Next time you need a doctor, go to China
Tessa Keswick marvels at the quality of care she received in Beijing when she found herself unable to walk. Painful though it was, the acupuncture was cheap and highly effective
My encounter with Wang Daifu came about when I found myself at the Longmen Grottoes unable to walk. I had not come halfway across the globe to see the Empress Wu’s hooded eyes and curled lip from a wheelchair. The sciatic nerve pounding away in my right leg just had to be sorted out. Thanks to the amazing efficiency of my companions we were back in Beijing within a few hours. And by 9.30 p.m. Wang Daifu was hovering over me as I lay on a board in the luxurious China World Hotel, issuing instructions and wielding fierce-looking acupuncture needles in his long thin fingers. A while later he was digging his bony elbows along my sciatic nerve during one of the most painful but effective medical sessions I have experienced.
Traditional Chinese medicine is by its very nature preventative — designed to get your body into a situation where you do not get ailments at all — rather than being, as Western medicine tends to be, the violent cure for the most immediate crisis. Hence the constant emphasis in Chinese life on fresh food — vegetables rather than meat — the avoidance of cold ‘which can linger in pockets under the skin’ and on the preventative quality of those often evil-smelling herbal medicines beloved by most Chinese. The mother of a newborn is cosseted for weeks not only so that she can feed the baby satisfactorily but to enable her to recover fully and not suffer ill health later on. The mother-in-law will move in and the mother will not be allowed to leave her room for one month. She will be discouraged from even leaving her bed (for fear of swollen ankles later) and from excessive washing. She will cover her head to keep warm and will protect her ‘weakened’ teeth and be fed with special foods such as eggs and chicken broth. Children in school in China learn early to massage their eyes and cheeks in class. And they will also do gentle exercises in the playground to keep the body healthy.
The philosophy behind this is not dissimilar to what preoccupied us in the Middle Ages. There is, to the Chinese, a natural harmony of world and body which can be disturbed if any particular limb or organ is out of sync. The Chinese have the concept of chi which flows through nature and man. In the external world it is the feng shui (wind and water) man who deals with the problem. When things go wrong with the body — when the chi is prevented from flowing easily, as in the case of my paralysed leg — then a practitioner like Wang Daifu is called in. The chi is visible to some and pulsates like a current under the skin. In the past I have felt and heard the electric chi power of a chi gong master literally crackling aloud as he draws on this energy.
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Dr Henry Martin
March 14th, 2008 8:57amDear Sir Living in a peripheral society as I do we tend to think of ourselves as rather backward and unsophisticated compared to people living in, say, Britain. Therefore it comes as somewhat of a shock to read the absolute twaddle written by Tessa Keswick and published in your supposedly sophisticated magazine. Perhaps someone could explain the concept of referred pain to Ms Keswick. The fact that the pain she feels is in her leg does not mean that it originates there; the chances are that she has pressure on the nerve root in her spine. So sticking needles into that nerve is questionable, and would amount to malpractice if done by a Western doctor. And the idea of “cold air” trapped in nerves and under the skin is alarming, to say the least. The only medical condition I’m aware of that could do this is gas gangrene, a terminal phenomenon. As for keeping new mothers in bed: has she never heard of pulmonary embolism? When Chinese medicine can treat diabetes or meningitis or coronary artery occlusion we Western doctors will certainly sit up and take notice. Until then I’m reminded of the words of the great American philosopher, H Barnum: “there’s one born every minute”. Henry Martin South Africa
Max Kaye
March 16th, 2008 8:01pmI'm confused: If Tessa Keswick was cured by "the best doctor in the country", then why, upon her return to the UK, is she waiting to see some lousy western-medicine practicing specialist?
Jon Jermey
March 19th, 2008 9:31amIt's nice that Tessa Keswick has passed on a few hundred of her hard-earned pounds to the impoverished Chinese, even if it was to a rather well-to-do citizen of the People's Republic. But I have no doubt that she could have found equally effective treatment from many English chiropractors and osteopaths. Unfortunately 'alternative medicine' is a little like advertising as described by Lord Leverehulme: only ten percent of it works, but nobody knows which ten percent. Perhaps the 'crackling Chi' (arthritic knuckles?) alone was a sufficient placebo.
Hanif Kanji
April 18th, 2008 7:28amAre we talking about the same China I have spent 8 years in consulting on healthcare services in? Tessa Keswick's description of Chinese health services defies belief. Far from being no queues for service, the average Chinese person may have to queue for days in a hospital outpatient department to get a ticket to see a doctor. Services are generally quite appalling and most foreigners arrange medical evacuation when stricken anything serious.
Granted, there are pockets of excellence - far beyond what is available in the West.
Some specialties are further advanced than the West could dream of. Perhaps this has something to do with the lack of oversight on experimentation and lack of adequate peer review when publishing scientific studies (I am partially referring to ethics here).
Your headline advising people to seek care in China borders on the negligent. In fact people should have adequate evacuation insurance when travelling in that beautiful country.