Chinese medicine holds assumptions that diverge fundamentally from those of modern Western medicine. Incorporation of what is useful from this age-old system, therefore, requires acquistion of a conceptual vocabulary foreign to our own. The ideas that form the ground of a culture are so taken for granted that, like air, water, or gravity, other legitimate systems of meaning are difficult to imagine. Appreciation of Chinese medicine involves a willingness to entertain the possibility of merit in a point of view that differs from our own.