Like the West in the 1970s, he created ancient Chinese medicine

We love things that have the patina of antiquity. They inspire confidence and a sense that old methods tested by generations can not be bad. Sometimes we even suspect that humanity has forgotten much of its ancient knowledge and had to rediscover it - which happened to be true in the history of mankind.

However, there is also a kind of false premise according to which everything that is ancient is better. It is also a good marketing method - we do not have to check anything too much to sell ancient water , an ancient method to clean the ears or ... croissants from ancient cereals .

Every time you hear: "once people were healthier" or "homeopathy exists for 200 years so it must work" - you have to deal with the so-called a reference to tradition or antiquity. This is not a new phenomenon: it even has its Latin name: argumentum ad antiquitatem .

Where does this thinking come from?

Perhaps because we are subconsciously afraid of new things and we think things are safer? Perhaps from a logical error consisting in the assumption that if we always did something in a specific way, then this method must be correct? Each of us knows it probably from our own experience. We like to create a tradition: "we always bought this kind of bread and it was good, why change it" or worse "my parents beat me with my belt and I grew up for a decent man".

In this way, our memory also works - we selectively remember better things, and the worse ones are blurred in our memory. This is how the "good old days" arise - sometimes the good old days are times that have never been, times when we ran healthy in the forest and, as Ben Goldacre wrote, gluten, vaccines and autism were alien to us.

This logical falsehood we meet in discussions on the so-called "Alternative medicine". (I take this term in quotes - there is no alternative medicine, just as there is no alternative engineering, alternative chemistry or alternative physics.) This is where we hear false statements that "people were less ill", because they were traditionally treated with herbs and bulbs.

Sometimes we refer to non-existent traditions

This is the case with our Western vision of the so-called ancient Chinese medicine. The whole "alternative" medicine draws from it a handful ... but after a closer look it turns out that we imagine something that in reality never took place.

When in the 1960s and 1970s, communist China struggled with the lack of basic health care in rural areas, only 2 percent. population lived in cities. The remaining 98 percent often did not have a chance to reach the doctor - and the symptoms of diseases, including parasitic schistosomiasis, became a normal sight in all villages.

The urging of doctors to settle in the countryside did not work, there were simply too few of them. Travel medicine was tried - medical teams traveled through the provinces, but it was a drop in the ocean of needs.

Then the concept of the so-called barefooted doctors

They were peasants who after a short training had the task of providing basic health care (while still performing all agricultural duties). Lack of access to treatments and medicines was to be replaced by a specially written textbook. The "Barefooted Doctor's Handbook" was designed to provide basic information about hygiene and the basic symptoms of common diseases.

This book referred to modern medicines and treatments - and recommended them as basic. It also contained an annex: the authors anticipating problems with access to pharmacies and medicines, they also wrote basic information about herbs and traditional means available in nature. It is this annex (which is a fraction of the volume of the whole book) that has been translated into English as "classic work on ancient Chinese herbal medicine", and so, through English translation, it spread to the entire western world. About 600 pages disappeared from the book, devoted to modern treatment with the use of medication and outpatient and hospital treatment - and the rest was left to talk about bubbles and herbs.

In this way, as in some cities, the old town is being rebuilt, ancient Chinese medicine was created in the 1970s.

Like the West in the 1970s, he created ancient Chinese medicine