Experts Discuss Medicine And Health Care in China At Med School Symposium

Panelists at a Medical School symposium on medical practice in mainland China agreed Monday night that the Communist regime has done an excellent job of spreading health care to most segments of the Chinese population.

Ezra F. Vogel, professor of Social Relations, said that, since the late 1950's, "the organization of Communist government has made it possible to carry medical techniques deep into the countryside."

Vogel added that Communist reform of the Public Health Ministry resulted in the establishment of medical schools and training at the provincial and district level.

Western Practice

John K. Fairbank '29, Francis Lee Higginson Professor of History, said that the importation of western medical practice early in the 20th century brought advanced standards of medical research to China, but "couldn't carry on the revolution of distributing this practice throughout the populace."

Nathan Sivim, associate professor of Humanities at M. I. T., said that Chinese medical practice is "humanitarian and personal rather than scientific and technical." He explained that medical science in China is "a unitary complex of concepts" which involves a philosophic, non-empirical approach to the internal harmony of bodily organs.

Acupuncture

One prominent Chinese medical technique not used in the West is acupuncture, which cures by insertion of slender needles at points of the body, which do not bear any anatomical relation to the diseased organ.

Chinese medical spokesmen claim that they have begun curing patients by applying western-style medication to acupuncture points. Sivim quoted a statistic which alleged an 87.5 percent cure rate for acupuncture treatment of whooping cough.