Vice President of CAE Fan Daiming delivered keynote speech on “Ge Hong, Master Forum” of WIV
On March 6, Fan Daiming, the Vice President of Chinese Academy of Engineering (CAE) was invited to give a keynote speech “Milestones of Medicine in the Last 3000 Years” to the faculty and students of WIV on the “Ge Hong, Master Forum”.
Mr. Fan began his speech with the origin of human being. He gave a chronological comparison and analyses of Chinese and western medicine history, presented the key figures in different epochs and their milestone contributions, especially those of Thales, Aristotle, Galen and other western medical sages, and three Chinese medical sages namely Zhang Zhongjing, Hua Tuo and Bian Que and their masterpieces Inner Canon of Huangdi, Treatise on Febrile and Miscellaneous Diseases and Sheng Nong's Herbal Classic. The Pulse Classic of Wang Shuhe, Valuable Prescriptions for Emergencies of Sun Simiao and Tang Materia Medica of Su Jing represented the zenith of Chinese traditional medicine. After the renaissance of western countries, Da Vinci and Vesalius created anatomy, and Santorio opened the epoch of metabolomics. At the same period, China had medical sage Li Shizhen and his masterpiece Compendium of Materia Medica. But development speed of Chinese medicine slowed down in comparison to that of western countries. After two industrial revolutions in the western countries, modern medicine entered an unprecedented thriving period. At the same time, China was troubled by civil wars and foreign invasions. The gap between western medicine and Chinese medicine was even wider.
Mr. Fan also shared two of his concepts with the audience: cherish the innovation incentive policies and do scientific research from a philosophic perspective. We shall dare to make breakthroughs and innovations since there are no absolute theories in this world. He also emphasized that we must “look forward and determine right or wrong in the end” in our life and scientific research career. He recited two of his poems Ode to Chuanjiang River and Ode to Dragon Boat Festival, which reflected his insights into life and career.
The keynote speech of Mr. Fan won lots of applauses of the audience by erudite quotations, vivid language, humorous style, historic reflections, philosophic insights, smart comments and witty jokes. After the speech, Mr. Fan had heated discussion and even debate with the audience.
