RMRB Editorial on Cultivating Traditional Chinese Medicine
(May 27, 1956[R])

Source: RMRB (May 27, 1956), 1.

This essay is written as an editorial for RMRB. Its title is “Jiji peiyang zhongyi, zhuangda
weisheng duiwu” (Actively Cultivate Traditional Chinese Medicine to Strengthen the Ranks
of the Health Care Work Corps). The date given here is, of course, the date of release; we
have no information regarding the date on which this essay was actually written. For Mao’s
earlier pronouncements on traditional Chinese medicine, see texts July 30, 1954; Oct. 20,
1954; Winter 1954; and 1954(2), in volume I.

The health care work corps in our country is at this time composed of doctors
of Western medicine who have a grasp of the modern medical knowledge and
doctors of traditional Chinese medicine who have a grasp of the medical knowledge
of our motherland. They form the basis of the enterprise of providing medical
treatment and health insurance for our people. As the enterprise of providing health
insurance for the people develops, it is necessary, in addition to cultivating a large
number of doctors of Western medicine, also to cultivate a large number of doctors
of Chinese medicine. Only in this way can the demands of the people’s masses in
the area of medical treatment and health insurance be met, and the medical legacy
of our motherland be passed on and further developed. This is a major task in
developing our country’s health care enterprise, as well as a historic responsibility
determined by the peculiarity of our nation’s history. At this moment, the Health
Care Department has resolved to direct its efforts toward cultivating new doctors
of Chinese medicine in order to strengthen the ranks of the health care corps.
According to the plans of the Health Care Department, in addition to having the
institutes and schools of traditional Chinese medicine cultivate some doctors of
Chinese medicine, we will also cultivate a large number of doctors of Chinese
medicine through the method of having doctors of Chinese medicine accept and


teach apprentices. For this reason, the work of organizing doctors of Chinese
medicine to educate apprentices has become a major job for the Health Care
Department at this time.1
Why must we take the education of apprentices to be the main method of
cultivating doctors of Chinese medicine? This is because at this moment, the
medical and pharmacological legacy of our motherland has not yet undergone
systematic and scientific treatment. The precious medical experience of our motherland is not only scattered among the myriad medical and pharmacological
documents, but also reposes broadly and in fragmentary fashion in the hands of
several hundreds of thousands of doctors of Chinese medicine. A schoolroom-type
education cannot by itself be counted on satisfactorily to transmit the knowledge
of doctors of Chinese medicine to the students, and it would be difficult to accept
totally the medical legacy of the motherland. For several millennia, although there
have been many different methods of transmitting Chinese medical [knowledge]
from generation to generation, the primary method has been that of educating
apprentices. Although this is a handicraft-style way of transmitting knowledge, [it
must be recognized that] it has indeed played, historically, an extremely important
role in the passing down of the medical legacy of the motherland and in cultivating
doctors of Chinese medicine. Furthermore, at the moment we are still obliged to
adopt this method. To accomplish the task of cultivating new doctors of Chinese
medicine, the health care departments in the various localities throughout the
country must actively encourage and organize doctors of Chinese medicine to
educate apprentices, provided that the principle of voluntary combination of
teacher and pupil is observed, so as to promote this area of our work.
In the old society the education of apprentices by doctors of Chinese medicine
was a very spontaneous matter in which things were allowed to run their course
naturally. The ruling class of the old society was totally unconcerned about how
the apprentices were trained, or how they learned their trade, or to what use they
put their knowledge. At this time, [even though] we adopt the traditional method
of training apprentices, we should not do it in the manner of the past. We must,
instead, do things in such a way that both cultivating and application are according
to a plan. We must give consideration to the people's needs, and to the development
and future of
our nation's medicine as well as to the careers of the doctors of
Chinese medicine whom we cultivate and produce. We must give equal thought to
the quantity and the quality of the doctors of Chinese medicine whom we cultivate.
As for those new doctors of Chinese medicine who are cultivated and produced,
we must not only arrange work for them in a reasonable way, but must also provide
the possibility for them to rise in the ranks in the future.
To accomplish the task of cultivating doctors of Chinese medicine, we must first
of all have the appropriate number of apprentices to inherit the experience currently
scattered among the doctors of Chinese medicine. After a certain period of work,
these apprentices should be organized for further education so that they may receive
some modern medical knowledge and their technical level may be elevated. In
training apprentices we must place equal emphasis on quantity and quality; we must
not overlook either. Crude methods and indiscriminate overproduction are wrong.
Doctors of Chinese medicine in the health centers and joint clinics as well as others
should be welcome as long as they are willing to train apprentices. However, it is
imperative that the apprentices they take on are truly capable of inheriting their
teachers’ experience, or become fully knowledgeable in one field of Chinese
medicine, or acquire and become accomplished at a skill, so that they can carry out
the work of treatment independently. After the apprentices have completed the
course, the health care departments in the various localities should issue to them
certificates attesting to their scholarly accomplishments and take responsibility for
arranging work for them in a reasonable way.
At present the various health care departments in the localities have already
begun to pay attention to making arrangements for the work of having doctors of
Chinese medicine train apprentices. The question for the immediate future is to
strengthen the leadership. We must use the work method of the mass line2 to decide
questions such as who is to learn and who is to train, how to learn and how to train,
as well as the questions of the various subjects to be studied, etc. If we produced
an inflexible, unified regulation, it would not meet the concrete conditions in the
various places, and therefore would not be appropriate. We should provide concrete
assistance for the health care organizations at the basic level, such as in terms of
registering the number of apprentices, appointing auxiliary teaching material, and
helping them to resolve difficulties in the process of teaching. Furthermore, the
health care departments at the various localities should draw up comprehensive
plans for this work in accordance with the concrete conditions in their respective
localities and place this work on the current agenda of things to be done. To
accomplish tasks that the state has set forth, we must get to the bottom of actual
situations and, on the basis of needs and possibilities, place our work plans on a
reliable foundation and, moreover, conduct a series of ideological and organizational preparations in order to promote this work.
The cultivation of new doctors of Chinese medicine is a historic task of our
generation, and a glorious assignment for the health care departments at all levels,
for the many doctors of Chinese medicine in our country as well as for the people’s
masses. We ought to make an effort to accomplish it.

Notes
1. For Mao’s earlier criticism of the Health Care Department, see text 1953 and text July
30, 1954 in volume I.
2. For a description of the principle of the mass line, see text May 15, 1951, vol. I, note 7.