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The oldest known Chinese medical texts are the ''Inner Canon of the Yellow Emperor'' and the ''Treatise on Cold-Damage Diseases'', usually dated to the period of the Han dynasty, that is, the 3rd century BCE. This would make TCM a little younger that the humoral and Ayurvedic theories, but it's also possible it was based on much earlier, but now lost, works. You can tell by the titles alone that TCM loses much in translation – if it's translatable at all.
The key concept of TCM is ''qi'' (pronounced ''chee''; literally: "air"), a vital substance permeating the entire universe. It comes in various densities or phases (depending on how you want to picture it), from matter to energy to spirit. All processes in the universe may be understood as thickening or rarefying of ''qi''. Chinese philosophy talks of ''yin'' whenever ''qi'' thickens and ''yang'' whenever it becomes rarefied. ''Yin'' and ''yang'' are a pair of cosmic opposites – with ''yin'' is colder, moister and slower, while ''yang'' is hotter, drier and quicker – the dark and light sides of the force. Except that, in ''Star Wars'' the two sides of the force are locked in a constant struggle, while ''yin'' and ''yang'' complement each other in a creative , rather than destructive, way.
From the medical point of view, ''yin'' and ''yang'' influence the gathering and flow of ''qi'' in the organism. ''Qi'' is transported around the organism along special energy channels, or "meridians", which I won't be talking about here (let me just note that it's along these channels that needles are inserted in acupuncture). Disease, obviously, comes from the lack of balance between ''yin'' and ''yang'' in your body, and the goal of medicine is to keep or restore that balance. The imbalance may result from too much ''yin'', too little ''yang'', too much ''yang'' or (guess what?) too little ''yin''.
