At the beginning of the founding of New China, the average life expectancy of Chinese people was only 35 years old, and 20 of every 100 newborns died. Infectious diseases such as plague , cholera , smallpox, diphtheria and other infectious diseases are rampant. At that time, there were only more than 3,000 health institutions of various types across the country, and about 80% of patients did not receive formal medical help.
Faced with the devastation left by old China, how to give full play to China's medical advantages and quickly find a solution to the medical and health problems of the people has become an urgent problem that the Party and the government need to solve.
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1950, the first National Health Conference was held in Beijing. The meeting determined the three major principles of health work in New China: "facing workers, peasants and soldiers", "prevention-oriented", and "unity between traditional Chinese and Western medicine". Chairman Mao Zedong personally wrote an inscription for the meeting: Unify all medical and health workers in all parts of the new, old, Chinese and Western countries, form a consolidated united front, and strive to carry out the great people's health work!

is used locally, adapting to local conditions, and giving full play to the characteristics of traditional Chinese medicine is the key to solving the medical and health problems of the general public.
In September 1954, Premier Zhou Enlai mentioned the issue of traditional Chinese medicine at the first session of the First National People's Congress of :
"We have hundreds of thousands of traditional Chinese medicine practitioners, scattered in rural areas and cities across the country. Health departments at all levels should seriously unite and educate and use them, and cooperate with them to organize and carry forward the useful knowledge and experience in China's medicine."
Development and utilization of traditional Chinese medicine is related to the problem of hundreds of millions of working people preventing and treating diseases. Establishing a specialized agency for studying traditional Chinese medicine to solve the problems of the medical and health industry in New China has become a major event in the minds of the central leaders.

Chairman Mao Zedong clearly instructed: Set up a traditional Chinese medicine research institution immediately, and draw good traditional Chinese medicine to conduct research, and send good Western medicine to learn traditional Chinese medicine, and participate in the research work together.
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1954 On September 12, 1954, the Ministry of Health appointed Lu Zhijun , Zhu Lian and He Gaomin to prepare for the establishment of Traditional Chinese Medicine Research Institute .

Lu Zhijunhe's top priority is to invite the best traditional Chinese medicine doctors in the country to come to Beijing to jointly establish the Chinese medicine research institute. So who will select traditional Chinese medicine experts and invite them to Beijing?
One day, an old man in simple clothes walked into Lu Zhijun's office.
His name is Chen Bangxian , from Zhenjiang, Jiangsu Province, he studied medicine when he was young. At the age of 30, he completed China's first general medical monograph on medical history - " Chinese medical history ". After the founding of New China, Chen Bangxian devoted himself to the medical and health industry.

Picture: Chen Bangxian
As soon as we met, Lu Zhijun told me the reason for asking Mr. Chen to come. He hopes that Chen Bangxian will go to Shanghai and other places to find and hire experienced famous Chinese medicine doctors to join the Chinese medicine research institute.
In Shanghai, Chen Bangxian visited many traditional Chinese medicine experts. During the communication with these experts, Chen Bangxian discovered that many famous Chinese medicine practitioners were old and their physical condition did not allow them to leave their hometown and live in the cold north. After discussion, the preparatory group for
finally decided to set up a textbook editorial board in Shanghai to edit the experience and theories of old Chinese medicine experts into textbooks so that more traditional Chinese medicine can learn.

At the end of 1954, the institute had just begun to be established and the rooms were very limited. The two doctors shared a clinic for treatment. Many experts and doctors from other places did not even have a place to live, so they could only stay in the clinic temporarily.
Under the care of Premier Zhou Enlai, the hospital specially built an "Expert Building" to give these traditional Chinese medicine experts from afar a stable residence.
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Zhu Lian is an acupuncture expert in the preparatory group of the Institute of Traditional Chinese Medicine. On April 15, 1955, Chairman Mao Zedong met Zhu Lian in Liuzhuang, Hangzhou and invited her to have dinner together. During the meal, the guards brought a plate of dishes specially prepared by Chairman Mao - fried steamed buns.
Chairman Mao said, Dr. Zhu, if you eat this, this earthy bread is better than foreign bread.
When talking about traditional Chinese medicine acupuncture, Chairman Mao Zedong waved his hands and emphasized with his iconic local accent: "Acupuncture is not a local thing, acupuncture is science, and countries around the world will use it in the future."At the same time, Chairman Mao Zedong once again mentioned the issue of integrating traditional Chinese and Western medicine: "We need Western medicine to participate in the collation of the experience of traditional Chinese medicine, and it is difficult to collate the experience of traditional Chinese medicine itself alone."
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1955. Although it was already cold winter, the small auditorium of the inpatient department of the Neibei Line Pavilion Institute of Traditional Chinese Medicine of Guang'anmen Neibei Road Pavilion was still crowded with people.

These papers with names are combined into the signature book of the people attending the ceremony on the day of the founding of the Institute of Traditional Chinese Medicine.

At the founding meeting of the Institute of Traditional Chinese Medicine, the Ministry of Health appointed Lu Zhijun as the president of the Institute of Traditional Chinese Medicine and also as the secretary of the Party Group, Zhu Lian and Tian Runzhi as the vice presidents, Peng Zemin as the honorary president, and Xiao Longyou as the honorary vice president.
Premier Zhou Enlai wrote an inscription for the establishment of the Institute of Traditional Chinese Medicine: Carry forward the medical heritage of the motherland and serve the construction of socialism in .

With the support of the Party and the government, the Institute of Traditional Chinese Medicine was officially established in 1955, and was renamed China Academy of Traditional Chinese Medicine in 1985, and in 2005, it was renamed China Academy of Traditional Chinese Medicine .

decades of glorious journey, passed down from generation to generation. The Chinese Academy of Traditional Chinese Medicine has always adhered to the responsibility of protecting life, carried the national mission, and assumed the important national responsibility. Several generations of people from the Chinese Academy of Traditional Chinese Medicine have bravely climbed the peak of medicine and maintained integrity and innovation, and have written a brilliant chapter in the inheritance and development of traditional Chinese medicine!
Column Editor: Qin Hong Text editor: Fang Ying Title picture source: CCTV
Source: Author: National Memory