Description
Herbal medicine is a healing art that has been practiced for thousands of
years in China, where it is held in equal esteem with acupuncture and
Western medicine. Recent evidence suggests that some drugs when used
in their unrefined state and in accordance with the laws of tradi-
tional Chinese medicine may be more effective in treating certain dis-
eases than Western methods.
This book provides for the first time in English a substantial exposi-
tion of Chinese herbal medicine as well as a detailed presentation of the
many crude drugs that comprise the Chinese pharmacopeia. Designed as
an introductory work on the subject, it opens with a brief overview of his-
tory and traditions and a theoretical section that discusses Oriental philos-
ophy as it applies to herbal medicine. Among the topics covered are yin
and yang, stages of disease, principles of diagnosis and pathology, and the
adaptation of the body to cure. Material which until now has been
unavailable to anyone not fluent in written Chinese is presented in the sections “Teas and Other Herbal
Preparations” and “Herbs.” The ap- pendixes provide thorough cross-
indexing of Chinese and Japanese names and their Latin counterparts as
well as Chinese characters for these names. The Chinese characters for
the formulas enable the reader to go to any of the herbal pharmacies in
the United States and abroad listed in the appendix and present a chosen
prescription to be filled.
Richard Hyatt has been involved in martial arts and Oriental medicine
since 1967. He has studied and colla- borated with Naburo Muramoto and
Kuo-lien Ying, among others. He has also taught martial arts at the Univer-
sity of California, Berkeley.
Richard Hyatt
