Medicine in 21st century and traditional Japanese medicine

Annual national medical expenses and the rate of aged people in Japan are both increasing year by year. Although aged people have many diseases, the cause of their diseases seems to be one or few from the standpoint of traditional Japanese medicine (TJM). The important examinations in TJM are pulse exaamination, tongue inspection and abdominal examination. According to these examinations, the conformation of the patient is decided and the prescription corresponding to the conformation is selected and many symptoms can be improved by only one or two prescriptions. TJM treats patient individually according to tha conformation which is specific to each patient. This method is called as ”tailor-made medicine” like” genome-based medicine” in 21st century. However, the relation between the conformation and the genome should be clarified in the near future. TJM also has an aspect of preventive medicine. Since prevention is betterthan cure, using TJM will contribute to decreasing the national medical expenses. These suggest that the role of TJM will become more important as a cost-effective medicine in 21st century.

本文データは山口大学医学会の許諾に基づきCiNiiから複製したものである