Chinese Medicine and Healing: An Illustrated History

I wanted to learn about the history of TCM and enthusiastically bought this book off of Amazon. I'm about 3/4ths of the way through now--the book has been amazingly enlightening! I've learned a ton about all that I was hoping to learn, and have really enjoyed the scope of the historical detail at length.However, I've finally come to the chapter about TCM under Mao, and I'm suddenly completely lost. This is a pretty important chapter, yet the author, named Volker Scheid, is such a wonky, puffed-up, and overly-academic writer, that I'm not at all sure what happened with regards to TCM in this period.I had been really looking forward to reading about this period in particular, but Scheid is so invested in speaking in broad terms about the political vicissitudes of this period, that he's quite lost the thread. This chapter sounds off blandly about governmental policy changes and their flip-flopping, yet the details to make that policy come alive are really missing, so it's hard to keep track of what the impact was (for example, how Mao's broad policies affected regular Chinese and their need for TCM/ability to get TCM/what they were prescribed might have been interesting to read about, with perhaps some detail about how an individual patient's care changed over that period).At one point, Scheid writes of 196-196 and the Cultural Revolution, "A short-lived frenzy of violence destroyed much of Chinese medicine's infrastructure, including ancient texts as well as modern institutions." How did this violence come about? Who participated? What, more specifically, was destroyed? What was the final outcome? The unimaginative author does not say...Someone should have provided some editing and stylistic recommendations for this author to fall in line uniformly with the interesting detail and style of the other chapters. I feel like I need to buy a whole other book to try to understand TCM and this period, if one is available. Meh.Otherwise, the book is great! Very insightful, lots of interesting detail...

I wish this text were a course in and of itself for all beginning students of Chinese medicine! Many of the greater themes were discussed broadly, but it was condensed into part of the lecture of one day's class and not given nearly the attention such a broad period of time deserves. Some well known voices from the field have also contributed individual breakout boxes on smaller subjects that tie in with each of the chapters nicely. Highly recommended for older and newer providers alike.

Don't recall this saying it was a used library book anywhere. Given that, I would've appreciated a slightly lower price. Otherwise, the book itself seems quite well researched and covers an interesting breadth of material for those interested in an overview of Chinese medicine's history and modern developments, as well as those searching for more obscure historical and esoteric details.

Great book and read!

ok

sort of boring and not enough good pictures

good for school

The equivalent of someone who has not seen a certain play or movie standing outside the theater and telling other people who have also not seen the performance what they think it may be like. Hence, of limited value.