There are two principal therapeutic methods in the Oriental medicine viz, the physical and the chemical methods, of which the latter corresponds to the “Kanpo Medicine” and the former to the Oriental physiotherapy.
In the systems of clinical examination of the Oriental physiotherapy, all of the exterior informations given by a sick body are accepted to be represented by signs on the twelve meridians. And when abnormality is found in a system of “Keiraku” and “Keiketsu, ” a simple and mild physical energy is to be applied to the said system in order to adjust an unbalance in the function of the living body.
The most significant difference between the Oriental and the Western medicine exists in the therapeutical system of diagnosis characteristic of the former.
There, all of the informations given by a sick body are directly correlated to the therapeutic principle. In detail, the over-all informations are firstly put in correspondence to some of the symptoms and signs of the twelve meridians (namely the pattern of the sickness image) and further classified into someone of the five levels in the light of the Principle of Five Components (WUHANG) on the Five Elements. In other words, the systems of the clinical diagnosis in the Oriental medicine are considered to be intensively based on the Five Elements Theory constituting its fundamental principle of classification and the clinical categories supported by the Theory of Twelve Meridians.
Although the conceptional constraction of the Oriental physiotherapy is generally accepted to be accomplished to apply only to the practice, there remained many oburities in its actual conception, at least lacking its scientific substantiation upon logical treatment.
The author has studied the validity of the diagnostic systems used in the Oriental medicine from the standpoint that the clinical and therapeutical systems of the Oriental physiotherapy are based on a “traditional hypothesis” worthy to be investigated.
(1) The informations of the Oriental physiotherapy are divided into four groups (system). The first group (Symptom system) consists mainly of the subjective complaints of a patient and partly of signs, where 122 informations are used in total. The second group (Five Component System) is further divided into 9 sub-groups each of which consists of every 5 informations corresponding to 5 patterns (Elements)-namely, fire, earth, metal, water and wood-, where 45 informations are used in total. the third group (Keiketsu System) consists of palpation findings of YU-BO system, where 24 informations are obtained. The last group (Puls System) consists of pulse information, surperficial and deep, full or vacant, where 24 informations are obtained in total.
In this study, separate diagnoses on 200 cases of inpatients with miscellaneous diseases have been made in the manner of the Oriental medicine starting from the individual informations and compared with those made in the manner of the Western madicine. Consequently, there is seen scarce tendency that a specified name of sickness corresponds to a specified name of “Keiraku.”
(2) The frequency of appearance of symptom systems corresponding to each Keiraku ranges from to 70, giving a wide distribution. χ²-test indicates that only 9 of the total (122) informations are on the level of significance (p less then 5%) to be useful for grouping of symptoms.
(3) Factor analysis of symptom systems has not revealed the presence of the twelve classification of the Keiraku sickness described in the classics of the Oriental medicine.
(4) Mutual comparisons of the individual 5 way diagnoses derived from every information source have been made only to give a poor coincidence as a whole, of which max. is 30% and min. is 13%.
(5) The Five Component Theory of the Oriental physiotherapy proved to be statistically scarcely significant.

In order to objectively evaluate the information on the diagnosis based on the oriental medicine, the signs and symptoms of 70 patients who visited our outpatient department were analyzed and evaluated. As a result, likelihood of manifest differences between the patients treated in our clinic and those treated in the clinics of general medicare facilities was found.
It was also clarified that image technology was found to be useful for objective diagnosis of the symptoms in accordance with the oriental medicine.

From old times, Oriental medicine has had a double layer structure comprising therapeutic medicine and constructive medicine, and therapists of Oriental medicine have believed that the best treatment for us is to take care of our health. The problem of the usual therapeutic system used only by acupuncturists is that clinical field is limited to an acupuncture clinic and the number of patients is also limited. In view of the above and with the goal of solving these problems, we devised a new magnetic acupuncture methol which is applicable to our home treatment in the early stages of disease and examined, from both the viewpoints of Oriental medicine and health medicine, whether or not this magnetic acupuncture is a useful means for systematically performing the treatments of therapeutic medicine and of constructive medicine.
(1) Magnetic acupuncture treatment
In this treatment, it is mainly expected that slight clincal symptom (stiffness, pain) will be relieved owing to the synergistic effect of the needle pressure stimulation and the magnetic action exercised by the needle plastered on the reaction acupuncture points of living body's skin. Compared with the intracutaneous needle which acupuncturists use as a rule, it is easier to operate. In addition, it is superior in rapidity and durability of effect to the commercially available magnetic pellet and acupuncture pellet.
(2) Magnetic acupuncture
The magnet is made of isotropic barium ferrite and has a diameter of 5mm and a thickness of 2.3mm. It has a shape of a disc having a small projection located at the center of the disc on the side which comes into contact with skin (N pole side). The magnetism emanating from the projection has a magnetic flux density of about 952 gauss which is approximately 1.8 times as great as the magnetic flux density of the magnetisms emanating from the flat part of the plate other than the projection. There are two kinds of magnetic acupunctures: one is gold magnetic acupuncture for PU (weak stimulation) and the other is silver magnetic acupuncture Xie (strong stimulation).
(3) Clinical application
In Ling-Shu (Rei Su) which is a volume in the earliest known text on acupuncture, the Nei Ching or Classic of Internal Medicine, or Da-Ging (Dai Kei), it is mentioned that the basic therapeutic point lies in the pain. On these grounds, one magnetic acupuncture disc is plastered on the point at which the response was greatest according to the acupuncture point phenomena (pressure pain, stiffness, depression, hypersensit iveness, trigger-point, etc.) and some additional magnetic acupuncture discs are appropriately plastered on the points surrounding the most sensible point, as well as on the main acupuncture points having a relation to the relief of clinical signs.
A clinical test was performed in order to prove the clinical effects of magnetic acupuncture. Thus, 401 subjects who usually complained of stiffness and pain in shoulder without any objective findings were picked out and clinically tested. These subjects were classified into magnetic acupuncture therapy group (120 subjects) and its placebo therapy group (281 subjects), and the clinical test was performed to compare both the groups. Here is reported a part of the test results.

The effects of electro-acupuncture on the regional cerebral blood flow (rCBF) and regional cerebral glucose utilization (rCMRglc) are unknown.
We examined the rCBF and rCMRglc in five normal adult volunteers and ten patients with cerebrovascular accident and brain tumor using positron emission tomography (PET) in order to investigate the effects of acupuncture on functions of central nerve system.
The stimulation by electro-acupuncture was performed on HOKU and SHOU-SANLI on one side. Electro-acupuncture was done for 10 minutes, at the frequency of 2Hz to cause a slight muscle twich. The rCBF and rCMRglc in volunteers were mearsured before and after electro-acupuncture stimulation.
The results are as follows;
1) On the OM45mm slice image, stimulation to HOKU and SHOU-SANLI on one side increased the rCBF and rCMRglc of frontal and temporal lobe on the opposite side of stimulation.
2) On the OM80mm slice image, electro-acupuncture incrased the rCBF and rCBFglc of frontal and temporal lobe on both the right and left side.
These results suggest that stimulation of electro-acupuncture may influences the rCBF and rCMRglc.