saps the resources of its neighbors and injures the system, the physician de-
pletes it. Of course, enhancement and depletion are also relative terms,
since an organ that is overly strong relative to its neighbors can also be con-
trolled by strengthening its neighbors. Thus the manipulation of yin and
yang can be complex and subtle.
It is important to describe the native understanding of medicine as a
concept. Confucius described the spectrum of possibilities inherent in the
physician-patient relationship when he said, “Only [one who embodies]
humanness has the ability to both love and detest a person” [15] (Sec. 4.3).
In other words, a patient’s presentation may require a physician’s re-
sponse to occur anywhere along a continuum from total acceptance to to-
tal rejection. The function of the physician is to reject disorder and to af-
firm order. His response is dictated by the needs of the patient, not his
personal preferences, which are rigorously suppressed through self-cultiva-
tion. Thus, it is stated in a medical primer, the Dao de Jing (Tao-te Ching):The sage has no constant heart.
His heart is simply the heart of the people. [16] (Chap. 49)The Tang dynasty physician Sun Simiao [17] wrote that there are
three levels of physicians: high, middle, and low: “In ancient times, of those
well-versed in the practice of medicine, the High Doctor cured society, the
Median Doctor cured the man, the Low Doctor cured illness. Or one could
say, the High Doctor looks at color, the Median Doctor listens to sound,
the Low Doctor feels the pulse. Yet another way of expressing this would
be to say, the High Doctor cures illnesses not yet begun (does not allow
problems to arise), the Median Doctor cures those disorders which may de-
velop into illnesses, the Low Doctor cures extant illnesses” [18] (Sun).Martial Arts
What features make Chinese martial arts uniquely Chinese? There are an-
cient references to primitive predynastic martial activities. However, these
do not reveal any uniquely Chinese characteristics. The principle of unity
and the orderly progression of yin and yang, which are the central features
of Chinese culture, are present in the earliest literary artifacts. But the de-
velopment of these principles into a distinctly Chinese civilization occurred
over thousands of years. The features that distinguish Chinese martial arts
from the fighting traditions of other civilizations are most apparent in the
millennia following the Zhou dynasty (1122–255 B.C.).
The key feature identifying Chinese martial arts is the use of dao [19]
as the central reference. As the influence of Chinese culture spread across
Asia, the philosophy of Daoism was integrated into other cultures, such as330 Medicine, Traditional Chinese