Chinese Herbal Medicine: Materia Medica: Portable 3rd Edition

As a doctor of traditional Chinese medicine I can attest to the value of this book's information. It is a fantastic reference book and provides practitioners with detailed formulae descriptions, analysis of formulae and is invaluable to any Chinese medicine practitioner. I would not recommend this book to non-practitioners as it is very in-depth and does assume an detailed understanding of traditional Chinese medicine. I have used this book extensively in my own practice for many years and still use it on a very regular basis.

This is a classical book about Herbal Formulaes. I have read it several times and consult it often. I believe Strategy refers to how an herbologist will be able to use the book to add or modify ingredient and dosage. Unlike the review I wrote for "Material Medica", I find this is a useful book with much needed information to come up with a prescription. Needless to say the translation of this book is choppy in many places. The authors can keep the terms more to the point. These flowery terms used is a minus. The original source of these prescriptions are of interest to the medical historians only as modern pharmacologist are more concerned with the chemical interactions and its function. The lack of modern Chinese and western sources also shows this is just a compilation of old sources. In that respect there are many formula prescription books out in Chinese which can be translated nicely into English. The book does have IDs showing important formulas required for certain state or national examinations. However, these required formulas are not always detailed enough or exist to explain in details what they really are. Similar to Material Medica it also has PinYin flaws in many places showing its obvious lack of proof reading capability using modern Chinese word processors. All in all, this is still an authoritative English language source on the subject of Formulaes.

Regardless of its very few flaws, this is still the standard reference for basic chinese herbal formulas. Many books have formulas with herbs and dosages, but none speak so extensively of how each herb within the formula works. This is an indispensable tome for the OM student. As for whether the general public will appreciate it, I doubt it. This is the kind of book needed by those who aspire to writing personalized modifications of classical formulas... but no one else except the extremely curious patient will find it worth the price.

Is excellente book very usefull for practitionars and for any herbalist one to know about CHM.