Does Chinese Medicine cure disease?

I’m writing an article for a class about using Chinese medicine to deal with common colds and flus. This is one of my passions (I know, weird) and something I feel the general public doesn’t really know about. In the past three years, I’ve suffered two external invasions, one more flu like and one more cold like. During the first two days of both, I went to the clinic. They both resolved the next day, with copious herb intake in the Shang Han Lun style. I’m a believer, you might say. Simply because of my personal experience? No, because of the countless people I’ve seen have similar experiences in clinic.

Everywhere I read about “finding a cure for the common cold” indicates that such a thing has not yet been achieved. The party line goes like this, “While there is no cure for the common cold, there are things you might be able to do to reduce its duration and severity.” Well… yeah. My question is this - how is that not a cure?

The dictionary definitions for cure are many, but the most relevant for our purposes recurrent themes:

A cure is a process

A cure does not indicate that the disease never occurs (that’s more like eradication)

A cure involves treatment

When people talk about “a cure for cancer” I don’t think they mean that cancer would never happen. While a vaccine for cancer (or the common cold) would be nice, usually that doesn’t seem to be what people are discussing. What we want is a way to avoid prolonged suffering and/or death at the hand of the disease process in question. We want, in essence, to reduce the illnesses duration and severity to minimal levels. We want to get better fast and suffer few lasting negative effects from our experience.

I think one other essential piece of the idea of curation involves the ability for the cure in question to be always and everywhere applicable. We wouldn’t call something a cure that sometimes worked and sometimes didn’t. That may be the info behind the claim that no “cure” for the common cold has been found. That being said, under the care of a competent Chinese medical practitioner, I do believe that rectification of cold and flu symptoms can be reliably achieved. If under such circumstances a person still suffers from their symptoms or, perhaps, even worsens (developing phlegm deep in the lungs, for example) this is likely due to some misunderstanding on the part of the practitioner about the pre-existing state of the patient’s body constitution. This is the case, I think, with any medical therapy and any disease. Consider any disorder we consider to be “cured” in modern medical practice. If a person displays with that illness and the therapy is inappropriately applied or some pre-existing condition of the patient renders the therapy ineffective, we don’t cast shadows on the ability of that therapy to be curative for that disease.

For Chinese Medicine, curing a disease simply involves a restoration of the body’s natural balance. Yin and Yang come into appropriate relationship with one another and all the seasons of the body come in their course with a typical expression. The body responds easily to normal daily stresses and no symptoms of blockage (pain, pathological products) exist. Chinese medical therapies, when applied consistently and competently, rectify the state of health for many conditions for many people. Wouldn’t you say?

What is your understanding of “cure”? What would it take for you to consider the common cold to be “cured”? I’ll be interested to read your thoughts in the comments.

Eric

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