine emerged in different historical contexts

Like other sciences, medicine must arise and develop on a certain socio-economic foundation. The superstructure that develops on different economic foundations often has different forms and contents. When the empirical basis changes, "the entire massive superstructure undergoes transformation, either slowly or quickly." Traditional Chinese and Western medicine grew up on different economic foundations, which inevitably leads to their stark differences in form and content.

Traditional Chinese medicine, as a medical science, roughly took shape between the 5th and 4th centuries BC, when China was transitioning from a slave society to a feudal society. During this period, medicine broke free from the constraints of divine authority and the concept of destiny, finally separating completely from witchcraft. The famous medical figure Bian Que was a representative of this transformative era. The ideas expressed in China's earliest medical theoretical work, "The Yellow Emperor's Classic of Internal Medicine," also began to take shape during this time. Over the following two thousand-plus years, China remained in a long feudal society (after the Opium War in 1840, it became a semi-feudal, semi-colonial society), with an economic base primarily composed of individual agriculture and scattered handicrafts. Such an economic foundation could neither provide modern research equipment for the development of medicine nor fully supply modern theoretical bases in physiology and pathology. Therefore, when ancient physicians engaged in clinical medical practice, they could only rely on patients' subjective sensations and the external manifestations of diseases. Beyond that, if they could rely on anything else, it was the medical practitioners' own thinking and analytical abilities. In contrast, the development of Western medicine occurred under completely different social conditions.

Starting in the 16th century, with the development of mining and metallurgy industries, capitalism began to emerge, and various new machines were successively invented. In particular, the invention of telescopes and microscopes opened the door for humanity to explore the mysteries of nature, providing unprecedented favorable conditions. Natural science thus broke free from the shackles of scholastic philosophy and, based on extensive experimental research data, achieved broad and systematic development. In the field of medicine, thanks to the widespread use of microscopes, humanity began to venture into the microscopic world. The discovery of cells and the understanding of blood circulation both originated on this basis.

In the mid-18th century, the advent of modern industry powered by steam engines further provided medicine with many essential instruments and facilities, promoting the emergence of a series of important theories and achievements in physiology and pathology. As a result, Western medicine formed a complete academic system—from theory to practice—at an unprecedented speed. From the above, it can be seen that the development of Western medicine is based on capitalist industry. Before the rise of capitalism, the form and content of Western medicine were broadly similar to those of traditional Chinese medicine, but its completeness and precision in syndrome differentiation were still far inferior to those of traditional Chinese medicine.

The Milesian School of Ancient Greece proposed that all things can be divided into opposing pairs, such as dryness and wetness, cold and heat, and that the fundamental elements constituting all objects are wind, fire, water, and earth. This idea is entirely consistent with the Yin-Yang Five Elements theory of traditional Chinese medicine and belongs to the same category of simple materialism and spontaneous dialectics in philosophy.