Searching Google for traditional Chinese acupuncture returns 5.5 million results, while Amazon.co.uk reveals about 300 titles for acupuncture books in English. The most expensive is the leather bound Classic Acupuncture: The Standard Textbook, by Manfred Porkert at £400. This review considers a very affordable ‘cook book’ on acupuncture therapeutics featuring traditional Chinese acupuncture (TCA) principles. The book is the textbook of China Beijing International Acupuncture Training School (
Acupuncture Therapeutics is concise, clearly set out and syndrome orientated. It assumes good basic knowledge of acupuncture and practical application. It is a reference work covering a very short introductory section of general principles...]]>
‘There is no doubt that our body is a moulded river’ (Novalis, cited on p 125)
This is an unusual book, by an osteopath who went on to train in acupuncture but felt dissatisfied with the usual explanatory models of both treatments. Three primary themes weave their way through his writing: movement, archetypal postures and meridians.
As an osteopath, his focus remains biomechanical—on shape, posture and movement (or ‘coherent changing of shape’). In attempting to understand how the body moves in a holistic way, he has developed the conventional ‘muscle chains’ of osteopathy into what he calls ‘contractile fields’ (CFs), primary patterns of movement that span the whole body, as against the elements of movement or the different muscles in isolation (the ‘dissective paradigm’). Although he sees his CF model as only a starting point in mapping the...]]>
This is a book in three parts, with five background chapters on traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) and Western medical approaches followed by a core of chapters focused on clinical treatment in six different areas (acquired brain injury, Parkinson's disease, multiple sclerosis, spinal cord injury and disease, peripheral nervous system disorders and motor neuron disease), and concluding with a chapter on ‘pulling it together’. There is also a single brief appendix on outcome measures used in neurological rehabilitation, and an index.
The authors, both experienced and knowledgeable in the field of neurological rehabilitation, have open-mindedly set themselves the admirable, if unenviable, task of demonstrating how TCM and Western medical acupuncture (WMA) may both be appropriate, and even integrated,...]]>
Nogier then related...]]>