Guest guest Posted March 10, 2010 Report Share Posted March 10, 2010 A few months ago, I bought Vol I and II of Classical Chinese Medical Texts by Richard Goodman. I am now almost finished with Vol II and I'm quite shocked at the amount of information available in Chinese that is not available in English. Just as a simple example, the way diseases are presented and discussed in Classical texts-very simple and concise, where as in English there are often pages of theory and strategy which serves to put everything into a neat little category-a blend of theories that came about at completely different times all blended together. While going through Goodman's two books, I have had so many moments of saying to myself " Ohhhh....that's what this means. " It all just makes so much more sense in Chinese, down to the most basic way people in early China talked about and dealt with disease. And it's all actually quite simple! Now that I am able to tackle texts with the help of a dictionary, I feel that my understanding has increased in immeasurable ways. This is not to say that we don't need to make changes to suit our modern times and culture, but if we are not basing these changes on the ideas presented in the classics, then what are we doing? There seems to be very little movement in this direction. IMHO, it seems to me that without some knowledge of Chinese, there is little chance to have more than bare minimum competency in TCM theory. Janet Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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