Product Description
Although the study of traditional Chinese medicine has attracted unprecedented attention in recent years, Western knowledge of it has been limited because, until now, not a single Chinese classical medical text has been available in a serious philological translation. In the present book Paul U. Unschuld offers, for the first time in any Western language, a complete translation of an ancient Chinese medical classic, the Nan-ching. The translation adheres to rigid sinological standards and applies philological and historiographic methods.

The original text of the Nan-ching was compiled during the first century A.D. by an unknown author. From that time forward, this ancient text provoked an ongoing stream of commentaries. Following the Sung era, it was misidentified as merely an explanatory sequel to the classic of the Yellow Emperor, the Huang-ti nei-ching. With this volume, however, Unschuld demonstrates that the Nan-ching should once again be regarded as a significant and innovative text in itself.

It marked the apex and the conclusion of the initial development phase of a conceptual system of health care based on the doctrines of the Five Phases and yinyang. As the classic of the medicine of systematic correspondence, the Nan-ching covers all aspects of theoretical and practical health care within these doctrines in an unusually systematic fashion. Most important is its innovative discussion of pulse diagnosis and needle treatment.