by Bob Flaws

If people know you're a doctor, they're always asking you in social settings how to treat this or that ailment they or a loved one is suffering from. If people know you're a famous doctor, albeit of Chinese medicine, these kinds of requests are ubiquitous and never-ending. So I wasn't particularly surprised this weekend when a woman I was chatting with at a social gathering asked me for a recommendation for a Blue Poppy formula. As always in such situations, I strongly advised that she see a professional practitioner of Chinese medicine who could do a proper in-take and diagnosis. However, the woman told me she had been to see many practitioners of acupuncture/Chinese medicine over the years as well as Western MDs, DCs, and NDs, all to no avail.

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by Bob Flaws

In my experience, as recent converts to Chinese medicine, we tend to be starry-eyed and gullible as a group. We are so enamored of this new love of our life that we often fail to ask some really important questions, questions we would normally ask when dealing with more familiar, less romantic areas of our life. Many of us are still infatuated by this medicine, this "brave new world." We've stepped into a new universe. We love it, and we want more and more of it. However, it's well known that converts are often stronger (and more gullible, more fanatical, and more fundamentalist) believers than people who have grown up within a tradition. People who have grown up within a tradition have a greater depth of familiarity with it and are aware of some of the negatives neophytes are ignorant of or willfully blind to. Sometimes our enthusiasm feels a bit naive in retrospect, but ultimately it is just a normal expression of our inherent passion. In some ways, it is a perfectly natural stage of evolution in a person's familiarity with and, therefore, understanding of something new and alluring.

For instance, some readers may gasp at the idea that quackery was and is an on-going problem in Chinese medicine. This is nothing new. If you read the premodern Chinese medical literature (such as Blue Poppy's Great Masters Series), famous Chinese authors frequently bemoaned the prevalence of quacks working within their society. For instance, Zhang Jing-yue created his famous 10 questions in the late Ming dynasty because it was so easy for supposed "experts" to simply feel a patient's wrist and then tell them they needed to buy some very expensive medicine that they or their associates just happened to have on hand. Imperial medical bureaus, colleges, and their examinations existed dynasty after dynasty in Old China, in part, to try to weed out these quacks. Several years ago, the famous German sinologist Paul U. Unschuld wrote about the history and prevalence of quackery in Chinese medicine. Although, to my knowledge, this essay has never been translated into English, I can tell you it caused apoplexy among many "younger" German practitioners I know. Here in N. America, there has been at least one instance of a "famous" doctor of Chinese medicine selling licensing exam answers to those who simply wanted Green Cards, and, in large cities, more than a few "acupuncture clinics" are simply fronts for prostitution. However, more worrisome are those "practitioners" who purposely cheat their naive patients by selling supposed secret formulas at inflated prices based on little or no medical justification. This topic has been explored in the Chinese literature for centuries.

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by Bob Flaws

Two weeks ago, Honora and I were having breakfast at our hotel in Delhi prior to flying back to the U.S. The TV was on and everyone was watching a live broadcast of the eclipse. I don't know how much attention this eclipse received in the U.S. since it was not visible here, but in India it was major. It was supposedly a once-in-a-thousand-years kind of event. There were lots of pandits on the TV debating the significance of this eclipse. When we came back for lunch several hours later, the live coverage was still on.

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by Bob Flaws

My read this weekend was Desi Sangye Gyatso's Mirror of Beryl: A Historical Introduction to Tibetan Medicine. Desi Sangye Gyatso was the regent for the Fifth Dalai Lama, a.k.a. the Great Fifth. So this book was written during the seventeenth century, However, it has only recently been translated into English by Gavin Kilty. Of particular interest to readers of this blog, the book devotes quite a bit of space and attention to discussing the impact of Chinese medicine on the development of Tibetan medicine. According to Desi Sangye Gyatso, the three main things taken from Chinese medicine were pulse diagnosis, urine diagnosis, and astrology.

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by Bob Flaws

Tomorrow morning, Honora and I leave for Bodhgaya, India to study phowa (transference of consciousness) with Ven. Ayang Rinpoche as well as to listen to some teaching by H.H. the Dalai Lama. We'll be gone until Jan. 18 when we'll be back at Blue Poppy and on-line again. I wish everyone a very healthy, happy new year. For those like Honora and I who are journeying over New Years, come and go safely, your purposes all fulfilled. 2009 has been quite a ride here at Blue Poppy and in the world at large. As for 2010, excelsior, ever upward. Good luck & best wishes.