What has been overlooked on study of Chinese materia medica in the West?

Chinese materia medica (CMM), including Chinese herbal, animal, and mineral medicine, has been widely researched in the past century for their biological and pharmacological activities. However, their mechanism and clinical efficacy studies did not always give expected results. For example, the most commonly used Chinese herb for menstrual disorders, Radix Angelicae sinensis, showed neither estrogenic nor progesteronic activity in laboratory and clinical studies. Its efficacy should not be denied simply based on such results, because it is mostly used together with other herbs in formulae. Moreover, its regulation on menstruation may take effect through other mechanisms, such as regulation of blood circulation. The key difference of Chinese medicine (CM) from conventional medicine is its unique holistic view on human body and diseases. CMM is mostly applied in clinic in the form of formulae. Study on individual CMM, simply using methods for development of conventional drugs, is unable to thoroughly reveal the power of CMM formulae. The reason may partly result from improper design due to the lack understanding about application principle of CMMs in CM, and/or to current lack of knowledge about the causes of some symptoms and diseases. This paper will introduce the importance of qi and blood in CM etiology and pathology, Zheng differentiation, formulation of CMMs, and explain why one formula can treat different diseases and one disease can be treated with different formulae. Examples in the paper will demonstrate that proper studies on Zheng and its corresponding clinically proven formulae could help scientists find new direction to explain and treat symptoms and diseases that so far modern medicine has been unable to, provided that the designer properly understands CM theories, etiology and pathology of CM, as well as modern medicine. Strategy suggestions about research methods for CMM and its formulae will be given at the end.