TCM History

History

Traditional Chinese Medicine has been dated back all the way to the Zhou Dynasty Period (475-221 BCE) which is when the concepts of TCM grew and became a practice in their culture. TCM was continued to be practice until around the 1700s when people started to look down upon it. TCM was thought to only be a superstition and wasn’t based on any science and even in 1929 TCM was banned in China. In 1949 however acupuncture and other treatments were unbanned and in the 1950s more research was being done on TCM to put scientific backing behind it. Also near the end of the 20th century TCM started to be combined and adapted by western medicine. TCM was growing in popularity in other countries besides just China and other nearby Asian countries but is starting to be used in European countries and the Americas. As more research has been done on TCM and the more evidence found that it helps, the more it has become accepted and used all over the world including its use in America ("Traditional Chinese").

Alternative Medicine History

Ancient forms of medicine have been around for thousands of years, going back to around 2500 B.C. with the ancient Egyptians. Treatment using herbs, supplements, acupuncture, and more has been around far longer than modern medicine that came around in the 1400s. Several studies have been performed to prove but also to invalidate the idea of alternative medicine such as on November 11, 1998, the Journal of the American Medical Association stated “alternative medicine lacks scientific data and is unproven.” This was to combat the unease toward alternative medicine, groups have been formed in America and around the world to prove its effectiveness and produce studies on it. This includes a group called the Office of Alternative Medicine (OAM) which in 1998 was changed to the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM). Countless surveys have also been conducted, including on May 27, 2004, a national survey showed that 36% of American adults had used alternative medicine before and another study researchers found that about 34 billion dollars were spent on alternative treatment in 2007 (Proquest Staff)

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