Customer Reviews

Illustrated Chinese Materia Medica: Crude and Prepared

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What a marvellous book for anyone who needs to pictorially identify Chinese herbs! There are 240 picture listings of different herbs, animal and mineral medicines. Each has a 5"x7" photograph of the herb in its various forms, laid out on a neutral background. For example, astragalus is shown skinned and black skinned, with both forms obliquely sliced and in stick form, and with honey fried and pressed forms as well. Codonopsis root is shown with longitudinal slices stir fried in earth,unprocessed longitudinal slices, unprocessed uncut lengths and transverse and oblique slices. Since Chinese herbs are prepared in several ways, a person used to seeing the distinctive pattern of round slices of Baikal skullcap root, for instance, may find the longitudinal slices difficult to identify.

The book is organized into barks, stems and woods, roots, rhyzomes, leaves, flowers, fruits, seeds, herbs, resins and balsams, animal medicines, minerals and mushrooms (curiously omitting Ling Zhi/Ganoderma/Reishi from the mushrooms.) . Each herb has Latin, botanical Latin,English, Japanese and Chinese Pinyin and character names, alternate names, physical descriptions, descriptions of characteristics of high quality herb, production areas, properties and actions, indications and constituents listed. The book omits discussion of endangered species or substitutes, although the latter can be inferred from the drug function comparisons tables.

There are 356 traditional formulas, although preparation instructions are scant, making the book more useful to someone seeking to understand the contents of formulas than to prepare them. The discussion of drug processing aims and methods is very useful to someone coming from a western herbal background, including processing to eliminate or reduce toxicity, to enhance actions and to change the properties of herbs. A glossary of Chinese medical terms is also included.

The indexes are particularly useful to anyone who struggles with the various transliterated, botanical Latin, pharmacological Latin and other names. All English, Latin, Pinyin and transliterated Japanese names are listed in a single index. (No Wade Giles transliterations however). There is a Chinese character index as well.

An excellent book for a specialized subject.