cosmology
By Heiner Fruehauf
By Heiner Fruehauf
As a NCCAOM (National Certification Commission for Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine) certified provider of Professional Development Activity credits (provider number ACHB 682) we are pleased to offer Chinese medicine practitioners educational and professional development opportunities through the Associates Forum.
A Bibliography of English Translations and Monographs
Compiled by Heiner Fruehauf
Chinese medicine is a microcosmic branch of ancient Chinese philosophy and cosmology. The better one understands the philosophical foundations of Chinese medicine, the deeper one’s knowledge of its core concepts and terminology can be. Theories such as yin and yang, the five phase elements, the hierarchical relationship between matter, energy, and consciousness, the supremacy of spirit, and the twelve organ networks were first mentioned in the Daoist and Confucian classics of the Han and Pre-Han periods of Chinese antiquity (fl. 700 BC – 200 AD) before they appeared in the keystone works of Chinese medicine. The following represents a comprehensive list of relevant philosophical, scientific, and literary works from the formative period of Chinese medicine in English translation.
by the 16th century Korean physician Hur Jun (Chinese: Xu Jun)
from his Dongyi baojian (Precious Reflections by an Eastern Physician)
Translated by Heiner Fruehauf
The sage healers of ancient times were able to heal the heart of humanity, and thus prevent disease from arising. Today’s doctors only know how to treat disease when it has already manifested in physical form, and don’t know anymore how to work with the heart.
By Frank Fiedeler
Translated by Gabriel Weiss
Joseph Needham, to whom we may be thankful for a multiple volume work on the culture of China from a scientific and historical perspective, once characterized the uniqueness of Chinese thought in the following way:
The key words in Chinese thought are system and above all pattern (and if I may whisper it for the first time, structure). Collectively the symbolic correlations or correspondences constitute parts of a single colossal pattern. Individual phenomena transpired as they did, not because of previous events or the influence of other phenomena in some specific way, but rather because they were gifted with an intrinsic character as a result of their inherent position in the constantly moving, cyclical universe and this made their behavior unavoidable.
