Description
What’s Inside
A treatise on using plants from outside the standard Chinese materia medica within the Chinese medical paradigm. This book first discusses some historical information, then introduces a method to integrate new plants into Chinese medicine, and finishes with a materia medica covering some of the most common plants used in Western herbal medicine. This is a continuation of the author’s first book, Western Herbs According to Traditional Chinese Medicine (2008).
Endorsements from the Back Cover
“Alexander the Great’s Hellenistic world first allowed the establishment of the Silk Road, and enabled traders to freely travel from one side of Asia to the other bringing along spices and medicine.
“Sima Qian’s 司马迁 “The Records of the Grand Historian” 史记 also reveal that the Chinese learned the process of using grapes to make wine, from the Bactrian Greeks (大宛 – Great Ionians).
“Later, the Persians became famous for trading Galen’s “theriac” (bezoar), after the Greek healing traditions interacted with the indigenous systems including the early Chinese Medicine.
“When the Ottomans terminated the Silk Road in 1453, the great European explorers went on to establish sea routes and re-discover China, which up until that moment they regarded as a mere legend.
“Although ancient historical records are fragmentary and rare, it is not unrealistic to assume that there have always been exchanges of knowledge and medicine between China and Europe. However, all the western herbs that entered the realm of Chinese medicine have since been explained in terms of qi, flavor, functions, indications and channel tropicity. Today, with Chinese Medicine becoming popular in the West, the opposite process is also becoming increasingly necessary. Thomas Avery Garran’s seminal new work offers a Chinese Medicine explanation for 52 popular western herbs. His high level of scholarship and solid methodology are evident throughout the book. I am certain that this volume will influence and guide a new generation of TCM herbalists into creating a bridge that will unite eastern and western herbology, under a shared Chinese philosophical explanation about alternative properties and uses.”
Ioannis Solos, Chinese medicine practitioner, researcher and author. Beijing, China
“Thomas’ work continues a growing tradition to reestablish an understanding of Western botanicals according to the same principles of nature that guided early Western herbalists, but was largely lost. This “energetic” system continues to form the basis of Ayurvedic and traditional Chinese medicine and is foundational in regaining a knowledge of western herbs that unites the natural expression of the herbs with the natural expression of the human being and their environment.”
Roy Upton RH, DAyu, Executive Director, American Herbal Pharmacopoeia, Scotts Valley, CA
“…this book is useful to practitioners of herbal medicine east and west. For the eastern practitioner, patients will self-prescribe herbal agents and expect a degree of expertise from their practitioner on the topic. This book takes those agents and places them into the cognitive frame of the eastern practitioners. For the western clinical herbalist, the transformation of western pharmacopeia into the disciplined approach of energetics is a move towards a reasoned and reliable scaffolding for thought in practice. It could easily find its way into the curriculum of both eastern and western schools of herbal medicine. I would like to see such content taught in the entry level programs of Chinese medicine here in the US.”
William Morris, PhD, DAOM, LAc
Author: Path of the Pulse and Li Shi Zhen Pulse Studies: An Illustrated Guide
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