Traditional Non-Chinese Medicine

[GeneChing]

There are all sorts of alternate traditional Chinese medicines. I couldn't find a thread that goes into this already, so I'm starting one now.

Iranian traditional medicine dates back more than 3,000 years.

Monday, September 19, 2016
Collaboration With China on Iranian Traditional Medicine
The Health Ministry has taken measures to integrate Iranian traditional medicine in the national healthcare system

China will host a conference next year on Iranian traditional medicine to discuss and introduce Iran’s capabilities to foreign participants, said Dr Amir Hooman Kazemi, international counselor of the Iranian Traditional Medicine Office at the Health Ministry, on Saturday.

Iranian traditional medicine dates back more than 3,000 years and has been used since ancient times. Persian polymath Avicenna’s ‘Book of Healing’ and the ‘Canon of Medicine’ are the most authoritative sources in this field.

“The conference is planned for late 2017 and the exact date will be announced later,” IRNA quoted Kazemi as saying.

The decision for the confab was made during a meeting between Iranian deputy minister of health for traditional medicine Dr Mahmoud Khodadoust and president of China Academy of Chinese Medical Sciences (CACMS) Zhang Boli, during the former’s visit to Beijing to take part in the 60th anniversary of establishment of Beijing University of Chinese Medicine on September 10.

Khodadoust also called on the head of the World Federation of Acupuncture and Moxibustion Societies (WFAS) Liu Baoyan and discussed ways of multilateral cooperation on traditional medicine.

Based in Beijing, CACMS was established in 1955 and previously called China Academy of Traditional Chinese Medicine. It is a institution that deals in scientific research, clinical medicine and medical education on traditional Chinese medicine (TCM).

The Chinese National Clinical Trial Center for New Herbal Medicines, the National Standardization Laboratory for Chinese Herbal Pharmacology, China Center for TCM Literature Retrieval and P3 Laboratory, the national Center for Evaluation on Safety of Herbal Medicines and the National Development Research Center for Herbal Compound Medicine are located at the academy.

Measures to Promote Traditional Medicine

In the past three years Iran’s Health Ministry has taken measures to strengthen the role of Iranian traditional medicine.

Establishment of eight faculties of traditional medicine, development of 17 university programs on Iranian traditional medicine (and 8 university programs on traditional pharmacy), and fixing tariffs for 11 traditional medicine services (for the first time in 2013) are among the important measures taken so far to integrate traditional medicine into the modern healthcare system.

The services include leech, massage and herbal vapor therapies, wet and dry cupping therapies to treat certain medical conditions including inflammation and muscular diseases, therapeutic phlebotomy, herbal soaks and traditional enemas.

Currently, there are 70 accredited traditional medicine specialists in the country, more than half of whom work at medical science universities. The rest are involved in treatment procedures at traditional medicine centers affiliated to universities.

Up until recently, individuals practicing traditional medicine or active in the field were doing so without official certification.

But following a directive by the Health Ministry earlier this year to the Iranian Traditional Medicine Association, a protocol was initiated to enable issuing permits and accreditation to the practitioners who number around 5000-6,000.

Traditional medicine practitioners can now apply for and be granted permits to practice and the association is in charge of overseeing and managing their activities.

In July, Health Minister Hassan Qazizadeh Hashemi said Iranian traditional medicine has been integrated into the national healthcare system, and health workers would offer services at 10 centers across the country.

Traditional medicine as an academic and complementary discipline emerged in the 1980s across the world, and hundreds of universities, schools, institutes, and colleges worldwide have since offered services in education, research, and medicine in the field.

The World Health Organization (WHO) defines traditional medicine as “the sum total of the knowledge, skills, and practices based on the theories, beliefs, and experiences indigenous to different cultures, whether explicable or not, used in the maintenance of health as well as in the prevention, diagnosis, improvement or treatment of physical and mental illness.

[GeneChing]

This reminds me of ancient Chinese myths like the snow lotus.

Medicinal Herb or Myth? Indian Official Proposes Hunt for Sanjivani of Lore
What in the World
By AYESHA VENKATARAMAN SEPT. 29, 2016


Credit Tamara Shopsin

Sanjivani is the stuff of myth: an herb that glows in the dark and has the power to revive the dying, wrenching them back from the fog of unconsciousness. In the Ramayana, a sacred Hindu epic, the herb is used to resuscitate both the god-hero Rama and his younger brother Lakshmana.

Could it really exist? A government minister in the Indian state of Uttarakhand wants to mount an expedition to find out.

Surendra Singh Negi is the state’s minister for alternative medicine, and he says he is worried that continued forest fires in the Himalayas may be wiping out rare and valuable plant life. You can tell that the hills of Uttarakhand are abundant in medicinal plants, he says, from the fragrant smoke that the fires give off.

Medicinal herbs are central to the traditional practice of ayurvedic medicine in India. But little has been done to scientifically study and preserve the medicinal herbs of the Himalayas, Mr. Negi says. So he has proposed spending 250 million rupees ($3.75 million) of tax money to send a team of ayurvedic practitioners into the mountains.

Mayaram Uniyal, the state’s ayurvedic adviser, says an herb that could be the real-life version of the legendary sanjivani has been seen growing on the slopes of Dunagiri, a mountain in northern Uttarakhand.

“It has a special fragrant smell, with unmatched sheen, and lights up in the night,” Mr. Uniyal said. “Both its flowers and milk are yellow. The herb is used extensively by the local shepherds when someone is unconscious, in pain or even under stress.”

“We need to study its active ingredients with clinical trials, to come to know what exactly is in it that resuscitates an unconscious man,” Mr. Uniyal said. He added that while hopes for the plant are high, no one expects it to have one ability that the Ramayana ascribes to sanjivani: resurrecting the dead.

“These are imaginative stories, as you might say,” said Robert P. Goldman, a professor of Sanskrit at the University of California, Berkeley, and the principal translator of a critical edition of the Ramayana. “It’s interesting how these things can come into modernity as traditions that people follow.”

A similar search for sanjivani was proposed in Uttarakhand in 2009, but it did not receive financing. This time around, “it should happen,” Mr. Negi said.

“When you decide something,” he said, “the road comes to greet you and you achieve your goals.”