History of Medicine

Happy Fall! The prettiest season in New England with leaves changing color and the weather getting cooler, not to mention hordes of squirrels scurrying around gathering acorns for the winter (I just learned that a group of squirrels is in fact called a scurry!). Fall is also special for me because it's my birthday season (plus Halloween and Thanksgiving season)! Changing color of leaves in Fall In ancient medicine, Fall is associated with the beginning of the Yin cycle (of yin and yang fame) with the days getting shorter and cooler. The Summer element of Fire (signifying activity and energy) gives way to the Metal element in fall. The metal signifies calmness and organization, so here's to a more organized and structured lifestyle (which seems impossible right now with senior year and college apps on my head but oh, so necessary!) An old Chinese saying by Tao Te Ching goes,  When I let go of what I have, I receive what I need. When I let go of what I am, I become what I might b

Welcome to Fall! Today, the autumn equinox marks the beginning of fall, my favorite season of all! “Equinox” of course means equal night in Latin and marks the day when the sun shines directly on the equator and both poles are equidistant from the sun, making day and night of equal length. It is also a point of balance between changing seasons, and between feminine and masculine energies. Position of earth relative to sun  It held special significance in ancient times as many societies celebrated it as a festival of harvest. In Greek mythology, the fall equinox marks the return of the goddess Persephone to the underworld to reunite with her husband Hades, king of the underworld (who incidentally abducted her after falling in love with her). Although she was rescued by her father, Zeus, she chooses to go back to Hades for six months every year during autumn and winter. Her mother, Demeter, who is the Goddess of agriculture and fertility, mourns her loss by making the earth infertile dur

In a true marriage of tradition and innovation, an AI (artificial intelligence) robot has been built by a Singapore startup called Ai Treat to give massages based on the tradition of Tui Na, an ancient Chinese medical therapy. The robotic masseuse, EMMA, uses sensors and 3D vision to measure muscle stiffness and identifies pressure points before giving a personalized massage to patients for the purpose of relaxation and pain relief. EMMA (Expert Manipulative Massage Automation) was developed by a physician trained in Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) and uses the same principles of personalized soft tissue massage which is derived from Tui Na therapy. Tui Na is the oldest known massage therapy and is one of the four branches of TCM, along with acupuncture, qi gong, and herbal medicine. It is meant to stimulate the flow of qi to promote balance and harmony within the body. The massage alternates between yin techniques, which are gentle, passive, and meditative, and the yang techniques

Someone asked me what was cupping after I mentioned it in a recent post, so I decided to write a post explaining the ancient medical practice. Athletes, particularly swimmers, routinely show up with cupping marks on their bodies as seen in the recently concluded Tokyo Olympics. The telltale red circles were first seen on Michael Phelps' torso at the 2016 Rio Olympics. Since then, it has become a popular therapy among athletes from swimming to gymnastics to football. I had a firsthand experience with cupping (No, I am not brave enough to try it!), but I got a peek of it when my old neighbor, former Patriots player Dwayne Allen, was getting it done on his back in his living room with the front door wide open! My brother now swears by it, so that's another personal experience I can claim. Michael Phelps showing cupping marks. Image: A-Team Performance Cupping is a procedure done primarily to reduce pain and inflammation but also for relaxation and to improve blood flow. Phelps and

If ancient Chinese medicine can give us a cure for malaria, could it also provide cures for other diseases like cancer? That was my thought when I first read about the discovery of the malaria remedy in TCM, and apparently, I wasn't the first to think that! A pharmacology professor at Yale University is trying to find out exactly that. Prof. Yung-Chi Cheng of the Yale School of Medicine is studying botanical drugs based on Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) that can make traditional cancer treatments work better. The professor calls the approach "WE medicine"- a combination of Western experimental-based pharmacology and eastern experience plant-based medicine.  I found the story of how his research began also quite interesting. After he expressed his interest in Chinese medicine for cancer treatment to a postdoc researcher, Shwu-Huey Liu, she went to the library and started researching Chinese herbs. After narrowing the search to common herbs that are still in use, and ha

Even though the process of vaccination can be traced back to ancient Indian and Chinese civilizations (as I wrote in my earlier post on history of vaccines), the name, like so many other words in the English language, has a Latin root.  Vaccine is derived from the Latin vaccinus , which means "of or belonging to cows". The first western vaccine was developed by English physician Edward Jenner using cow pox, which was called  vaccinae. Jenner found that an injection of material taken from cowpox sores protected a person from getting small pox in the future. Because it was taken from cows ( vacca in Latin), it came to be called vaccinus , which led to the adjective, vaccinae , and then to vaccine in English. Cowpox virus

Recently, I wrote about the anti-malarial properties of artemisia. Artemisia was also recently in the news for its potential effectiveness against covid-19, and I explored that a few months ago in "Artemisia for COVID Treatment." Turns out the plant might have other hidden wonders: it is also being investigated as a cancer therapy. Artemisia, whose medicinal origins can be traced back to 200 BCE in ancient China, is one truly impressive medicinal plant! Artemisia has active phytochemicals that have a list of medicinal properties— antimalarial, antioxidant, cytotoxic, anti-inflammatory, and antimicrobial to name a few. It has recently also been found that the bioactive compounds of the plant target multiple pathways in the case of cancer.  A study by University of Washington researchers found artemisinin to be very effective in killing specific cancer cells—up to 1200 times more effective than current treatments! The UW researcher described it as “ like a special agent plantin

The 2015 Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was won by a Chinese scientist, Tu Youyou, for her discovery of anti-malarial drug, artemisinin in the 1970s. Artemisinin is derived from the flowering plant  Artemisia annua (or sweet wormwood).  Artemisinin-based combination therapies (ACTs) are now standard treatment for malaria worldwide, and several drugs containing artemisinin such as Artesunate are now widely available.  Artemisia plant While it was heralded as a pathbreaking discovery in the 1970's, it turns out it wasn't entirely a new discovery. In fact, it had been known to mankind thousands of years ago, and has a very interesting journey from ancient to modern medicine. Several thousand years ago, ancient Chinese doctors prescribed tea made from a flowering plant called Qing Hao (modern name: artemisia) for fever and inflammation. Like many other traditional medicines, it was lost in historical texts. That is until the Vietnam War started. The Viêt-Cong soldiers fighti

Today's news about Pfizer's coronavirus vaccination brings hope for an end to the covid-19 pandemic. With an effective vaccine (90% effective as Pfizer has claimed for their vaccine is truly spectacular!), we can finally think about returning to life as before- normal school, yay! (never thought I would say that ever!), even though it will be months or years before a sufficiently large population can be given the vaccine. Nevertheless, it is exciting news for people, as well as for the scientific community that a new vaccine was developed in such an unprecedented short time. In honor of Pfizer's announcement today, I decided to update an older post about vaccines and their history.   A vaccine protects a person from becoming sick when exposed to the virus. How exactly does that happen? When a person gets infected by a virus (any type of virus in general), the white blood cells in their body produces antibodies to fight the virus which helps them recover, and these antibodi

Previously I wrote about Qi, the vital energy or life force energy derived from traditional Chinese medicine. Interestingly but not surprisingly, Chinese medicine is not the only one that believes in a vital energy guiding a person’s physical and mental processes. Indian medicine has a similar concept called prana . Prana is also a life force energy that flows through the human body. When it flows freely and is balanced, it results in good health and well-being. If it gets blocked or thrown off-balance, it causes illness. Chinese qi and Indian prana are very similar concepts, both help maintain health and happiness in humans by controlling physical and mental processes. And they are not the only ones either. Ancient Greek and Latin philosophies have a very similar concept: the Greeks called it  pneuma  (defined in the dictionary as the vital spirit or creative force of a person) while the Latin named it  spiritus . The Japanese apparently call it ki . In fact, it seems 97 cul

The Chinese (those who believe in Traditional Chinese Medicine) believe COVID-19 is caused by an imbalance of qi in the lungs. So what exactly is this qi? It has become a popular concept in the New Age movement, but it isn't very clear what it signifies, so I decided to dig a little deeper into it. Turns out, it is the fundamental basis of ancient Chinese medicine. Ancient Chinese medicine is based on the simple (in theory) principle that every system needs to be in harmony for health, well being and sustainability. When this harmony is broken, an imbalance is created in one direction and that leads to illness, disease, and many other sufferings. But it is more complicated than that- a system is not just a person, but everything that is interconnected and interdependent. That includes a family, community, environment… and the entire world. The harmony is created by two equal and opposite forces or elements: yin and yang. Qi (pronounced "chee") is the vital energy tha

Just as ancient Indian medicine is under review for potential use for treatment of COVID-19, the Chinese have also turned to their ancient medical science to combat the disease. Traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) is widely used in China, and represents a multi-billion dollar industry. So when the novel coronavirus hit China in early 2020 and no effective treatment was found, the Chinese turned to TCM, apparently based on their past experience in the treatment of infectious diseases including the SARS epidemic in 2003. Traditional Chinese medicine believes that the human body (and in fact, all matter) is made up of Qi or vital energy. The qi controls the basic functions of the human body; when the normal flow of this life energy is disturbed, it causes disease. In the case of COVID, the pathogenic qi is stronger than the healthy qi and has an adverse effect on the lungs. TCM doctors described severe cases of COVID-19 as caused by a noxious dampness that causes the qi in the lungs to