© S.E. Kashnitsky
© AST Publishing House LLC
Review
Traditional medicine is a vast and multifaceted phenomenon. In the new book by S.E. Kashnitsky "Pearls of Oriental Medicine" an attempt was made to give the widest possible overview of the various methods of traditional medicine - as a rule, tested and proven in practice. The authors of these methods are doctors, often famous and titled, but also healers who pass on valuable folk experience. A special place is given in the book to the methods of Oriental medicine - an ancient science, rediscovered by Europeans in the last century. All this variety of approaches to treatment in the book is systematized, which allows you to quickly find the required method of assistance for various diseases.
However, in the practical use of the recipes given in the book, reasonable prudence is necessary: each organism is individual; what is good for one is not always acceptable for another. Therefore, anyone who dares to use prescriptions as recommendations must certainly coordinate them with the attending physician. Only in this case the risk of thoughtless self-treatment will be minimized.
Professor, Doctor of Biological Sciences A.P. Dubrov
Part 1. At the origins of wisdom
Chapter 1. Facing the East: Encyclopedia of Oriental Medicine
The interest of Europeans in the East is probably as eternal as this conditional division into West and East itself, which has little to do with geography. Starting, probably, with the Greco-Persian wars, our ancient countrymen understood: there, in the East, there is some other civilization. It cannot be said that it is more or less developed. She is different, and this already explains the inexhaustible interest in her. Neither the Indian campaign of Alexander the Great, nor the caravan trade with the Caliphate, nor the adventures of the Crusaders, nor the colonial conquests of European maritime powers, ever satisfied this burning interest, this eternal mystery of the East.
Kipling's phrase: "The West is the West, the East is the East, and together they cannot come together" with formulaic brevity establishes the relationship of two cultures with their dialectical balance of attraction and repulsion.
In addition to gunpowder, paper, silk and spices, Europeans brought from the East an unusual system of ideas about a person and his health. There was a concept of "Oriental medicine", which does not have a clear semantic outline, about which only one thing can be most accurately said: a different medicine.
It was created and developed over the centuries in Persia and Arabia, in Tibet and in Central Asia, in India and China ... And in even greater, almost invisible antiquity, probably in Egypt and Sumer, Assyria and Babylon, Phoenicia and the Hittite state ...
The East is so vast and irreducible to one thing that there is no way not only to give it and, accordingly, Eastern medicine, a clear definition, but even to confidently identify the principles that distinguish it from the European medicine we are used to. The Korean would answer this question with something different, and the Filipino would have something completely different.
Nevertheless, let us try, at least in the most general terms, to outline the features of that incomprehensible concept, which can be called oriental medicine very conditionally.
The ancient philosophers, observing how everything is interconnected in nature, considered the Creator's separation of light from darkness and the earth's firmament from water as a decisive event. Two pairs of opposites set four categories, or "elements" that underlie the universe.
The life-giving energy is called chi (or qi) in Chinese philosophy, prana in Indian philosophy, and pneuma in Persian. All these words are synonymous with the word “air” that is familiar to us, inhaling which a person receives energy for life. Qigong therapy, prana-yama are systems of respiratory gymnastics that allow you to harmonize the body only due to the correct distribution of energy through it. Biologically active points, united into meridians, are those channels through which the energy of the surrounding world enters the body. This is already an approach radically different from that adopted in the West.
The macrocosm (stars and planets) is similar to the microcosm (nuclei of atoms and elementary particles) just as a person is similar to the Creator-Creator, but consists of dust, that is chemical elements. The changing macrocosm will certainly change the microcosm - these relationships are studied by astrology. But vice versa: changes in the microcosm entail changes in the macrocosm - this is studied by magic. In the same way, a changing world changes a person - these relationships are monitored by medicine (of course, Eastern).
Everything, including the human body, consists of four primary elements - fire (hot), water (cold), earth (dry) and air (wet). Divided according to tastes: fire is bitter, pungent and salty, water is sour or tasteless, earth is astringent, air is slimy. The basis of the color spectrum: fire - red, water - white, earth - brown, air - blue.
Human life is also divided into phases corresponding to the four primary elements: a newborn comes out of the water, a child swims in the air, a fire burns in a young man, an old man shrinks like earth.
The same four elements determine the temperaments, the doctrine of which the Greek Hippocrates and the Roman Galen borrowed from the East. There are four fluids in a person: bile (or cholius) - fire, lymph (or phlegm) - water, black bile (or melancholius) - earth, blood (or sangvus) - air.
Accordingly, spicy, bitter and salty foods are more suitable for explosive choleric people; lethargic phlegmatic people prefer cold, wet, sour food; restrained melancholics, old people from youth, will choose dry and sweet foods, such as dried fruits; cheerful, "childish" sanguine people - fatty, oily food.
This is how the layout of the primary elements, in itself, indicates to us the patterns healthy eating underlying oriental medicine (which will be discussed in more detail below).
Exactly in accordance with the same logic, it is better for the choleric to live in the south, the phlegmatic - in the north, the melancholic - in the east and the sanguine - in the west. And it is better for everyone to eat what grows in a suitable area for him - this is how the body adapts, using the leading primary element embedded in it. Violation of this principle leads to diseases and, above all, to allergies, which is a kind of payment for adapting to a foreign element.
Tibetan medicine - the most integral part of Oriental medicine that has been preserved for several millennia - does not recognize surgical intervention in the human body. Only one correct selection of food, minerals, herbs, aromatic substances, Tibetan doctors undertake to solve all the problems of a malfunctioning organism.
Until recently, Tibet was a closed country and there was no access for foreigners. In our country, the existence of Tibetan medicine was known from Buryatia, where it penetrated along with Buddhism in the 17th century. Buryat lamas themselves wrote medical essays on theoretical issues, and also compiled prescription reference books, which are practical guides for treatment. Today, Tibetan healers move freely around the world and pass on to their students knowledge that was previously considered secret and inaccessible even in Tibet itself.
In our time, Western civilization is experiencing an ecological crisis - a crisis of disturbed relationships between man and nature, when, due to imbalances in the harmonious ratio of primary elements, people in their mass became chronically ill. Under such conditions, a return to the original concepts, attempts to achieve a disturbed balance are quite natural. That is why the whole world today has turned its eyes to the achievements of oriental medicine.
More and more patients come to medical centers where the principles of oriental medicine are applied. More and more pilgrims flock to Asia, to the autochthonous carriers ancient knowledge. The shelves of bookstores are filled with literature revealing the secrets of oriental medicine.
The information collected in the book is fragmentary: in some regions of the East (Mongolia, Buryatia, Uzbekistan, Tatarstan, Bulgaria, which I also conditionally attribute to the East, since the information received there comes from Turkey, Greece, Byzantium) I happened to visit personally and communicate with figures of ancient medical culture, I met with some interlocutors from China, Taiwan, Korea in other territories. You should also not look for completeness in recipes that help cure ailments. Only those of them are given that were passed on to me by the carriers of this knowledge.
The information contained in my notes is purely practical. I am not trying, like other scientific authors, to explain, for example, the basics of reflexology. But I give the simplest recommendations: massaging which points in which cases will help get rid of the most common ailments.
The recipes of Eastern doctors, as a rule, were taken by me on faith: there was simply no physical opportunity to check everything on myself and loved ones. In those cases where such checks were carried out, I specifically stipulate this. But, I believe, you can trust the information I give in the book: all my interlocutors are people with solid experience practical work in medicine or healing. In addition, most of the notes were published in the periodical press and had a lot of feedback from readers who were able to use the recipes I cited.
In addition to information from oriental medicine, a lot of information has accumulated about alternative methods of healing and treatment that have practical value. I have separated it into a separate part of the book. The book also contains specific recipes for the treatment of diseases. folk methods for the convenience of readers, arranged in alphabetical order.
In conclusion, I would like to thank all my interlocutors who disinterestedly shared their knowledge with me and readers. Special thanks to Professor Ivan Pavlovich Neumyvakin, chief physician of the Naran Tibetan clinic in Moscow, Svetlana Galsanovna Choyzhinimaeva, and an employee of the Bukhara Medical Institute, Inom Dzhuraevich Karomatov, who devoted long hours to useful and interesting conversations with me about oriental medicine.
Middle East and Central Asia
Ancient recipe of Avicenna
Everyone must have heard this name. But few people know anything specific about this person. Medieval Arab thinker. Philosopher, physician, musician. So then everything prominent people were encyclopedists.
Abu Ali ibn Sina (in Latin pronunciation - Avicenna) during the period of the Arabic Renaissance continued the traditions of Aristotle and the Neoplatonists, left to posterity about 50 works on medicine, 30 of which have survived to this day. Among them is the Canon of Medical Science, which until the 17th century was the main medical aid for European doctors. And then Avicenna was forgotten for many centuries. Rather, the name remained, but Avicenna's prescriptions disappeared from the medical arsenal.
Meanwhile, it is still modern today. And we - instead of grabbing a pill for any reason - can use the wisdom of the Arab genius. You just need to learn to understand it.
A thousand years ago, when Avicenna lived and worked, dead matter in the form of chemical additives was not included in the composition of medicines. Those thousands of recipes that the Arab doctor left us contain only natural ingredients of plant, animal and mineral origin. These recipes are by no means abstract mental constructions, they were personally tested by Avicenna and other famous doctors. And since much of the knowledge of that era has been lost, the verification and search for correspondence between the former names of the components and the current ones continues today.
Then they set about solving the problems of "translating" his recipes into the language of modern herbal medicine. This is not always easy: sometimes the meaning of some names is lost. They have to be restored using context or a general understanding of the qualities that are required to achieve the desired effect.
For example, many of Avicenna's recipes use the term pulegium mint. What it is? Let us turn to the first book of the Canon, where all varieties of mint are given. In particular, in the section "Fudanaj" it is indicated that pulegic mint consists of a rarefied substance, drives sweat, dries and warms a lot. It is already clear that we are talking about the expansion of blood vessels. The sum of all the properties mentioned can be found among known identical plants. Specifically, we need mint with high content menthol. Or catnip, together with lemon balm (lemon mint), obviously overlapping the properties that mint, including pulegium, can differ in.
Having found such a replacement, you can “modernize”, for example, Avicenna’s most important recipe for removing kidney stones, which has one hundred percent efficiency.
How to get kidney stones out. Avicenna recipe
They take one part of lavender flowers, two parts of mountain thyme (Avicenna has thyme), two parts of strawberry leaves and berries, one part of lemon balm, two parts of catnip and two parts of mint (all these plants, as a rule, are available in the summer cottage, the missing ones can be find in a pharmacy or store). All this is mixed, a teaspoon of the plant mixture is poured with a glass of boiling water and infused for 10-15 minutes. The infusion is drunk like tea. Thyme and strawberry crush stones, turning them into sand, but do not drive them along the excretory paths, lavender relieves inflammation, and mint, lemon balm and catnip drive the resulting mucus down. They drink the infusion, all the time looking through the morning urine: already a week after the start of the reception, it becomes cloudy (mucus goes), then grains of sand appear. Continue treatment from two months to a year until the urine becomes clear. The great advantage of this method is that the stone will not go through the ducts, causing excruciating pain.
Studying Avicenna's recipes in practice, the researchers were convinced that they are very strong, designed for patients with a greater margin of health than current people. Apparently, a thousand years ago, the immune system was stronger, and a person reacted perfectly to the active effects of drugs. We must make allowances for the changed ecological situation and the greater vulnerability of our body.
So, for example, one should be wary of the recommendation of treating men with St. John's wort. This very popular herb is purely female, men should not use it for longer than two weeks: impotence may occur. And we are used to thinking that all herbs have only a weak, barely noticeable effect on the body.
A very common disease is otitis media (inflammation of the middle ear). It causes a lot of trouble with acute pain, possible complications. Doctors often prescribe antibiotics for otitis media. Meanwhile, Avicenna teaches how to easily and harmlessly deal with this disease.
How to get rid of otitis. Avicenna recipe
Take almonds. If bitter, wild, two cores are enough, if sweet, four cores. They are crushed in a mortar. Add a pinch of Ceylon or Chinese cinnamon, a pinch of soda and 1 drop of essential rose oil. All this is connected with half a teaspoon of thick honey - a paste is obtained, which should be stored in the cold. A drop of vinegar is dropped onto a piece of paste the size of a pea - in the presence of soda, a hiss occurs. The reaction of soda with vinegar allows almonds to release phytoncides, due to which it is in the most active phase. In this state, you can’t store the drug for the future: the reaction has to be repeated before each new use. A hissing "pea" is placed in a sore ear, plugged with cotton wool and kept for an hour. 3-4 such procedures a day for several days will lead to a complete recovery. Moreover, the pain in the ear is removed from the second time.
In the "Canon" there are three recipes for the treatment of inflammation of the ear. Those elements that are repeated in all three are selected: almonds, soda, honey. And the main principle: soda and vinegar balance each other. Rose oil is taken from the first recipe, Chinese cinnamon is taken from the third. Thanks to this, it was possible to bypass galban, which grows only in Africa (experimentally convinced that the drug is quite effective even without galban). Saffron, mentioned by Avicenna, is replaced by cinnamon. There is nowhere to get myrrh now, poppy, which is a drug, is unacceptable as a sleeping pill.
Infusion on pomegranate peels for stomach ulcers
A medieval physician gave us a recipe for getting rid of stomach and duodenal ulcers. Take sweet pomegranate peels (sweet pomegranate seeds are maroon in color) and sour pomegranate peels (light pink grains). Pomegranate peels can be replaced with cypress cones. It is convenient to grind any of the selected substances in a coffee grinder or with a meat grinder. Pour it with red wine, heated to 50-60 °, in a ratio of 1:10 and insist for 2 weeks in a tightly closed vessel in a warm place without access to light. Then the pulp is separated, the wine is filtered and drunk 30 g on an empty stomach and twice a day before meals. The duration of treatment depends on the size of the ulcer (an ulcer with a diameter of a penny coin is delayed for a month). With increased acidity, the wine should be dessert, with low acidity, it should be dry. Healing will be faster if the wine does not contain a preservative added to better preserve the drink (such wine can be purchased in high season in wine-growing areas or use home-made wine).
A replacement for this recipe: long, chewing on a cypress cone, until the ulcer heals.
Avicenna's recipe for longevity
Avicenna's recipes do not lose their relevance today. It remains only to regret that the rejection of the teachings of the brilliant physician by the Catholic Inquisition led to mid-seventeenth centuries to the complete rejection of European medicine from the legacy of Avicenna and the oblivion of many of his works.
The restoration of this heritage is a long, painstaking work, but quite real. It is only important not to drown in theorizing and check each recipe in practice.
Avicenna considered the art of maintaining health to be the main business of his life. Moreover, it is not an art that prevents death, saves the body from external disasters, or guarantees the body a very long life. The task of this art is much more modest, but at the same time extremely important: to provide protection from damage to the moisture contained within the body.
Before the onset of natural death, according to Avicenna, this is a means of preserving the human body. It is entrusted to two forces: the natural, nourishing and providing a substitute for what disappears from the body, and the force that makes the pulse beat.
This task is achieved by observing three modes:
Replacement of moisture disappearing from the body;
Prevention of the causes that cause and accelerate the drying of the body;
Protection of the moisture present in the body from decay.
The main thing in the art of maintaining health is to balance seven factors: nature, physical and mental movement (that is, sleep and wakefulness), choice of drink and food, cleansing the body of excess, maintaining a correct physique, improving the air exhaled through the nose, adapting clothing to the needs of the body.
Newborn Health Bookmark Recipe
After the baby is born, the umbilical cord is cut and tied with clean wool. To strengthen the skin, the child's body is doused with lightly salted water. Before swaddling him, you should lightly touch the baby's body with your fingertips and wrinkle him slightly. Put the baby to sleep in a room with moderate air temperature. In summer, the baby is bathed with moderately warm water, in winter - moderately hot. It is best to start bathing after a long sleep.
Let first, for a week or two, the child is breastfed not by the mother, but by the nurse, until the mother's nature is balanced after childbirth. A nursing mother or another woman should not, according to Avicenna, succumb to such emotional reactions as anger, sadness, fear, so that the baby does not absorb information that spoils nature with milk. To strengthen the child's nature, light swaying, music, and singing are very good. It is desirable that the mother sing more often (regardless of her skill and assessment of the quality of this singing by herself and those around her): maternal singing is in any case healing for the nature of the child.
The baby should be breastfed for two years.
The little man should be protected by all possible means from intense anger, fright, sadness and insomnia. It is necessary to give him what he wants, and to remove from him what he does not like.
Traditional medicine is a vast and multifaceted phenomenon. In the new book by S.E. Kashnitsky "Pearls of Oriental Medicine" an attempt was made to give the widest possible overview of the various methods of traditional medicine - as a rule, tested and proven in practice. The authors of these methods are doctors, often famous and titled, but also healers who pass on valuable folk experience. A special place is given in the book to the methods of Oriental medicine - an ancient science, rediscovered by Europeans in the last century. All this variety of approaches to treatment in the book is systematized, which allows you to quickly find the required method of assistance for various diseases.
However, in the practical use of the recipes given in the book, reasonable prudence is necessary: each organism is individual; what is good for one is not always acceptable for another. Therefore, anyone who dares to use prescriptions as recommendations must certainly coordinate them with the attending physician. Only in this case the risk of thoughtless self-treatment will be minimized.
Professor,
Doctor of Biological Sciences
A.P. Dubrov
Part 1. At the origins of wisdom
Chapter 1. Facing the East: Encyclopedia of Oriental Medicine
The interest of Europeans in the East is probably as eternal as this conditional division into West and East itself, which has little to do with geography. Starting, probably, with the Greco-Persian wars, our ancient countrymen understood: there, in the East, there is some other civilization. It cannot be said that it is more or less developed. She is different, and this already explains the inexhaustible interest in her. Neither the Indian campaign of Alexander the Great, nor the caravan trade with the Caliphate, nor the adventures of the Crusaders, nor the colonial conquests of European maritime powers, ever satisfied this burning interest, this eternal mystery of the East.
Kipling's phrase: "The West is the West, the East is the East, and together they cannot come together" with formulaic brevity establishes the relationship of two cultures with their dialectical balance of attraction and repulsion.
In addition to gunpowder, paper, silk and spices, Europeans brought from the East an unusual system of ideas about a person and his health. There was a concept of "Oriental medicine", which does not have a clear semantic outline, about which only one thing can be most accurately said: a different medicine.
It was created and developed over the centuries in Persia and Arabia, Tibet and Central Asia, India and China... And in even greater, almost invisible antiquity, probably in Egypt and Sumer, Assyria and Babylon, Phenicia and the Hittite state...
The East is so vast and irreducible to one thing that it is not possible not only to give it and, accordingly, Eastern medicine, a clear definition, but even to confidently identify the principles that distinguish it from the European medicine we are used to. The Korean would answer this question with something different, and the Filipino would have something completely different.
Nevertheless, let us try, at least in the most general terms, to outline the features of that incomprehensible concept, which can be called oriental medicine very conditionally.
The ancient philosophers, observing how everything is interconnected in nature, considered the Creator's separation of light from darkness and the earth's firmament from water as a decisive event. Two pairs of opposites set four categories, or "elements" that underlie the universe.
The life-giving energy is called chi (or qi) in Chinese philosophy, prana in Indian philosophy, and pneuma in Persian. All these words are synonymous with the word “air” that is familiar to us, inhaling which a person receives energy for life. Qigong therapy, prana-yama are systems of respiratory gymnastics that allow you to harmonize the body only due to the correct distribution of energy through it. Biologically active points, united in meridians, are the channels through which the energy of the surrounding world enters the body. This is already an approach radically different from that adopted in the West.
The macrocosm (stars and planets) is similar to the microcosm (nuclei of atoms and elementary particles), just as a person is similar to the Creator-Creator, but consists of dust, that is, chemical elements. The changing macrocosm will certainly change the microcosm - these relationships are studied by astrology. But vice versa: changes in the microcosm entail changes in the macrocosm - this is studied by magic. In the same way, a changing world changes a person - these relationships are monitored by medicine (of course, Eastern).
Everything, including the human body, consists of four primary elements - fire (hot), water (cold), earth (dry) and air (wet). Divided according to tastes: fire is bitter, pungent and salty, water is sour or tasteless, earth is astringent, air is slimy. The basis of the color spectrum: fire - red, water - white, earth - brown, air - blue.
Human life is also divided into phases corresponding to the four primary elements: a newborn comes out of the water, a child swims in the air, a fire burns in a young man, an old man shrinks like earth.
The same four elements determine the temperaments, the doctrine of which the Greek Hippocrates and the Roman Galen borrowed from the East. There are four fluids in a person: bile (or cholius) - fire, lymph (or phlegm) - water, black bile (or melancholius) - earth, blood (or sangvus) - air.
Accordingly, spicy, bitter and salty foods are more suitable for explosive choleric people; lethargic phlegmatic people prefer cold, wet, sour food; restrained melancholics, old people from youth, will choose dry and sweet foods, such as dried fruits; cheerful, "childish" sanguine - fatty, oily food
This is how the layout of the primary elements, in itself, indicates to us the patterns of healthy eating that underlie oriental medicine (which will be discussed in more detail below).
Exactly in accordance with the same logic, it is better for the choleric to live in the south, the phlegmatic - in the north, the melancholic - in the east and the sanguine - in the west. And it is better for everyone to eat what grows in a suitable area for him - this is how the body adapts, using the leading primary element embedded in it. Violation of this principle leads to diseases and, above all, to allergies, which is a kind of payment for adapting to a foreign element.
Tibetan medicine - the most integral part of Oriental medicine that has been preserved for several millennia - does not recognize surgical intervention in the human body. Only one correct selection of food, minerals, herbs, aromatic substances, Tibetan doctors undertake to solve all the problems of a malfunctioning organism.
Until recently, Tibet was a closed country and there was no access for foreigners. In our country, the existence of Tibetan medicine was known from Buryatia, where it penetrated along with Buddhism in the 17th century. Buryat lamas themselves wrote medical essays on theoretical issues, and also compiled prescription guides, which are practical guidelines for treatment. Today, Tibetan healers move freely around the world and pass on to their students knowledge that was previously considered secret and inaccessible even in Tibet itself.
In our time, Western civilization is experiencing an ecological crisis - a crisis of disturbed relationships between man and nature, when, due to imbalances in the harmonious ratio of primary elements, people in their mass became chronically ill. Under such conditions, a return to the original concepts, attempts to achieve a disturbed balance are quite natural. That is why the whole world today has turned its eyes to the achievements of oriental medicine.
More and more patients come to medical centers where the principles of oriental medicine are applied. More and more pilgrims flock to Asia, to the autochthonous bearers of ancient knowledge. The shelves of bookstores are filled with literature revealing the secrets of oriental medicine.
© S.E. Kashnitsky
© AST Publishing House LLC
Review
Traditional medicine is a vast and multifaceted phenomenon. In the new book by S.E. Kashnitsky "Pearls of Oriental Medicine" an attempt was made to give the widest possible overview of the various methods of traditional medicine - as a rule, tested and proven in practice. The authors of these methods are doctors, often famous and titled, but also healers who pass on valuable folk experience. A special place is given in the book to the methods of Oriental medicine - an ancient science, rediscovered by Europeans in the last century. All this variety of approaches to treatment in the book is systematized, which allows you to quickly find the required method of assistance for various diseases.
However, in the practical use of the recipes given in the book, reasonable prudence is necessary: each organism is individual; what is good for one is not always acceptable for another. Therefore, anyone who dares to use prescriptions as recommendations must certainly coordinate them with the attending physician. Only in this case the risk of thoughtless self-treatment will be minimized.
Professor, Doctor of Biological Sciences A.P. Dubrov
Part 1. At the origins of wisdom
Chapter 1. Facing the East: Encyclopedia of Oriental Medicine
The interest of Europeans in the East is probably as eternal as this conditional division into West and East itself, which has little to do with geography. Starting, probably, with the Greco-Persian wars, our ancient countrymen understood: there, in the East, there is some other civilization. It cannot be said that it is more or less developed. She is different, and this already explains the inexhaustible interest in her. Neither the Indian campaign of Alexander the Great, nor the caravan trade with the Caliphate, nor the adventures of the Crusaders, nor the colonial conquests of European maritime powers, ever satisfied this burning interest, this eternal mystery of the East.
Kipling's phrase: "The West is the West, the East is the East, and together they cannot come together" with formulaic brevity establishes the relationship of two cultures with their dialectical balance of attraction and repulsion.
In addition to gunpowder, paper, silk and spices, Europeans brought from the East an unusual system of ideas about a person and his health. There was a concept of "Oriental medicine", which does not have a clear semantic outline, about which only one thing can be most accurately said: a different medicine.
It was created and developed over the centuries in Persia and Arabia, Tibet and Central Asia, India and China... And in even greater, almost invisible antiquity, probably in Egypt and Sumer, Assyria and Babylon, Phenicia and the Hittite state...
The East is so vast and irreducible to one thing that there is no way not only to give it and, accordingly, Eastern medicine, a clear definition, but even to confidently identify the principles that distinguish it from the European medicine we are used to. The Korean would answer this question with something different, and the Filipino would have something completely different.
Nevertheless, let us try, at least in the most general terms, to outline the features of that incomprehensible concept, which can be called oriental medicine very conditionally.
The ancient philosophers, observing how everything is interconnected in nature, considered the Creator's separation of light from darkness and the earth's firmament from water as a decisive event. Two pairs of opposites set four categories, or "elements" that underlie the universe.
The life-giving energy is called chi (or qi) in Chinese philosophy, prana in Indian philosophy, and pneuma in Persian. All these words are synonymous with the word “air” that is familiar to us, inhaling which a person receives energy for life. Qigong therapy, prana-yama are systems of respiratory gymnastics that allow you to harmonize the body only due to the correct distribution of energy through it. Biologically active points, united in meridians, are the channels through which the energy of the surrounding world enters the body. This is already an approach radically different from that adopted in the West.
The macrocosm (stars and planets) is similar to the microcosm (nuclei of atoms and elementary particles), just as a person is similar to the Creator-Creator, but consists of dust, that is, chemical elements. The changing macrocosm will certainly change the microcosm - these relationships are studied by astrology. But vice versa: changes in the microcosm entail changes in the macrocosm - this is studied by magic. In the same way, a changing world changes a person - these relationships are monitored by medicine (of course, Eastern).
Everything, including the human body, consists of four primary elements - fire (hot), water (cold), earth (dry) and air (wet). Divided according to tastes: fire is bitter, pungent and salty, water is sour or tasteless, earth is astringent, air is slimy. The basis of the color spectrum: fire - red, water - white, earth - brown, air - blue.
Human life is also divided into phases corresponding to the four primary elements: a newborn comes out of the water, a child swims in the air, a fire burns in a young man, an old man shrinks like earth.
The same four elements determine the temperaments, the doctrine of which the Greek Hippocrates and the Roman Galen borrowed from the East. There are four fluids in a person: bile (or cholius) - fire, lymph (or phlegm) - water, black bile (or melancholius) - earth, blood (or sangvus) - air.
Accordingly, spicy, bitter and salty foods are more suitable for explosive choleric people; lethargic phlegmatic people prefer cold, wet, sour food; restrained melancholics, old people from youth, will choose dry and sweet foods, such as dried fruits; cheerful, "childish" sanguine people - fatty, oily food.
This is how the layout of the primary elements, in itself, indicates to us the patterns of healthy eating that underlie oriental medicine (which will be discussed in more detail below).
Exactly in accordance with the same logic, it is better for the choleric to live in the south, the phlegmatic - in the north, the melancholic - in the east and the sanguine - in the west. And it is better for everyone to eat what grows in a suitable area for him - this is how the body adapts, using the leading primary element embedded in it. Violation of this principle leads to diseases and, above all, to allergies, which is a kind of payment for adapting to a foreign element.
Tibetan medicine - the most integral part of Oriental medicine that has been preserved for several millennia - does not recognize surgical intervention in the human body. Only one correct selection of food, minerals, herbs, aromatic substances, Tibetan doctors undertake to solve all the problems of a malfunctioning organism.
Until recently, Tibet was a closed country and there was no access for foreigners. In our country, the existence of Tibetan medicine was known from Buryatia, where it penetrated along with Buddhism in the 17th century. Buryat lamas themselves wrote medical essays on theoretical issues, and also compiled prescription guides, which are practical guidelines for treatment. Today, Tibetan healers move freely around the world and pass on to their students knowledge that was previously considered secret and inaccessible even in Tibet itself.
In our time, Western civilization is experiencing an ecological crisis - a crisis of disturbed relationships between man and nature, when, due to imbalances in the harmonious ratio of primary elements, people in their mass became chronically ill. Under such conditions, a return to the original concepts, attempts to achieve a disturbed balance are quite natural. That is why the whole world today has turned its eyes to the achievements of oriental medicine.
More and more patients come to medical centers where the principles of oriental medicine are applied. More and more pilgrims flock to Asia, to the autochthonous bearers of ancient knowledge. The shelves of bookstores are filled with literature revealing the secrets of oriental medicine.
The information collected in the book is fragmentary: in some regions of the East (Mongolia, Buryatia, Uzbekistan, Tatarstan, Bulgaria, which I also conditionally attribute to the East, since the information received there comes from Turkey, Greece, Byzantium) I happened to visit personally and communicate with figures of ancient medical culture, I met with some interlocutors from China, Taiwan, Korea in other territories. You should also not look for completeness in recipes that help cure ailments. Only those of them are given that were passed on to me by the carriers of this knowledge.
The information contained in my notes is purely practical. I am not trying, like other scientific authors, to explain, for example, the basics of reflexology. But I give the simplest recommendations: massaging which points in which cases will help get rid of the most common ailments.
The recipes of Eastern doctors, as a rule, were taken by me on faith: there was simply no physical opportunity to check everything on myself and loved ones. In those cases where such checks were carried out, I specifically stipulate this. But, I believe, you can trust the information I give in the book: all my interlocutors are people with solid experience in practical work in medicine or healing. In addition, most of the notes were published in the periodical press and had a lot of feedback from readers who were able to use the recipes I cited.
In addition to information from oriental medicine, a lot of information has accumulated about alternative methods of healing and treatment that have practical value. I have separated it into a separate part of the book. The book also contains specific recipes for the treatment of diseases by folk methods for the convenience of readers, arranged in alphabetical order.
In conclusion, I would like to thank all my interlocutors who disinterestedly shared their knowledge with me and readers. Special thanks to Professor Ivan Pavlovich Neumyvakin, chief physician of the Naran Tibetan clinic in Moscow, Svetlana Galsanovna Choyzhinimaeva, and an employee of the Bukhara Medical Institute, Inom Dzhuraevich Karomatov, who devoted long hours to useful and interesting conversations with me about oriental medicine.
Middle East and Central Asia
Ancient recipe of Avicenna
Everyone must have heard this name. But few people know anything specific about this person. Medieval Arab thinker. Philosopher, physician, musician. So after all then all outstanding people were encyclopedists.
Abu Ali ibn Sina (in Latin pronunciation - Avicenna) during the period of the Arabic Renaissance continued the traditions of Aristotle and the Neoplatonists, left to posterity about 50 works on medicine, 30 of which have survived to this day. Among them is the Canon of Medical Science, which until the 17th century was the main medical aid for European doctors. And then Avicenna was forgotten for many centuries. Rather, the name remained, but Avicenna's prescriptions disappeared from the medical arsenal.
Meanwhile, it is still modern today. And we - instead of grabbing a pill for any reason - can use the wisdom of the Arab genius. You just need to learn to understand it.
A thousand years ago, when Avicenna lived and worked, dead matter in the form of chemical additives was not included in the composition of medicines. Those thousands of recipes that the Arab doctor left us contain only natural ingredients of plant, animal and mineral origin. These recipes are by no means abstract mental constructions, they were personally tested by Avicenna and other famous doctors. And since much of the knowledge of that era has been lost, the verification and search for correspondence between the former names of the components and the current ones continues today.
Then they set about solving the problems of "translating" his recipes into the language of modern herbal medicine. This is not always easy: sometimes the meaning of some names is lost. They have to be restored using context or a general understanding of the qualities that are required to achieve the desired effect.
For example, many of Avicenna's recipes use the term pulegium mint. What it is? Let us turn to the first book of the Canon, where all varieties of mint are given. In particular, in the section "Fudanaj" it is indicated that pulegic mint consists of a rarefied substance, drives sweat, dries and warms a lot. It is already clear that we are talking about the expansion of blood vessels. The sum of all the properties mentioned can be found among known identical plants. Specifically, we need mint with a high menthol content. Or catnip, together with lemon balm (lemon mint), obviously overlapping the properties that mint, including pulegium, can differ in.
Having found such a replacement, you can “modernize”, for example, Avicenna’s most important recipe for removing kidney stones, which has one hundred percent efficiency.
How to get kidney stones out. Avicenna recipe
They take one part of lavender flowers, two parts of mountain thyme (Avicenna has thyme), two parts of strawberry leaves and berries, one part of lemon balm, two parts of catnip and two parts of mint (all these plants, as a rule, are available in the summer cottage, the missing ones can be find in a pharmacy or store). All this is mixed, a teaspoon of the plant mixture is poured with a glass of boiling water and infused for 10-15 minutes. The infusion is drunk like tea. Thyme and strawberry crush stones, turning them into sand, but do not drive them along the excretory paths, lavender relieves inflammation, and mint, lemon balm and catnip drive the resulting mucus down. They drink the infusion, all the time looking through the morning urine: already a week after the start of the reception, it becomes cloudy (mucus goes), then grains of sand appear. Continue treatment from two months to a year until the urine becomes clear. The great advantage of this method is that the stone will not go through the ducts, causing excruciating pain.
Studying Avicenna's recipes in practice, the researchers were convinced that they are very strong, designed for patients with a greater margin of health than current people. Apparently, a thousand years ago, the immune system was stronger, and a person reacted perfectly to the active effects of drugs. We must make allowances for the changed ecological situation and the greater vulnerability of our body.
So, for example, one should be wary of the recommendation of treating men with St. John's wort. This very popular herb is purely female, men should not use it for longer than two weeks: impotence may occur. And we are used to thinking that all herbs have only a weak, barely noticeable effect on the body.
A very common disease is otitis media (inflammation of the middle ear). It causes a lot of trouble with acute pain, possible complications. Doctors often prescribe antibiotics for otitis media. Meanwhile, Avicenna teaches how to easily and harmlessly deal with this disease.
How to get rid of otitis. Avicenna recipe
Take almonds. If bitter, wild, two cores are enough, if sweet, four cores. They are crushed in a mortar. Add a pinch of Ceylon or Chinese cinnamon, a pinch of soda and 1 drop of essential rose oil. All this is connected with half a teaspoon of thick honey - a paste is obtained, which should be stored in the cold. A drop of vinegar is dropped onto a piece of paste the size of a pea - in the presence of soda, a hiss occurs. The reaction of soda with vinegar allows almonds to release phytoncides, due to which it is in the most active phase. In this state, you can’t store the drug for the future: the reaction has to be repeated before each new use. A hissing "pea" is placed in a sore ear, plugged with cotton wool and kept for an hour. 3-4 such procedures a day for several days will lead to a complete recovery. Moreover, the pain in the ear is removed from the second time.
In the "Canon" there are three recipes for the treatment of inflammation of the ear. Those elements that are repeated in all three are selected: almonds, soda, honey. And the main principle: soda and vinegar balance each other. Rose oil is taken from the first recipe, Chinese cinnamon is taken from the third. Thanks to this, it was possible to bypass galban, which grows only in Africa (experimentally convinced that the drug is quite effective even without galban). Saffron, mentioned by Avicenna, is replaced by cinnamon. There is nowhere to get myrrh now, poppy, which is a drug, is unacceptable as a sleeping pill.
Infusion on pomegranate peels for stomach ulcers
A medieval physician gave us a recipe for getting rid of stomach and duodenal ulcers. Take sweet pomegranate peels (sweet pomegranate seeds are maroon in color) and sour pomegranate peels (light pink grains). Pomegranate peels can be replaced with cypress cones. It is convenient to grind any of the selected substances in a coffee grinder or with a meat grinder. Pour it with red wine, heated to 50-60 °, in a ratio of 1:10 and insist for 2 weeks in a tightly closed vessel in a warm place without access to light. Then the pulp is separated, the wine is filtered and drunk 30 g on an empty stomach and twice a day before meals. The duration of treatment depends on the size of the ulcer (an ulcer with a diameter of a penny coin is delayed for a month). With increased acidity, the wine should be dessert, with low acidity, it should be dry. Healing will be faster if the wine does not contain a preservative added to better preserve the drink (such wine can be purchased in high season in wine-growing areas or use home-made wine).
A replacement for this recipe: long, chewing on a cypress cone, until the ulcer heals.
Avicenna's recipe for longevity
Avicenna's recipes do not lose their relevance today. It remains only to regret that the rejection of the teachings of the brilliant physician by the Catholic Inquisition led in the middle of the 17th century to the complete rejection of Avicenna's heritage by European medicine and the oblivion of many of his works.
The restoration of this heritage is a long, painstaking work, but quite real. It is only important not to drown in theorizing and check each recipe in practice.
Avicenna considered the art of maintaining health to be the main business of his life. Moreover, it is not an art that prevents death, saves the body from external disasters, or guarantees the body a very long life. The task of this art is much more modest, but at the same time extremely important: to provide protection from damage to the moisture contained within the body.
Before the onset of natural death, according to Avicenna, this is a means of preserving the human body. It is entrusted to two forces: the natural, nourishing and providing a substitute for what disappears from the body, and the force that makes the pulse beat.
This task is achieved by observing three modes:
Replacement of moisture disappearing from the body;
Prevention of the causes that cause and accelerate the drying of the body;
Protection of the moisture present in the body from decay.
The main thing in the art of maintaining health is to balance seven factors: nature, physical and mental movement (that is, sleep and wakefulness), choice of drink and food, cleansing the body of excess, maintaining a correct physique, improving the air exhaled through the nose, adapting clothing to the needs of the body.
Newborn Health Bookmark Recipe
After the baby is born, the umbilical cord is cut and tied with clean wool. To strengthen the skin, the child's body is doused with lightly salted water. Before swaddling him, you should lightly touch the baby's body with your fingertips and wrinkle him slightly. Put the baby to sleep in a room with moderate air temperature. In summer, the baby is bathed with moderately warm water, in winter - moderately hot. It is best to start bathing after a long sleep.
Let first, for a week or two, the child is breastfed not by the mother, but by the nurse, until the mother's nature is balanced after childbirth. A nursing mother or another woman should not, according to Avicenna, succumb to such emotional reactions as anger, sadness, fear, so that the baby does not absorb information that spoils nature with milk. To strengthen the child's nature, light swaying, music, and singing are very good. It is desirable that the mother sing more often (regardless of her skill and assessment of the quality of this singing by herself and those around her): maternal singing is in any case healing for the nature of the child.
The baby should be breastfed for two years.
The little man should be protected by all possible means from intense anger, fright, sadness and insomnia. It is necessary to give him what he wants, and to remove from him what he does not like.
And the savvy reader knows that on the bookshelves you can find many reference books on oriental medicine. However, few people know that such publications are compiled on the basis of two or three outdated printed sources that have long lost their relevance. The book you hold in your hands is unique in its content. The copy-books collected in it were not copied from old books. These original and surprisingly effective recipes have been passed down from teacher to student for centuries. oral and were not intended for general use. All of them were collected in remote regions during search expeditions by Savely Kashnitsky. Shocking in their effectiveness, the results of many medicinal prescriptions, the author had the opportunity to observe with his own eyes directly during the practice of healers. The book includes hundreds of original recipes and recommendations collected during expeditions to the Middle East and Central Asia, Tibet, Mongolia, Tatarstan, Bulgaria, China and the Far East.
This manual is not a textbook on medicine, all the recommendations given in it should be used only after agreement with the attending physician.
Savely Kashnitsky
Pearls of Eastern medicine
Review
Traditional medicine is a vast and multifaceted phenomenon. In the new book by S.E. Kashnitsky "Pearls of Oriental Medicine" an attempt was made to give the widest possible overview of the various methods of traditional medicine - as a rule, tested and proven in practice. The authors of these methods are doctors, often famous and titled, but also healers who pass on valuable folk experience. A special place is given in the book to the methods of Oriental medicine - an ancient science, rediscovered by Europeans in the last century. All this variety of approaches to treatment in the book is systematized, which allows you to quickly find the required method of assistance for various diseases.
However, in the practical use of the recipes given in the book, reasonable prudence is necessary: each organism is individual; what is good for one is not always acceptable for another. Therefore, anyone who dares to use prescriptions as recommendations must certainly coordinate them with the attending physician. Only in this case the risk of thoughtless self-treatment will be minimized.
Professor
Doctor of Biological Sciences
The sophisticated reader knows that on the bookshelves you can find many reference books on oriental medicine. However, few people know that such publications are compiled on the basis of two or three outdated printed sources that have long lost their relevance. The book you hold in your hands is unique in its content. The copy-books collected in it were not copied from old books. These original and surprisingly effective recipes have been handed down orally from teacher to student for centuries and were not intended for widespread use. All of them were collected in remote regions during search expeditions by Savely Kashnitsky. Shocking in their effectiveness, the results of many medicinal prescriptions, the author had the opportunity to observe with his own eyes directly during the practice of healers. The book includes hundreds of original recipes and recommendations collected during expeditions to the Middle East and Central Asia, Tibet, Mongolia, Tatarstan, Bulgaria, China and the Far East.
This manual is not a textbook on medicine, all the recommendations given in it should be used only after agreement with the attending physician.
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