Hardback
1127 pp, 25 pp full colour plates, copious drawings, charts and tables, 255 X 197 mm
Published by Churchill Livingstone
Published: 2004-8
Genre: Medicine; alternative medicine
ISBN: 978 0 443 06448 7

Description:

Basic Information:
The most complete textbok in English on Chinese Medicine diagnosis, covering diagnosis by observation, interrogation, palpation, hearing and smelling, symptoms and signs, and identification of Patterns including all TCM Patterns and also Five Elements Differentiation.  This book includes all the signs and symptoms, however subtle, with which a modern patient may present in the clinic.  Emphasis is placed on "real world" issues and symptoms - the practice beyond the theory.

This book will have an enormous attraction for those whose principle modality is acupuncture, widening the scope of diagnosis far beyond the limits of normal, basic acupuncture training of any kind.  The serious practitioner of Chinese herbal medicine will wish to also consider the other Churchill Livingstone title on this subject:  "Traditional Chinese Medicine Diagnosis", by Tietao Deng, with foreward by Ted Kaptchuk.

Review:
As Giovann Maciocia says in the preface to thsi vast and comprehensive textbook "The longer I practise, the more I appreciate the importance of diagnosis to Chinese mediicne in particular and to medicine in gerneal.  Indeed, one could say that the value of Chinese medicine lies not in its theories of Yin-Yang, Five Elements, Eight Prinicples, but in diagnosis itself".

Whilst this may seem self-evident, what he is referring to is the extraordinary focus on, and expertise in, the art of observation and examination that form one of the richest parts of Chinese medicine, and which have so declined in modern western medicine.  A traditional medicine, the major part of whose history predates modern biomedical diagnostics, has only the human senses to rely on, and the science and art of Chinese mediicne diagnosis concerns itself with everything that can be seen, smelt, palpated, heard and asked about.  How comprehensive this knowledge is, is illustrated by the breadth of this monumental work that goes so much further than anything yet published in English on this subject.

The book is divided into 5 major parts: 

• diagnosis by observation
• diagnosis by interrogation
• diagnosis by palpation
• diagnosis by hearing and smelling, and
• symptoms and signs.

Several of these parts are subdivided into sections, and then each section is further subdivided into chapters (there are 111 chapters in the whole book).  Thus section one (diagnosis by observation) is subdivided into:

1. observation of the gody, mind and complexion
2. ovservation of parts of the body, and
3. tongue diagnosis

The first of these (observation of the body, etc) has chapters on observing body shape (according to Yin and Yang, according to the Five Elements, according to prenatal and postnatal influences, according to body build, accroding to pain and drug tolerance, observing the mind, spirit and emotion (the three aspects of teh spirit, the three condtions of the spirit, the spirit and constitution, the spirit and the emotions), observing the complexion and so on.

Section 5, Symptoms and Signs, is the largest, and the previous sections frequently refer to it.  For example, diagnosis by observation of teh neck illustrates and gives brief differentiations of variations in neck length and width, neck rigidity, soft neck, deviated neck, etc.  Similarly, diagnosis by interrogation covers goitre and pain and stiffness of the neck.  In both cases, however, for each disorder or pattern the reader is referred to a chapter in Section 5 where a full discussion of the presentation is given (pattern, symptoms and signs, pulse, etc.).  For a book of this size, it would have been more helpful here to refer readers to the relevant page number in section 5, as it can take a bit of time to track down the right passage in the text.

It is hard in a review to convey the immensity of this book.  It can really only be repeated that nothing as ambitious has been attempted in English before, and that it is inconceivagle that anyone studying or practising Chinese medicine can afford to be without it.

Peter Deadman, Editor, The Journal of Chinese Medicine.

Price: R1211.65

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