The Essential Book of Traditional Chinese Medicine (review)

494 China Review International: Vol. 3, No. 2, Fall 1996 Liu Yanchi with Kathleen Vian and Peter Eckman. The Essential Book of Traditional Chinese Medicine. 2 volumes. Translated by Fang Tingyu and Chen Laidi. New York: Columbia University Press, 1995. Paperback. Volume 1 $16.50, isbn 0-231-10357-3. Volume 2 $19.00, isbn 0-231-10359-x. Liu Yanchi, author of this authoritative two-volume work, is a prominent scholar and practitioner of Chinese medicine in Beijing. His many publications and editing projects in Chinese, oriented to teaching and clinical work, are among the most useful modern guides to this complex field, for both Chinese students and foreign scholars. It was heartening to see the work ofa leader in the Chinese medical field in China appearing in a publication by an academic press in the United States in 1988 (the date of the hardcover edition). Now that a paperback edition is available, I expect that the value of this two-volume compendium will be more widely appreciated. The structure of The Essential Book ofTraditional Chinese Medicine models that ofgeneral introductory medical texts used in Chinese colleges oftraditional medicine. Volume 1, Theory, covers basic concepts such as yinyang and the "five elements," the visceral systems and "channels," and principles of etiology, pathogenesis , examination, and diagnosis. Volume 2, Clinical Practice, summarizes general principles of therapeutics, including brief discussions of materia medica and prescription composition; then it turns to detailed clinical information, well organized for ready reference. Much of the space in volume 2 is devoted to detailed tabular summaries ofwidely used prescriptions and the various treatments of commonly encountered ailments. Exemplary case histories are also included. I have long used Liu's book as a supplement for students to the very few reliable works in English on contemporary forms ofChinese medicine. It has been especially useful for students working on special projects, many ofwhom find Manfred Porkert's The Theoretical Foundations ofChinese Medicine (1976) too technical and philological, and Nathan Sivin's translation of a 1972 text in Traditional Medicine in Contemporary China (1987) too fragmented. Liu Yanchi's work has the virtue of being accessible, comprehensive (though necessarily rather general), and reflecting the commonly accepted state of Chinese medical knowledge in today's China. Ofcourse there are translation problems, but some ofthese are interesting in that they relate to the specific modernity of Chinese medicine. In the case of some key terms, Liu's translators have preferred down-to-earth words like "five elements" y mversi y and "cnanneis" to the more processual phrasings—"five phases" and "circulation tracts"—preferred in U.S. academic circles. These choices reflect a modern materialist approach to rendering Chinese medical dynamics. Words for objects are preferred to labels that might name processes. With this procedure, naive readers ofHawai'i Press © 1996 fry University ofHawai'i Press Reviews 495 are invited to picture a sort ofbogus anatomy offixed spatial structures, but perhaps ifthey read the whole book carefully they will begin to treat such terms as arbitrary names for physiological activities that become clear in clinical work. Students can be assured that this book represents an introduction to the state ofthe field (including its materialist politics) oftraditional Chinese medicine in China today. Academic and clinical readers who seek a deep understanding ofthe logical styles of Chinese medicine or ofits historical complexity will need to turn to the three or four good academic studies of Chinese medicine now available in English as a supplement, or (even better) tackle the huge literature available in Chinese. Clinicians ofChinese medicine who rely on English-language textbooks will find it useful up to a point, although it is perhaps not really detailed enough to serve as a clinical handbook. Last but not least, there are charming illustrations in the bai-miao (brush-line drawing) style by Cheng Duoduo (with the assistance ofSally Yu Leung) throughout volume 1. Though they suggest at times an ancientness that is at odds with the very modern version ofknowledge presented in the book, they are nevertheless lovely to look at. Judith Farquhar University ofNorth Carolina Judith Farquhar is Bowman and Gordon GrayAssociate Professor ofAnthropology at the University ofNorth Carolina, Chapel Hill. She is the...