Chinese Acupuncture

Rating:
Summary: Simply the best
Review: An outstanding description of both the theory and the practice of Acupuncture. There are not many point locations charts and few from the French edition are reproduced. But the quality and the quantity of the text that describes those points makes up for the loss. If I could have only one book on Acupuncture, this one would be it.

Rating:
Summary: pre-Maoist-revision medical theory
Review: I agree with the other reviews of this book - it is outstanding. One feature which should not be overlooked is that work was written in the 30s, and pre-dates the Maoist revisions of 'TCM' - there is still not a whole lot of material on the 'spiritual' aspects of points, etc., which many say were weeded out during the revisions, but it is still the most thorough textbook available on Chinese Medicine which is not largely shaped by the homogenizing efforts of the Cultural Revolution.

Rating:
Summary: Interesting but Problematic
Review: I was very excited about this book when I encountered it as an acupuncture student, mainly because of the psychological indications given for the points, and because I had not found such interesting psychological info before in English.

However, subsequent learnings have dampened my enthusiasm:

1. This book uses terms and theories not found elsewhere in representations of authentic historical Chinese medicine.

2. This book, originally written in 1931, is blamed for the mistranslation of jing-luo as "meridians" and qi as "energy," and the closed-minded aberrance of French acupuncture. What I have heard, but have not been able to verify, is that this book left so many gaps in Chinese medicine that the French were forced to make up their own theories, and now they hold onto them even when they contradict newer more accurate translations of Chinese medical classics.

3. There is more and more historical psychological information available for acupuncturists and we needn't rely on this book alone for that. In fact, this book gives only indications for points without discussing the vessel-related reasons why those points work that way. For more on this, see books by Sionneau or Deadman.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent book on acupuncture
Review: My medical training includes TCM (Traditional Chinese Medicine), Homeopathy and Pharmacy based medicine.
There are many diferent modalities of acupuncture in the world as well as subtypes of the main systems. Terminology can be very confusing in this field according to the author or location. Some reviewers may have limited views and we should discard bias comments because the world of medicine is not black and white. This is an outstanding work on acupuncture, written truly by a great man.