The Practice of Chinese Medicine stretches back more than five thousand years and embraces all of nature's domains: Animal, mineral, vegetable, earth and sea. Contemporary Chinese Medicine arose from more than five millennia of continual practice. It is the world's oldest, safest and most comprehensive system of health care. Westerners at first find the Chinese medicine exotic. Bear in mind that Chinese medicine has stood the test of time over the entire span of recorded history. It treats a third of all the world's people. This rich legacy we offer now to benefit all of humankind.

Here is a significant example. A legend from the most ancient times tells of a farmer who found a snake near his hut. He beat it with his hoe and left it for dead. The same snake reappeared a few days later, apparently as healthy as before. Again the farmer beat it. This time he watched the bleeding smock crawl to a particular clump of weeds and begin to eat them. By the next morning its wounds were healing again, and its vitality rapidly returning.

Such was the fabled discovery of San qi or Panx notoginseng. It is the main ingredient of Yunnan Baiyao, a light tan herbal powder that counteracts internal or external bleeding by promoting extremely rapid cell division and thus bonding the edges of wounds. Yunnan Baiyao also helps to improve blood circulation, disperse blood clots, ajnd stop inflammation and swelling as well as expelling pus and counteracting poisons. Chinese soldiers have carried it in their first aid kits for many centuries. They call it jin bu huan - more precious than gold.

Last year a Canadian patient and friend of mine ran into my clinic bleeding profusely at a finger he had just accidentally cut to the bone. I cleaned his wound, generously applied Yunnan Baiyao, and told the man he could take the bandage off in five days when the wound had healed. Five days later he returned and asked me to change his bandage. It simply had not registered with him that I had told him his wound would heal in five days. I removed the bandage. He saw that already the wound had fully healed without scarring. This completely astounded him. His friends and acquaintances have been coming in to but Yunnan Baiyao ever since. The west has nothing like this miracle medicine (Reid 1986:10). It belongs in every medicine cabinet right beside the bandaids.

Chinese medicine gelled into a science-based profession about the time of the birth of Christ. During the Han dynasty (206 BC to 220 AD), the Chinese began to keep systematic records. They began to record standard treatment methods for acupuncture and moxibustion (skin warming). We have records from that period of sophisticated herbal prescriptions, medicinal dietary and exercise regimes, techniques for medical massage, and for Qigong. Qigong is preventive and creative medical meditation.