TNAG-0313-FCO40-349-Reports-of-typhoons-and-storms-from-Hong-Kong-Typhoon-Rose---1976 — Page 36

082302

News from HSINHUA NEWS AGENCY

peking hospital of traditional chinese medicine achieves success in curing traumatic paraplegia

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peking, august 23 (hsinhua) guided by our great leader chairman mao's proletarian line in health work, medical workers of the peking hospital of traditional chinese medicine have achieved initial success in curing traumatic paraplegia (paralysis of the legs and lower part of the body caused by injury) by combining traditional chinese and western medicine. bourgeois authorities had arbitrarily judged this ailment "incurable".

of the 151 paraplegia patients treated by the hospital over the past two years, 124 can now walk with crutches and 15 walk without any aid. eight have gone back to their work posts.

this paralysis of the limbs is caused by traumatic fracture of the patient's spine, which results in damaging of spinal nerves. before the great proletarian cultural revolution, many paraplegia patients were denied treatment by hospitals under the pernicious influence of the renegade, hidden traitor and scab liu shao-chi's counter-revolutionary revisionist Line in medical and health work. they became bed-ridden. serious complications often followed after long inactivity and the patients' lives were endangered.

"this question of 'for whom?' is fundamental; it is a question of principle." medical workers of the hospital of traditional chinese medicine followed this teaching of chairman mao's and were determined to help these patients stand up and walk again.

in order to smash the metaphysical viewpoint that paraplegia is "incurable", they conscientiously studied chairman mao's teaching "the movement of change in the world of objective reality is never-ending and so is man's cognition of truth through practice." they recognized that there is no absolutely "incurable" disease and that people who are determined to Learn through practice can grasp the laws of overcoming diseases step by step in the course of struggle against them. a paraplegia multiple treatment group was formed in march 1969 to solve the problem of this difficult ailment, under the leadership of the hospital revolutionary committee and the workers' and people's liberation army men's mao tsetung thought propaganda team.

in the course of treating paraplegia the medical workers combined methods of traditional chinese medicine with modern medical knowledge and tried their best to make the patient's remaining spinal nerves play the maximum role. the damaged portion recovered quickly and the patient's paralyzed limbs gradually functioned again.

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TUESDAY, AUGUST 24. 1971

in search for new acupuncture points and new methods of treatment, the medical workers often experimented needling on themselves. they worked out a new treatment of paraplegia by deep needling on the nerve root. through studying and summing up experience constantly, they trial-produced a new kind of pill for traumatic paraplegia. because the ingredients are toxic the medical workers tried it themselves many times to determine its properties, the safe dosage and medical effect. now the pills are being used to good effect.

chairman mao teaches: "it (materialist dialectics) holds that external causes are the condition of change and internal causes are the basis of change, and that external causes become operative through internal causes." the medical workers consistently used chairman mao's brilliant philosophic thinking as their guiding principle and made every effort to bring the patient's positive factors into play. the patients were able to display their subjective initiative instead of being passive as before. the medical workers studied chairman mao's works with the patients, helped them break the mental shackle of considering the disease as incurable, and strengthened their confidence in combating and overcoming the ailment.

they also used the viewpoint of "one divides into two" to analyse the relations between "rest" and "movement" and between the part and the whole. they recognized that since the patient's spine is damaged, relative inactivity is the principal aspect of the contradiction during treatment and bed rest is necessary for a period. but prolonged bed rest causes muscle-wasting, joint stiffness, bedsores and general deterioration of the patient's health.

after careful observation and analysis of many cases, they found out that the fibrous union of the broken bones usually takes place two weeks after a fracture and the soft tissues recover even quicker. they were of the opinion that the patients, depending on physical condition and under strict safeguards, should use their limbs as early as possible, progressing from easier to more difficult movements, so as to help recover function. as for paraplegia patients bed- ridden for many years, the fractured spinal bone (vertebra) has healed and they have all the more reason to practise using their limbs in order to recover the function of sitting up, standing and walking. therefore, the medical workers did away with the old convention of long rest; they greatly shortened the time for bed rest and combined acupuncture treatment, medicine and exercise of the limbs to recover function.