Monday, April 4, 2011

Cheng Man-ch'ing on Women's Health

Cheng Man-ch'ing was, from the 1930s on, a practicing doctor of traditional Chinese medicine. He wrote several books on Chinese medicine topics related to women's health, cancer, and orthopedics, as well as newspaper columns on meditation and tai chi. His books on medicine discuss theory, application, cases, and prescriptions, and give insight into how Cheng thought about medicine.
The complete Insights on Women's Medicine (女科心法Nu'ke xinfa) has just been released, translated by Douglas Wile, who also writes an extensive introduction to the work, giving the historical context of twentieth-century Chinese medicine and Cheng's place in it. The book is published by Sweet Ch'i Press (order through Redwing Books). Wile, formerly professor of Chinese at Brooklyn College, is a prolific translator, having previously translated and annotated several books: Thirteen Chapters, Cheng Man-ch'ing's Advanced Form Instruction, Zheng Manqing's Uncollected Writings, as well as Lost T'ai Chi Classics, T'ai Chi Touchstones: Yang Family Secrets, Tai Chi's Ancestors, and The Art of the Bedchamber: The Chinese Sexual Yoga Classics.