Traditional Chinese Medicine #1

This is my first blog from Nanjing and it's a little too early in the morning for me to be writing--but I'll try to give some context and not sound too flat. I feel lucky to be here with Jim & Marcus and even luckier that Mount Auburn Hospital granted me an academic leave to be learning something I had only read about with interest -- Traditional Chinese Medicine. And I owe it to one of Jim's colleagues at Northeastern (who was willing to call/e-mail friends, who e-mailed friends, who e-mailed friends--literally) who connected me with a TCM school that teaches one small section in English that had a class starting soon after I arrived.

Nanjing's school of TCM is associated with the World Health Organization and had taught Giovanni Maciocia, the doctor who wrote the textbook on the topic: The Foundations of Chinese Medicine.
Why study it at all?
One thing I've focused on in medicine is why, despite money, resources, some patients do not receive good treatment. Those patients tend to have problems -- such as addictive disorders -- that are not "solved" easily, and therefore become a frustration to their doctors who naturally want to see good results of their hard work. When I worked for Health Care for the Homeless, acupuncture to the ear was prescribed for patients who were withdrawing from alcohol, to help with the craving. At $2 a session at the Fenway health center, they sat in a room with others getting the same treatment (a needle placed on a certain point on the ear), drinking tea. And I heard from some of those patients that it seemed to work -- whether it was the point, the company of others in similar situation, time away from alcohol.
The school is a long hot walk from our apartment along streets with intersections more complicated to cross than Times Square (yes, even with the current construction there) because sidewalks also host motorcyclists/bicyclist/motorbike riders but the hard part is that unless I take an even longer and hotter route there is no caffeine to be had before I walk into the classroom.
The classroom has five rows of wooden desks, padded chairs, and in the left front corner, a lifesize white model of naked (though somewhat edited) man with blue and red acupuncture points mapped out.
Up front is a blackboard where two doctors stand, with cups of hot tea which they sip from during lectures. The older doctor lectures in Chinese. The younger once translates in English. It is the lingua of our class which includes myself, and 7 other doctors, one each from Switzerland, Poland, Turkey, Australia, Japan and two from Mexico. I am among the three who are Western-trained internal medicine docs, the others are acupuncturists looking for more training.
We ended up in this sometimes stuffy, sometimes cool (depending upon who gets control of the floor to ceiling "cooling tower" of an air conditioner first) through the usual ways, internet, word of mouth, and two are repeat students looking for more advanced knowledge.
Included in the course is a 590 page textbook, and a foot tall plastic model of, who guessed it, Acupuncture-Man.
What is different about this medical learning versus that I've done in the past will be a topic for another day. But even more is the same: after a little learning, we are all diagnosing ourselves. As is obvious to all of you who know me, I have way to much yang, I always feel hot, I like spicy food & stimulants (cafeine) , don't like to be quiet. I made this claim when I was cranking the air conditioner and got a laugh from my classmate who wanted the AC off and suffers from, you guessed it, yang deficiency.
Hoping you all have had a good meal (an old Chinese greeting)...Irene