Chinese Medical Chinese: Grammar and Vocabulary

This is a very sophisticated and highly useful work for the student or practitioner of Chinese medicine who is acquiring the original medical language of his/her profession. The work assumes that the student has already acquired a knowledge of how Chinese characters are composed, how they are written by hand, and how they are pronounced. While the text itself can be navigated entirely in Pinyin, students should know how to use Chinese language dictionaries. Anyone who has basic knowledge of Chinese can use this book to acquire more than 2,500 terms.

The book is presented in two parts. The first describes the basic features of the literary language of Chinese medicine and its relationship to the language of the classical period and to the modern vernacular of northern China (known as Mandarin). It explains many grammatical constructions commonly encountered in Chinese medical texts and describes in detail how Chinese medical terms are composed. The second part presents vocabulary and terminology as its component characters. The discussions are organized in categories that cover Basic Theories, Diseases, Pathomechanisms and Pattern Identification, Principles and Methods of Treatment, Chinese Pharmaceutics, and Acupuncture. The characters are introduced in sets according to subject matter (e.g. the five phases, inspection of the tongue, pulse-taking, women's diseases, etc.). Each of these sets is followed by a section that presents examples of compound terms which use the characters thus far introduced. There are drills that test the vocabulary, with answers at the end of the book. In all cases, the Pinyin pronunciation and English rendering of each term are given, with Kenyon and Knott phonetic transcriptions of the English renderings for the benefit of non-English-speaking learners.

The four appendices include the answers to the 912 self-test questions, Chinese medicinals and formulas by treatment principle (e.g. exterior-resolving formulas) and the names of channel points. A complete English-Pinyin-Chinese and Pinyin-Chinese English index of all the single characters introduced in the text provides access to the basic elements of the terminology.