Masters of Health Magazine November 2017 | Page 101

In the centuries that followed, the completion of the Yellow Emperor’s Inner Cannon, several shorter books tried to summarize or systematize its contents. The Canon of Problems (second century CE) tried to reconcile divergent doctrines from the Inner Canon and developed a complete medical system centered on needling therapy. The AB Canon of Acupuncture and Moxibustion compiled by Huangfu Mi (between 256 and 282 CE) assembled a consistent body of doctrines concerning acupuncture. The Canon of the Pulse presented itself as a comprehensive handbook on diagnostics and therapy.

In the 1950s, these precepts were standardized in the People’s Republic of China, which included attempts to integrate them with modern notions of anatomy and pathology. In 1952, the president of the Chinese Medical Assoc. said that, “This One Medicine, will possess a basis in modern natural sciences, will have absorbed the ancient and the new, the Chinese and the foreign, all medical achievements, and will be China’s New Medicine.”

NOTE: The information in this article is basic. The Science and study of TCM is a lot more complex.