The art of healing and the quest for effective cures has been around for centuries. For the Greeks and the Chinese imbalance was determined to be the cause of illness, the Chinese focused on the cosmology of Yin and Yang while the Greeks focused on determining what caused the illness and how to combat the illness. Even though both cultures saw imbalance to be the cause of the illness, the Greeks and the Chinese had different ways of attempting to cure their sick.
Imbalance had two different meanings for the Chinese imbalance dealt with Yin and Yang. Yang is the male principle of light and life, the day and the sun, strength and activity; Yin is the female principle of darkness and death, the night and the moon, weakness and passivity. (Andrea P.116) Yin and Yang deals with every aspect of the world, even humans have a blend of Yin and Yang. Therefore, maintaining the harmonious balance of Yin and Yang that is special to each element of nature is essential for preserving its well-being and proper function. (Andrea P.116) With the Greeks, imbalance dealt with the four humors; blood, phlegm, black bile and yellow bile. An excess of any humor causes psychic and physical imbalance. (Andrea P.117) This throws the body out of balance, but because every person is different humors are never imbalance and because of this each person has different characteristics. However when the imbalance becomes to great and a person gets ill, a doctor had to involved and help the body get back into balance by: withholding foods and medicines that either reduced or increased one or more of the humors. (Andrea P.117)
The Yellow Emperor’s Classic of Internal Medicine was the earliest know Chinese medical text, although it
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