Traditional Thai Medicine - History

History

Traditional Thai medicine stems from pre-history indigenous regional practices with a strong animistic foundation, animistic traditions of the Mon and Khmer peoples who occupied the region prior to the migration of the T'ai peoples, T'ai medicine and animistic knowledge, Indian medical knowledge (arriving pre ayurveda) and coming through the Khmer peoples, Buddhist medical knowledge via the Mon peoples, and Chinese medical knowledge (arriving pre TCM)with the migration of the T'ais who came largely from Southern China.

In the early 1900s, Traditional medicine was 'outlawed as quackery' in favor of western medicine, however by the mid 1900s traditional medicine was once again being supported by the Thai government. The Seventh National Economic and Social Plan for 1992 & 1996 stated that "he promotion of people's health entails the efforts to develop traditional wisdom in health care, including Thai traditional medicine, herbal medicine, and traditional massage, so as to integrate it into the modern health service system." Further, in 1993 the government of Thailand instituted the National Institute of Thai Traditional Medicine, under the supervision of the Ministry of Public Health. The goal of the institute, expressed in its own literature, is to "systematize and standardize the body of TTM knowledge", to "gather knowledge, revise, verify, classify, and explain TTM knowledge", and to "compare and explain the philosophies and basic theories of TTM and to produce textbooks on TTM".