Acupuncture Books

This book is very good at explaining the different elements involved in the TCM acupuncture art. Great book for a patient or prospective patient of acupuncture. A must to read before beginning acupuncture to help understand the basis and the whole picture of what the acupuncturist is doing and looking for.

Clear and concise. Uses western anotomical terminology to describe point location. Not completely in-depth, but adequate for the scope of this book. Good for those with basic anatomy/physiology understanding. NOT for those with no medical/scientific understanding. If you took a&p in high school and have a reference book, you should be ok.

Though I am a stomathologyst, I've been interesed in it and I think the book is cool. But four stars. That's right and it is just because of it's 628 pages which I (personally)think is way too much and the work loses it's major concept. But I MUST congratulate the author, Mr.Topol, for it's exelent fabula, and as I said before, thank You for making the publc avaliable of reading Your works.

I found this book to be very interesting. The author builds a good case for taking control of your own health. His bringing in Chinese Patent medicine and the exercises at the end are really powerful.
I especially like that its small and you can carry it with you wherever you go.
I am a Barefoot Doctor!!!

After finding out that what is taught in the West as `Traditional Chinese Medicine' was basically created by a Chinese Communist government committee from some but not all of the various ancient texts and practices that are available, I wanted to reconstruct Traditional Chinese Medicine (particularly acupuncture) as it actually existed prior to the Communist revolution. I came across Celestial Lancets in the process. Make no mistake, it is a tome, complete with more footnotes and references than most of us can read in several lifetimes.

"Celestial Lancets" is written by one of the top academic researchers on China, Joseph Needham, in collaboration with his Chinese wife. It is part of his encyclopedic "Science and Civilization in China" series. It is written by a serious academic, for other serious academics or practitioners of acupuncture and moxa who want to explore as deeply as possible the history and understanding of these two ancient practices of Traditional Chinese Medicine. There are no less than three bibliographies broken down by language and dates.

Needham is neither a starry-eyed believer in TCM, nor is he a scientific disbeliever. He simply explores the history to a very great, detailed depth, and then does the same for some of the western science that has been done (this chapter alone being almost 75 pages), letting the evidence show for itself. It should be said that the goal of the book seems to be history and explanation of acupuncture and moxa, not an attempt to PROVE the system to the most skeptic of Westerners.

I like reading academic works, though I don't have even an associates degree, and I still found this book tough going, except for the last chapter on `The Lore of Vital Spots'. This chapter will be of particular interest to serious martial artists (which is how I began my own exploration of things Asian, particularly philosophy). Unless you are serious enough about Traditional Chinese Medicine that you have begun learning the Chinese language, you might want to skip buying this book, and try checking it out from a library first.

It is a very good book for it's purpose, probably ground-breaking in many of it's insights. It is not for beginners like me who are just trying to get an accurate, broad overview with less historical detail. Or just use it as a reference book, rather than reading it cover to cover. Western skeptics of TCM should begin by reading the conclusion on the last two pages, a good idea also for the mildly curious.

The writing style is not challenging, just the pace of the writing for the nonacademic. A better introduction for the layman (again, not the purpose of "Celestial Lancets") would probably be "Web That Has No Weaver: Understanding Chinese Medicine" by Ted Kaptchuk, the second edition.

This recent book shows ongoing interest in Tibetan medicine on the part of Chinese scholars. This is encouraging because China possesses much botanical knowledge that can be applied to Tibetan medicine. The book has sections on history, fundamentals, pharmacy and therapeutics. Most of the clinical material is easily traced to classical sources (including the rgyud bzhi or Four Tantras), many of which weren't available in English before.

This book suffers from several problems that prevent it from being fully usable:

1. There is no index of herb names, formula names or clinical conditions. The table of contents is not very detailed either, which makes any search tedious.
2. Herb names were translated into Latin without any reference to the original Tibetan name. This obscures the problem of identification of Tibetan herbs, which at this point is best left open ended. It would have been better to include the Tibetan names also to allow revisiting of the Latin equivalency.
3. There seems to be some amalgamation with concepts of traditional Chinese medicine, which only partially overlaps Tibetan medicine. A reader familiar with both systems (such as this reviewer) may be able to sort it out, but for others this may simply create confusion.

This book presents a good source of references brought up to date on Auricular Acupuncture.

This is a book of the 100 most commonly used acu-point characters in traditional Chinese medical literature and is designed to be read after one has learned the characters in volume one. The 100 characters presented here are done so with clarity: 2 pages dedicated to each character. On the left, you have the character in simplified and traditional format (which is important, depending upon where in Taiwan or China you're reading Chinese), common ways and examples in which the character is used, an explanation of the component parts and significance of the character, and the etymology (evolution from the ancient pictograph into the modern), and on the facing page, there is a worksheet for practicing writing the character. Having studied Chinese for some time in preparation for Chinese medical school, I've found the best way to remember these characters is to write write write! Pages are provided for this, and I really found the character evolutions and breakdowns useful in differentiating between similar characters. (You can really see the original meaning in some of the ancient pictographs!) One thing this book could have had to further aid in memorization and usage is additional workbook type exercises and sample practice reading sections to help bridge the gap between this series and the rather dense Chinese Medical Chinese that follows. In terms of price, to be honest, having already studied a fair amount of Chinese, I think I would have paid 5 bucks just for a copy of the table of contents and done the research on my own. But for the beginning student, you're paying not only for the text, but for the assurance that it's been presented by a traditional Chinese medical language authority and veteran translator.

If you liked this book, the first, Basic TCM Vocab, follows the same format and the third, Materia Medica Vocab, can also be found online elsewhere.

My Beijing born doctor of oriental medicine recommends this book as a"Western friendly" authentic overview of Chinese medicine. It covers not only accupuncture, but many more aspects of traditional Chinese medicine. Lots of pictures and easy to comprehend explanations of the mysteries of Chinese holistic treatment.

This is a typically workman-like product of the Chinese Foreign Languages Press, that has been putting out textbooks for many years. It is comprehensive and well-produced.

The reaons for the four stars rather than five is this: although the techniques can indeed be used by an individual as part of a self care program, this book requires a fair amount of knowledge about finding specific acupuncture points. Though they are illustrated, it can be hard to find some of them from the pictures. Secondly most contemporary Chinese acupuncturists acknowledge that although some acupuncture points are always in pretty much the same place, the positions of some of the points are not precise, and have to be found by palpation. If a person hasn't been shown how to do that, they may miss the spot, and then it is less likely that the treatment will be effective.

So the main audience for this book will be acupuncturists who want to give their patients some homework. And for that it is first rate.