Branches
Traditional Thai medicine (used as umbrella term for all medicine of Thailand) consists of five primary branches:
- Internal Medicine - Primarily the use of herbs and diet to promote health
- External Medicine - All therapies applied to the external body including but not limited to:
- Bone setting (indigenous chiropractics)
- Thai cupping
- Thai scraping (a practice similar to Chinese Gua Sha)
- Thai massage techniques including compression, Thai acupressure, beating, passive stretching and focus on sen channels (pathways of movement in the body such as tendons, ligaments, nerves and circulatory vessels)
- External application of herbs through balms, liniments, compresses and poultices
- Spirit Medicine - Use of amulets, incantations, sak yan tattooing and shamanistic involvement with spirits for the purpose of healing
- Divination - Use of vedic astrology, numerology, palmistry and geomancy to determine health predisposition and remedial measures
- Buddhism - seen as the mental health branch of Thai medicine.
Read more about this topic: Traditional Thai Medicine
Famous quotes containing the word branches:
“Different persons growing up in the same language are like different bushes trimmed and trained to take the shape of identical elephants. The anatomical details of twigs and branches will fulfill the elephantine form differently from bush to bush, but the overall outward results are alike.”
—Willard Van Orman Quine (b. 1908)
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“Go to the adolescent who are smothered in family—
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It is like an old tree with shoots,
And with some branches rotted and falling.”
—Ezra Pound (1885–1972)