[Comments on Nigel Wiseman's A Practical Dictionary of Chinese Medicine: on the use of Western medical terms in English glossary of Chinese medicine].

Mr. Wiseman believes that Western medical terms chosen as equivalents of Chinese medical terms should be the words known to all speakers and not requiring any specialist knowledge or instrumentation to understand or identify, and strictly technical Western medical terms should be avoided regardless of their conceptual conformity to the Chinese terms. According to such criteria, many inappropriate Western medical terms are selected as English equivalents by the authors of the Dictionary, and on the other hand, many ready-made appropriate Western medical terms are replaced by loan English terms with the Chinese style of word formation. The experience obtained by translating Western medical terms into Chinese when Western medicine was first introduced to China should be helpful for developing English equivalents at present. However, the authors of the Dictionary adhere to their own opinions and reject others' experience. The English terms thus created do not reflect the genuine meaning of the Chinese terms, but make the English glossary in chaos. The so-called true face of traditional Chinese revealed by such terms is merely the Chinese custom of word formation and metaphoric rhetoric. In other words, traditional Chinese medicine is not regarded as a system of medicine but merely some Oriental folklore.

[Comments on Nigel Wiseman's "A Practical Sictionary of Chinese Medicine"--on Wiseman' s literal translation].

Comments were made on the word-for-word literal translation method used by Mr. Nigel Wiseman in A Practical Dictionary of Chinese Medicine. He believes that only literal translation can reflect Chinese medical concepts accurately. The so-called "word-for-word" translation is actually "English-word-for-Chinese-character" translation. First, he made a list of Single Characters with English Equivalents, and then he replaced each character of Chinese medical terms with the assigned English equivalent. Many English terms thus produced are confusing. The defect of the word-for-word literal translation stems from the erroneous idea that the single character constitutes the basic element of meaning corresponding to the notion of "word" in English, and the meaning of a disyllabic or polysyllabic Chinese word is simply the addition of the meanings of the two or more characters. Another big mistake is the negligence of the polysemy of Chinese characters. One or two English equivalents can by no means cover all the various meanings of a polysemous character as a monosyllabic word. Various examples were cited from this dictionary to illustrate the mistakes.

Dangshen (Codonopsis pilosula) and Bai guo (Gingko biloba) enhance learning and memory.

CONTEXT: An exploration of the usefulness of several common Chinese herbs used for Acquisition and Retention singly or in combination is required. OBJECTIVE: To test (1) whether Gingko biloba (Bai guo) in combination with Codonopsis pilosula (Dangshen) or Gingko biloba (GB) alone could enhance memory acquisition and retention of normal human subjects, better than a placebo and (2) to investigate whether the overall health status can be affected by these supplements. DESIGN: A double blind randomized placebo controlled trial design was used to determine the efficacy of these two products compared to placebo. PARTICIPANTS AND SETTING: Sixty participants, aged 21- 60 years, who were either students or faculty of the Southern California University of Health Sciences. INTERVENTION: Each combination capsule was made up of 75mg of Codonopsis pilosula total glycosides and 40mg GB extract. Each GB capsule consisted of 40mg of Gingko biloba as an aqueous extract and. The placebo pill was similar in shape and color to that of the other two capsules. All the participants regardless of the group were instructed to take one pill twice a day with food. OUTCOME MEASURES: The primary outcome measure was a computerized, standardized acquisition and retention test provided by Digital Acumen, Inc. The secondary outcome measures were the SF-12 and the Medical Symptom Questionnaire ( 1997 healthcomm International, Inc. And Immuno Laboratories, Inc.) RESULTS: Mean age was 28 years; almost two thirds of the sample were males. The study adopted repeated measure analysis using data from three measurement points for between group analysis. GB group was compared to placebo, and CPG/GB group was also compared to placebo. These individual comparisons were made to determine whether the active products produced better results than chance. The between groups findings indicate that both products are better than placebo at producing improvements in acquisition and retention and overall health status. CONCLUSION: In our participant population, the combination product seems to be better than GB alone in improving the cognitive function and overall health.