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Item No: BK10022
Title: Clinical Handbook of Internal Medicine, Volume 2: Treatment of Disease with TCM - Spleen & Stomach
Author: MACLEAN Will & LYTTLETON Jane
Publisher: Sydney Pangolin Press, 1st Edition 2002
Language: English, Hardcover, 995pp
ISBN: 9780957972001
The publication of part two is entirely devoted to disorders of the Spleen and Stomach and would make Li Dong-yuan (founder of the Spleen and Stomach school) proud.
It covers 29 disorders of the gastro-intestinal system (interpreted in its widest Chinese medicine sense), ranging from epigastric and abdominal pain, diarrhoea, dysenteric disorders and constipation etc. to gingivitis, haemorrhoids, lip wind (lip cracking, blistering etc.), halitosis, mouth ulcers and tooth abscess.
Each chapter offers a general discussion of the disorder, and a comprehensive account of its aetiology, physiology and diagnostic features (e.g. commonly encountered combined patterns). This is followed by a detailed analysis of each pattern (indications, pathophysiology, treatment principles) with one or more herbal prescriptions with variations, patent medicines, and a briefer account of acupuncture treatment.
Clinical notes offer useful guidance on typical western diseases that may be seen within the pattern discussed, prognosis, numbers of treatments that may be required, and advice to patients on lifestyle changes including page references to a major section on dietary medicine.
This latter section covers the basic theories of Chinese dietetics, guidance and specific beneficial and contraindicated foods for every Chinese medicine pattern, and characteristics, indications and contra-indications for all common foods eaten by westerners.
Throughout this book there is a rewarding emphasis on the kind of clinical information a practitioner needs to know and much advice drawn from the rich clinical experience of its authors. The chapter on haematemesis, for example, includes in highlighted box format the main biomedical diseases that present with vomiting of blood and clinical measures to quickly stop bleeding (patent medicines and simple prescriptions), and a diagnostic flow chart to help pattern identification.
Too often, books of this kind offer a bare translation of Chinese texts which are not normally given to detailed discussion of clinical realities and subtleties, and the resulting information leaves many gaps for the practitioner who is encountering real patients. The authors of the two volume Clinical Handbook of Internal Medicine represent a new generation of increasingly mature western writing on Chinese medicine.
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