Fundamentals of Chinese Medicine

Fundamentals of Chinese Medicine (Revised)

Author: Nigel Wiseman, Andrew Ellis

ISBN: 9780912111445

Paperback, 532 pages

English translations of traditional Chinese medical texts rarely have conformed to the standards required of a contribution to sinology. One exception has been the Fundamentals of Chinese Medicine, a groundbreaking translation of the Zhong Yi Ji Chu Xue, which demonstrated that not only was it possible to meet scholarly expectations for translations of Traditional Chinese Medicine (T.C.M), but also that the cooperation of Chinese-speaking clinicians could reveal the nuances of practice.

Beyond beginners manuals, it gives English-speaking students of T.C.M. a chance to appreciate the qualitative details available to their Chinese-speaking colleagues. Fundamentals of Chinese Medicine offers a unique and rare opportunity to understand Chinese medicine, not as it is perceived by a Western writer, but as it is perceived and taught in China. This is because Chinese descriptions of T.C.M. that confound Western expectations have not been expunged from the textual translation.

After more than two decades in print and numerous reprintings, the current edition incorporates experience from the use of the work as a didactic text and as a course book for teaching Chinese medical English to student physicians. Based on feedback from Western teachers and translators, this popularly priced edition features a straightforward 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, pathogen, and exogenous heat conditions are discussed in detail, as are principles and methods of treatment. Illustrative acumoxa therapy has been added for Western acupuncturists.

Fundamentals of Chinese Medicine includes a glossary of terms and a materia medica and formulary sufficient to practice the treatments described in the text. As such it is not only a unique, absolutely-defined and referenced text, but also 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 unique key for scholars and clinicians alike.

"This book will make history. For the first time a monograph-size publication directed at Western practitioners and expounding the conceptual foundations and clinical applications of Chinese medicine may be said to meet all the criteria of a serious, scholarly contribution. The standards set by this book cannot be neglected by anyone writing on Chinese medicine in the future.''

- Prof. Dr. Paul U. Unschuld, Sudhofs Archiv