ABSTRACT
The fight against pestilence has been the major theme of both western and eastern medicine since ancient times, and bacteriology has been founded on the modern scientific idea of ensuring reproducibility, the socalled Koch's four postulates, by identifying and isolating pathogenic bacteria, then proving their infectious cause.<br>However, although the major factors surrounding infectious disease are host/parasite relationships and drugrelated causes, more importance has been placed on developing new drugs. With the emergence of compromised hosts as treatment methods become widespread, such thinking is no longer valid.<br>There is now no clear logic to the question of reproducibility in clinical medicine, against a background of the enormous contributions the human system makes. Kampo medicine, the study of therapeutics in humans, has long been used to treat people through an understanding of the pathological conditions humans express as a system, with their Six Stages of Disease (<I>rikkei</I>) theory, yin-yang, hypo- and hyper-function <I>sho</I> (symptoms), and through those <I>sho</I> that people present with, it can provide highly reproducible therapies. Moreover, the oral traditions (<I>koketsu, gugyeol</I>) of Japanese Kampo which bring increased therapeutic efficacy and reproducibility through the achievements of predecessors, provide indispensable therapeutic bias. In future, the systematic medical concepts of Kampo will also become essential in Western medicine.