Terrain and germs

The origins of Chinese Medicine predate germ theory (which took hold in Europe and the Americas in the late 19th Century) by at least 2000 years.

Across that time, the question of What causes diseases that come into the body from the outside? was answered in several different ways. First it was ghosts and disgruntled ancestors, then it was various climatic factors (such as wind and cold), then it was specific infectious agents of unknown form, and finally it was microbes (influenced by the conclusions of western science).

Persistent throughout this history has been the observation that most diseases of exterior origin seem to affect the weak more than the strong. Healthy bodies are not hospitable environments for most pathogens - this is an essential Chinese Medicine doctrine.

Echos of this idea may be heard today in the mutterings of people who believe themselves to be proponents of terrain theory.

The gist seems to be, infections in general don't pose a risk to healthy people who have optimized their internal "terrain", especially their immune system.*

Amongst other things, this belief is being used to diminish the perceived value of vaccines and to promote immune-enhancing measures, such as vitamins, for serious contagions, such as measles.

Traditional Chinese Medicine should have none of that.

Toward the end of the Ming dynasty (1368-1644) in China, physician Wu You-Xing posited that a category of disease-causing agents he called li qi (pestilential qi) was responsible for epidemics, including the one that wiped out his entire village in 1642.

Li qi were especially strong pathogens that could be transmitted one person to another and cause serious disease regardless of body constitution. No one was safe. And li qi diseases were often very hard (sometimes impossible) to treat.

His doctrine, which arguably prefigured western germ theory, inspired one of two immense bodies of scholarship which together formed the foundation of Traditional Chinese Medicine clinical practice.

The goal of Chinese Medicine has always been to understand and solve the problems of our complex reality, not a quaint dreamscape.

A lush terrain will save you. Except when it won't.

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*Actual terrain theory, which was born from the ideas of French scientist Antoine Béchamp and his bitter rivalry with Louis Pasteur, is more complex than this. Some modern proponents I've read either don't understand all of it or don't care to mention it.