Talk:Traditional medicine

Wikiproject Traditional Medicine
I have proposed the creation of a wiki project traditional medicine, ethno medical or anthropological sources would be ideal; though any references that meet wikipedia MEDRS standards would be even better. The projects scope would cover at least half of the articles on diseases, animals, plants, fungi and ethnic groups. The projects goal is to promote multicultural perspectives and a multi-disciplinary approach to the sciences. CensoredScribe (talk) 19:00, 3 September 2013 (UTC)


 * Same tendencies in GE
 * This article was translated to GE. Unfortunately, some wikipedians were unwilling to discuss topics before altering. So I ::stopped up to now to work on it. Nevertheless in GE a very engaged author, EMERITUS had made the same proposal. I agree. My ::proposal is, to split the existing article in two:


 * A1 should describe principles and common structures


 * A2 should, in its core be the existing article which is in essential an article on WESTERN Traditional Medicine. This is ::excuse me, a general problem of articles in EN wikipedia. Bussakendle (talk) 10:19, 9 June 2014 (UTC)

This
This article doesn't evey try to be NPOV, it's just propaganda, whether you agree with it or not. Revolver 01:37, 7 Feb 2004 (UTC)

It's much better now, but still POV. While I share some of your concerns about pharmaceutical companies and unorthodox ideas failing to receive funding (see my aborted attempt at the article AIDS reappraisal), perhaps there's still a better way to phrase this. Revolver 22:31, 9 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Give it your best shot at revision. statkit1 15:13, 10 Feb 2004 (UTC)

Changed "pharmaceutical" back to "medical"...traditional medicine is not just about the chemical treatment of ailments; if it were, acupuncture wouldn't be considered part of traditional medicine. Alan 20:10, 3 May 2007 (UTC)

Traditional medicine systems like Traditional Chinese Medicine or Traditional Ayurvedic Medicine are fully developed medical systems and not folk medicine. This article should not be merged. However I will add some see also links. Karen S Vaughan 01:19, 21 May 2007 (UTC)


 * Traditional Chinese Medicine and Traditional Ayurvedic Medicine are unsafe and unsound pseudoscientific Alternative Medicine systems that are based entirely on anti-scientific esoteric principles of vitalism and "life forces", primitive ideas of sympathetic magic, and blind adherence to tradition despite a complete lack of evidence for any kind of effectiveness. Both systems use highly unethical and/or dangerous components; TCM uses myriad body parts from endangered animal species (ground rhinoceros horn used as an ineffectual aphrodisiac just because horns look kind of phallic... how brilliant.) Body parts that are supplied by an extensive black market of panda torture farms and worldwide poaching rings that hunt endangered species to near extinction.  Ayurveda uses toxic chemicals such as lead, mercury, and arsenic, substances known from modern science to beextremely poisonous to the human body.  And at the most basic level, continued belief in such systems of pseudoscientific quackery is extremely harmful to some of the poorest and most at-risk people on the planet; countless poor sick people rely on useless snake oil thinking it will heal them, instead of seeking out modern (real) medical aid, and they die because of it.  Referring to these laughable remnants of Bronze Age folk magic as "fully developed medical systems" is an insult to the very idea of medicine.
 * RyokoMocha FOR I AM NYARLATHOTEP, THE CRAWLING CHAOS 05:42, 16 August 2023 (UTC)

Cleaned up, consolidated and added references. Removed clean up tags and references tags. Added terms ethnobotany and medical anthropology. Added categories and removed the no-categories tag. Friarslantern 18:21, 20 August 2007 (UTC)

Quackery
So basically what I get from this article is that snake oil used by white Westerners it is rightfully acknowledged as alternative medicine quackery, but snake oil used by non-white non-Westerners gets labelled "Traditional Medicine." A given type of unscientific snake oil would be recognized as harmful Alternative Medicine quackery when used by a New Age hippie from New York, but if the exact same snake oil is used by a villager in China or Africa it somehow gets transmuted into "Traditional Medicine." Why is this? Snake oil is snake oil. RyokoMocha FOR I AM NYARLATHOTEP, THE CRAWLING CHAOS 04:24, 16 August 2023 (UTC)

Request
I would like to request for someone to create a page on traditional Mexican medicine. It is a rich topic that has been extensively studied from both cultural and scientific perspectives. A google scholar search for "Traditional Mexican Medicine" may be a good starting point. Cazort (talk) 19:56, 18 September 2008 (UTC)

REQUESTING FOR native american medicine!!! an element of america that does not have its own page on wikipedia! how can that be?121.7.192.69 (talk) 11:16, 26 June 2009 (UTC)

Reference style
This article uses Parenthetical referencing. If you're adding a new reference, please make the style match what's already in place here. Thanks, WhatamIdoing (talk) 19:18, 3 December 2008 (UTC)


 * Please use a direct instruction instead of leaving the reader to do navigation.
 * I have a look at the following and cann't tell which one is the wiki standards
 * http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Citation_templates--222.64.31.57 (talk) 07:51, 23 May 2009 (UTC)


 * Embedded citations is the most commonly used style, and is in use at this article. -- Brangifer (talk) 16:55, 23 May 2009 (UTC)

Definition of traditional medicine.....
I suggest that the definition on the following page should be used, although it maybe different to the one quoted in the article currently

http://www.who.int/medicines/areas/traditional/definitions/en/index.html --222.64.31.57 (talk) 07:09, 23 May 2009 (UTC)

Please adopt the terms with the following
http://whqlibdoc.who.int/publications/2003/9241546271.pdf as a standardized practice--222.64.31.57 (talk) 07:40, 23 May 2009 (UTC)

The topic of Buddhist medicine has been added based on ..... plus ....
the following

http://scholar.google.com/scholar?as_q=buddhist+medicine&num=10&btnG=Search+Scholar&as_epq=&as_oq=&as_eq=&as_occt=title&as_sauthors=&as_publication=&as_ylo=&as_yhi=&as_allsubj=all&hl=en&lr=&newwindow=1 --222.67.208.20 (talk) 03:08, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

Hindu medicine http://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&lr=&newwindow=1&q=allintitle%3A+%22hindu+medicine%22&btnG=Search --222.67.208.20 (talk) 03:18, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

Islamic medicine http://scholar.google.com/scholar?hl=en&lr=&newwindow=1&q=allintitle%3A+%22Islamic+medicine%22&btnG=Search --222.67.208.20 (talk) 03:22, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

Jewish medicine http://scholar.google.com/scholar?q=allintitle:+%22Jewish+medicine%22&hl=en&lr=&newwindow=1&start=0&sa=N --222.67.208.20 (talk) 03:24, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

The other main streams of medicines could be from the main streams of religions and I assume that people knows.

BTW, what is the difference between Vedic medicine and Hindu medicine??? http://scholar.google.com/scholar?as_q=Vedic+medicine&num=10&btnG=Search+Scholar&as_epq=&as_oq=&as_eq=&as_occt=title&as_sauthors=&as_publication=&as_ylo=&as_yhi=&as_allsubj=all&hl=en&lr=&newwindow=1 --222.67.208.20 (talk) 03:32, 27 May 2009 (UTC)

Jagged 85
(Ping! ) I have reverted this two word claim which Jagged 85, a problematic editor, inserted in about 10 articles several years ago. It is sourced to "Diane Boulanger (2002), "The Islamic Contribution to Science, Mathematics and Technology", OISE Papers, in STSE Education, Vol. 3." The actual title of her paper is The Islamic Contribution to Science, Mathematics and Technology: Towards Motivating the Muslim Child and this is in a (almost certainly non-peer reviewed) journal dedicated to education, written by a then undergraduate computer scientist. Jagged 85, moreover, is noted for failing to correctly follow his sources, among other problems. For full details see Reliable sources/Noticeboard and the Jagged 85 cleanup project that it links to. All the best, Rich Farmbrough, 00:46, 10 April 2014 (UTC).


 * Note full changes made by Jagged 85.  Probably suspect as well. Rich Farmbrough, 00:51, 10 April 2014 (UTC)


 * Thanks for the helpful explanation, Rich. Would it make sense to retain the reference to Ibn al-Baitar? From a quick look, it seems appropriate. Regards, DA Sonnenfeld (talk) 02:05, 10 April 2014 (UTC)


 * It is a bit of a nightmare, we should ideally re-write the whole section, there are people around who have the knowledge to do that without intensive research, but I'm not one of them.  I dislike removing content, but so much of what Jagged 85 wrote is wrong (and he wrote a lot, albeit much was cut and pasted in many places), and such is the reliance on Wikipedia these days, that on other articles I have visited his mistakes, having been removed once, are coming back from sources that have copied them from WP.  A tremendous amount of work has been done (not by me, I hasten to add) to resolve these problems, but there's loads left.  All the best, Rich Farmbrough, 02:47, 10 April 2014 (UTC).

Traditional medicine and folk medicine
Traditional medicine is fundamentally different from folk medicine in terms of classification. Folk medicine is a system that is regionally developed based on the requirements of a relatively small community. It is often related with regional conditions, available plants and herbs and although completely efficient it lacks a scientific understanding of the processes going on behind the treatment. Traditional medicine is based on a platform upon which a science is built. It is a science in the sense that it is reproducible anywhere at anytime given a proper understanding of the applicable conditions. Extensive classification, practice and study often lead to the formation of scriptures in traditional medicine which is not present in folk medicine. Hence it would not be advisable to merge the two pages of Folk medicine and Traditional medicine. Ksajnani (talk) 16:07, 24 September 2014 (UTC)
 * The merger is now being discussed here. – Maky  « talk » 03:28, 24 October 2014 (UTC)
 * It happened in December 2014. -- BullRangifer (talk) 05:42, 21 December 2015 (UTC)

New project starting
This article seems to fill a void in the general article History of medicine and may be a candidate as a subarticle to the series. Anyone interested in this article is welcome to join the discussion. I'm proposing an overhaul of History of medicine, both to improve the quality of its discussion of Western Medicine, and to improve its world view of other medical traditions in the rest of the world. All are welcome to join in the discussion. Hi-storian (talk) 23:36, 4 January 2016 (UTC)

That picture of the mutilated slow loris is pretty disturbing for this article.
I'm recommending that it gets removed. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 70.64.105.180 (talk) 08:01, 28 July 2018 (UTC)
 * I don't understand why, unless you WP:IDONTLIKEIT, in which case dont remove it, it is sourced. Have you got a policy based reason to remove it? -Roxy, the dog. barcus 08:05, 28 July 2018 (UTC)
 * Disagree with removal; Roxy makes good points — Sir-Douglas (talk) 15:28, 4 December 2021 (UTC)
 * I agree it should be removed. A more appropriate photo that still represents how endangered species correspond to traditional medicine is needed. Youngmv (talk) 00:48, 30 August 2020 (UTC)

Safety concerns deletion
Why was the sentence I added to safety concerns deleted? The sentence read "However, given that iatrogenic complications from chemical pharmaceuticals ranks as a third leading cause of death in the U.S. and Britain[34], Traditional Medicine may be considered relatively safe in comparison." MSun333 (talk) 01:37, 23 August 2018 (UTC)

Undeleted and revised section to read: "Statistics regarding actual harm befalling consumers of folk medicine are scant. "Deaths or hospitalizations due to herbs are so rare that they are hard to find. Even, the National Poison Control Centres of the United States does not have a category in their database for side or adverse reactions to herbs." [38]. In contrast, "Johns Hopkins patient safety experts have calculated that more than 250,000 deaths per year are due to medical error in the U.S. Their figure, published May 3 in The BMJ, surpasses the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention's third leading cause of death—respiratory disease, which kills close to 150,000 people per year."[39]"

Added stronger references. I kindly ask that instead of future deletions, we could discuss future cooperation and compromise on the talk page. MSun333 (talk) 03:05, 23 August 2018 (UTC)

Deletion continues without talk. If you are going to separate two different types of medicine, "modern medicine" and "traditional medicine" the comparative theme should continue throughout the document. If safety concerns of one are mentioned, than safety concerns of the other should be mentioned. How would you like to do that? MSun333 (talk) 06:09, 23 August 2018 (UTC)
 * It was deleted because it was anti-scientific and made a false comparison. Your other addition was very good. Carl Fredrik  talk 08:50, 27 August 2018 (UTC)

From traditional to 'modern'
I am speaking as an anthropology undergraduate interested in the culture of medicine. I feel that there is something lacking in the 'modern usage' section of this article. After the 'medieval and later' section, which discusses how traditional medicine was influenced by generally well-respected scientists (famous Islamic physicians like Avicenna) and endorsed by the Western empires (Imperial Spain) which heavily influenced the creation of the 'modern world', we do not get a clear idea as to how 'traditional' medicine came to diverge from standard practice.

There is some hint that there is no absolute boundary between 'traditional' and 'modern' medicine (i.e. that we have been able to derive medicines from the ingredients involved in traditional cures), but I believe it would benefit from some examples (like the discovery of artemisinin), and I might try editing the article to add some myself. I think it would also be interesting to provide examples of how 'tradition' (i.e. knowledge not necessarily empirically supported but nonetheless 'passed down') continues in standard Western medical practice. This could be as simple as describing the rituals/traditions of medical education or we could discuss examples of non-empirically-supported medical practices which caused harm in the modern era.

I want to stress that I don't have any particular bias in favour of 'traditional' medicine and don't seek to make its present-day practice appear more empirical or scientifically valid than it is. I personally rely on what would be called 'modern' forms of medicine. I do think, however, that this article should pose challenging examples of situations where the distinction between 'traditional' and 'modern' medicine becomes unclear. We could also discuss recent attempts to integrate these practices, such as partnerships between indigenous practitioners and MDs/clinicians. I also generally think some sections are underdeveloped (such as the one on indigenous American practices, which is only one sentence and doesn't really integrate what is said about indigenous practice elsewhere in the article).

I will do my own bit to try to improve and expand the article, but I am writing here to encourage others to do the same. PigeonAppreciator (talk) 17:13, 27 July 2019 (UTC)

Wrong History in the "Classical History" section
"Classical history .... The first Chinese herbal book was the Shennong Bencao Jing, compiled during the Han Dynasty but dating back to a much earlier date, which was later augmented as the Yaoxing Lun (Treatise on the Nature of Medicinal Herbs) during the Tang Dynasty. " Huangdi Neijing is before the Shennong Bencao Jing. see wiki Huangdi Neijing

Ted 2607:FEA8:4A2:4100:5C03:A6A:1118:C842 (talk) 11:35, 19 December 2022 (UTC)

"Magico-medical" listed at Redirects for discussion
The redirect [//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Magico-medical&redirect=no Magico-medical] has been listed at redirects for discussion to determine whether its use and function meets the redirect guidelines. Readers of this page are welcome to comment on this redirect at  until a consensus is reached. Utopes (talk / cont) 06:04, 22 January 2024 (UTC)

"Magico-healing" listed at Redirects for discussion
The redirect [//en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Magico-healing&redirect=no Magico-healing] has been listed at redirects for discussion to determine whether its use and function meets the redirect guidelines. Readers of this page are welcome to comment on this redirect at  until a consensus is reached. Utopes (talk / cont) 06:04, 22 January 2024 (UTC)

Wiki Education assignment: Psychology Capstone
— Assignment last updated by Rahneli (talk) 00:49, 10 June 2024 (UTC)