Reviews
Professor Dr. Paul U. Unschuld
This book will make history. The standards set by this book cannot
be neglected by anyone writing on Chinese medicine in the future.
Book Description
English translations of traditional Chinese medical texts rarely
have conformed to the standards required of a contribution to
sinology. One exception has been the first edition of Fundamentals
of Chinese Medicine, a ground-breaking translation of the Zhong
Yi Ji Chu Xue which demonstrated that not only was it possible
to meet scholarly expectations for the translations of T.C.M,
but that the cooperation of living Chinese speaking clinicians
could reveal nuances of practice. Beyond beginner’s manuals, it
gives English-speaking students of TCM a chance to appreciate
the qualitative details available to their Chinese-speaking colleagues.
It offers readers the rare opportunity to understand Chinese medicine,
not as it is perceived by a Western writer, but as it is perceived
and taught in China, because Chinese descriptions of TCM that
confound Western expectations have not been expunged from the
textual translation.
The newly revised edition incorporates experience from utilization
of the work as a coursebook for teaching, not only in the West
but in China. Based on the suggestion and aid of Western teachers
and translators, this new, popularly priced edition features a
simplified but precise English terminology, thousands of source
Chinese characters, and hundreds of clinical definitions never
before available in English. Contents include yin and yang and
the five phases; qi, blood, essence, and fluids; the channels;
the organs; diseases and their causes. Pattern identification
and treatment of eight-parameter, organ, qi-blood, pathogens,
and exogenous heat conditions are discussed in detail, as are
the principles and methods of treatment. Illustrative acumoxa
therapy has been added for Western acupuncturists.
The revised edition includes explanations of terms and an entire
materia medica and formulary sufficient to practice the treatments
described by the text. As such it is not only a unique, absolutely-defined
and referenced text, but a self-contained and inexpensive course
of study. As a basic text produced to a multi-author, multi-publisher
voluntary standard, the revised Fundamentals of Chinese Medicine
is a bridge between scholars and clinicians in both East and West.
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