Page 6 - Pharmacy History 23 July 2004

The development of traditional Chinese medicine in Australia
(Excerpts from a Master of Education thesis by Glenys Savage, titled A Pioneer: Professor Lun Wong
and The Academy of Traditional Chinese Medicine Australia, RMIT University, Melbourne, May 2002)
Victoria is the first jurisdiction outside of China to
legislate to register by title practitioners of traditional
Chinese medicine.
On the gold fields, Chinese medical practitioners coexisted with practitioners of Western medicine and by the 1860s practitioners of Western medical practices were regulated by the state.
In considering the history of traditional Chinese medicine in Australia, it is of particular interest to note that a petition for the registration of Chinese medicine practitioners was presented to the Victorian Parliament in 1878,
but was not drafted into a related parliamentary Bill.
Morag Loh, a researcher on the experiences of Chinese in Victoria, refers to the use of the title Dr by some Chinese practitioners at the goldfields such as Lo Kwoi Sang of Ballarat, contrary to the Medical Practitioners Act, with limited its use only to qualified registered practitioners.63 By the mid 1870s with a serious diphtheria outbreak some hostility did develop between the two traditions and the medical board enforced use of the title doctor to those registered Western practitioners.
In 1925 a bill was introduce into the Victorian Parliament by the member for Toorak and member of the British Medical Association, Dr Argyle,
to limit the right to dispense medicinal herbs to pharmaceutical chemists. This would have restricted use of herbs to chemists. The bill was withdrawn after an intense campaign.
Both Chinese and British herbalists undertook an intense
Practitioners of traditional Chinese medicine (TCM), generally known as herbalists, were familiar in the inner suburbs of Melbourne and in country cities and towns.
public campaign to counter scorn expressed for their work by Argyle and the organised medical and pharmaceutical professions. The most powerful of their arguments was for the fight of those whom orthodox medicine had failed to ‘have one last chance’. In addition the Chinese stressed the thousands-of-years-long efficacy of their tradition.64
Loh comments, ‘From the last quarter of the 19th century until the Second World War, practitioners of traditional Chinese medicine (TCM), generally known as herbalists, were familiar in the inner suburbs of Melbourne and in country cities
and towns’.65 This included Ballarat, Ararat, Bendigo amongst other areas and Bairnsdale.
One Chinese herbalist, Thomas Chong, about whom Loh writes, born in 1877 in Sydney, was
sent to China from the age of 12
and studied with a master as an apprentice in traditional Chinese medicine. He graduated from a clinic
dispensary in 1898 and returned to Australia in 1908. After practising in Melbourne for a while he later settled at Bairnsdale in country Victoria.
He is known to have practised as a Chinese herbal medicine practitioner from early 1924 until he died in 1950 at Bairnsdale.66
In 1925, Thomas Chong, together with 45 other Chinese and European herbalists proposed an amendment to the bill before parliament,
to allow some practitioners to continue in business, and to work together. Loh interprets that this could have indicated a degree of collaboration between some doctors and pharmacists who had interests
in other therapies, contrary to the professional medical associations. The bill, however, was withdrawn.
After 6,800 people signed a petition opposing the bill, it was withdrawn, leaving 76 ‘Asians’ and 44 ‘European’ herbalists free to practise in uneasy co-existence with the dominant British medical tradition.67
6 ■ Pharmacy History Australia
volume 2 ■ no 24 ■ November 2004