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[Guest guest]

Has anyone had a chance to look at Kendall's book " DAo of Chinese

Medicine " ? Amazon has rave reviews about it(see below) and Oxford

university has published it.

It sounds really interesting.

matt

 

 

 

A MAJOR ACHIEVEMENT ...BEYOND EVEN JOSEPH NEEDHAM, June 22, 2003

Reviewer: Kenneth J.T. Li, Ph.D.,D.Sp. from Hong Kong, SAR, China

As a Western-trained biochemist and a critical commentator of Chinese

Medicine, I read Donald Kendall's book with keen interest. For more

than two decades since the rise of popularity of acupuncture in the

West, has been regarded as any other folklore

medicine derived mainly from empirical experience with little

scientific basis, despite the fact that it has been practiced for

over two thousand years and has long been the only mainstream

healthcare system in China until recent century. Even today, this

healing art is still practiced as a complementary medicine in China

and in overseas Chinese communities.

 

In recent years, the quest for herbal-based alternative medicine in

the West has made increasingly appealing not only to

the ordinary populace, but also to western medical professionals.

This ancient healing art is said to have embraced the environmental,

nutritional as well as emotional influence in its etiology and be

capable of providing individualized therapies which could only be

realized by the future pharmacogenomic approach.

 

However, to most westerners is as mysterious as the

Chinese Ancient Civilization it belongs. The reasons could well be

that the classical cannons of this healing art are all written in

very concise and hard to understand ancient Chinese, and its

underlying therapeutic principles are shrouded in the ancient Chinese

worldviews of Five Phases and Yin-Yang. Furthermore, most attempts in

the past to interpret the principles of Chinese medicine either do

not properly recognize the ultimate consistency of its functional

organ concepts with modern physiology, nor all together misunderstand

its essential theories of disease etiology and balance of Yin & Yang

due to inaccurate translation of the some of the critical concepts.

All these have led to the misperception that Chinese medicine is a

totally outdated traditional therapeutic system passed down merely by

generations of empirical healing experience, with little scientific

basis for verification and hard to reconcile with nowadays mainstream

western medicine.

 

It is therefore an intellectual delight to find in Dr Kendall's new

book " Dao of " a fresh interpretation of this

oriental healing art in terms of modern physiology. The content of

this book is logically laid-out in fifteen chapters starting from the

quest for the Dao, i.e., the way, and the ancient beginning of this

healing art, to the interpretation of many important concepts and

principles of Chinese medicine, and finally to the different

approaches in diagnosis and treatment which were adopted by the

Chinese physicians over the centuries and are still practiced today.

 

From the start, what makes this book different from most existing

English texts on Chinese medicine is that Kendall derived his source

material by taking on new and more accurate translations of Huangdi

Nei Jing, the most reverend cannon of Chinese medicine, and

successfully demystifies the misleading idea that Chinese medicine is

on based energy circulation through invisible meridians. As the

readers will discover, ancient Chinese medicine is not just based on

an ancient philosophy of Five Phases and Yin-Yang, but is firmly

rooted in empirical physiological studies, which includes, against

common customs of the time, post-mortem dissection.

 

.... I consider Dr. Kendall's book a major achievement in introducing

Chinese medicine to the West in ways even Dr. Joseph Needham could

not achieve in his monumental work of " Chinese Science and

Technology " . With over 200 citations to more than 80 treatises of the

Nei Jing, this book reveals the rational basis of this ancient

healing art with modern insight which will be instrumental for future

application, research and acceptance of Chinese medicine in the West.

The Dao is a must read for students, practitioners of Chinese

medicine as well as other health specialists and individuals who

would appreciate the fascinating story of the great indigenous

medicine of China.

 

By: Kenneth J.T. Li, Ph.D.,D.Sp.

Former Assistant Director, R & D, School of , Hong Kong

University