A New Chinese Herbal Medicine Publication

Chinese Medicinal Identification

An Illustrated Approach

At last, a specialized text dedicated to herbal quality assessment!

For centuries, pharmacists and clinicians have relied on the traditional method of macroscopic identification to assess the quality and authenticity of medicinal materials.   Macroscopic identification uses the naked senses to assess herbal quality, combining appearance, texture, aroma, and taste with traditional methods of fire and water testing.  For the first time, this text brings this specialized discipline of knowledge to English readers using a concise, illustrated format that distills the experience of China's foremost authorities in visually rich, easy-to-understand format.

Chinese Medicinal Identification: An Illustrated Approach records 429 commonly used Chinese medicinal materials (including associated medicinals), using the Chinese Pharmacopoeia (2005) combined with domestic and international market investigation as a basis for determining medicinal nomenclature.  For each medicinal, details are provided on nomenclature, origin, harvesting and post-harvest handling, functions and properties, macroscopic characteristics, and decoction pieces.  The book can be referenced via a Chinese stroke order index, a Pinyin index, and indexes organized by Latin Pharmaceutical names and Latin binomials.

This book emphasizes the experience-based differentiation of Chinese medicinal materials, which is a treasure of China's cultural heritage that has been inherited and systematized, combining the technical terms derived from experience in differentiation with a modern scientific perspective.  At the same time, the authors draw upon a foundation of years of field research and experiments related to medicinal materials, synthesizing information on trade, literature, and techniques, dissecting each detail.  The book visually illustrates the art and science of macroscopic identification of medicinal materials in a way that is easy to learn, easy to remember, and easy to disseminate, supplementing the insufficient state of illustrations in the current literature.

Featuring:

• 428 commonly used Chinese medicinals
• Over 1000 high-resolution images of medicinal materials and decoction pieces
• Over 400 photos dedicated to botanical, zoological, and mineral sources
• Preservation of nearly 200 traditional technical terms used in macroscopic identification

Each of the eight areas of interest are explicated for each medicinal:

1. The name in Chinese, Pinyin, and Pharmaceutical Latin from the 2010 Pharmacopoeia of the People's Republic of China and other authoritative sources.
2.  The origin of the medicinal including the zoological or botanical family names. The main entry for medicinals with multiple origins is the commonly used variety.
3. Production Region is noted as are the primary distributions of medicinals gathered in the wild.
4. The traditional harvesting and processing methods are noted for each medicinal. 
5. The properties and functions are noted. These include: nature, flavor and traditional actions.
6. Macroscopic features are exemplified in color photographs, including the traditional indications of quality.
7. Decoction pieces are illustrated with color photographs detailing the distinguishing features of each medicinal's processed form.
8. The eighth section complete the discussion with illustrations of the technical features, multiple species, nationally registered plantation sites and different parts of the plant that have separate entries.

The book is available through Redwing Books.