
NEW YORK — When uninitiated Americans think of traditional Chinese medicine, their first thoughts might be of an elderly Asian man performing acupuncture behind a curtain, or someone’s grandmother dishing out a questionable concoction of pungent herbs.
But the contrast between the old images and current reality is as different as yin and yang, as mass-produced herbal remedies can be ordered at the click of an app by Western practitioners of Eastern medicine who may have never set foot in Asia.