From a Western perspective, the medicine incorporates the theoretical platform of bio-terrain postulated by the nineteenth century scientist, Antoine Beauchamp. Beauchamp's terrain theory suggests that it is the internal strength or balance of an individual that protects or fails to protect him/her from illness. For instance, if four people go to a yoga class together and one of them has a cough with phlegm and is sneezing, why is it that two out of the three healthy individuals get sick with the same condition and one person doesn't? The answer is due to individual terrain. We are all exposed to microbes, however, Beauchamp suggest that if the pH of the body is slightly more acidic in nature, the body produces more ³food² for germs to feed upon and our risk of becoming sick increases. (We will discuss the concepts of acid and alkaline in the nutrition section of this site.) Basically, it is not only the microbes we need to be concerned with but also the health of our bodies "medium" or internal environment that supports the growth and mutation.

"The primary cause of disease is in us, always in us."
—Antoine Beauchamp, 1883

The most popular view of illness is based on the theory of one of Beauchamp's colleagues, Louis Pasteur. According to Pasteur's germ theory, illness is due to bacterial, viral, and parasitic exposure. However, if exposure was the only variable in determining illness, then all three of those individuals should have gotten sick. Clearly, there is more to illness than what the germ theory has to offer and Chinese medicine concerns itself with the "other" factors, those that lay the groundwork for the strength and balance of the body's terrain.