Traditional Chinese Veterinary Medicine: Fundamental Principles (Volume 1)

Preface: This volume, Fundamental Principles, is the first of four books which comprise the textbook Traditional Chinese Veterinary Medicine. As a collabroative work, it has developed into an update and expansion of the text Traditional Chinese Veterinary Medicine Published in 1994 by Dr. Huisheng Xie. This volume intends to clarify the basic principles of Traditional Chinese Veterinary Medicine. We have created this text for several reasons. First, Traditional Chinese Veterinary Medicine has been used to treat animals for thousands of years in China. Only in recent history have practices such as acupuncture and herbal therapy come into use in the Western World. The majority of the literature about these traditional techniques is written in Chinese and is inaccessible to most Westerners. Because of the paucity of texts in the English language regarding these techniques, we hope this text will fill some gaps in the current knowledge. This is especially true of the basic philosophies and principles of traditional medicine for with English-language information is quite deficient. For this reason, we dedicate the entire first volume to the underlying principles of Traditional Chinese Veterinary Medicine. Second, we wish to create a ook which would be a relevant, functional resource for veterinarians and students who wish to apply these principles. For this reason, we intend to present the material in a practical manner and to illustrate these principles with case examples and questions at the end of the chapters. In addition, the final chapter of this book consists of numerous, lengthy case studies with descriptions and explanations of all the findings and treatments. It is our hope that this will promote understanding of how one may apply these principles to clinical cases.