Plants and animals help keep the soil fertile. Plant roots tunnel through the soil and break it up, and decaying plants form humus. Burrowing animals mix the soil; the excrete of animals contribute nutrients and improve soil structure.
Chinese medicine is a system of medicine partly based on the idea that an energy, called qi (say chee), flows along pathways in the body called meridians. In this belief, if the flow of qi along these meridians is blocked or unbalanced, illness can occur.
Traditional Chinese Medicine for Stroke. Practitioners of Chinese medicine attribute stroke to a chronic weakness of qi that eventually blocks the flow of Blood through the brain. Chinese medicine has equated stroke and heart attack for centuries. Western medicine has come to this view only recently.