Book Review: Acupuncture techniques: a practical manual
Description: The book briefly covers the history and development of acupuncture, including the role that acupuncture techniques may have in treating patients. It explores various acupuncture and moxibustion techniques and presents a concern about the perceived limitations of acupuncture technique training in the West. The structural elements used are not unique.
Purpose: The book explores the history and development of acupuncture and moxibustion. It places more emphasis on the role of various acupuncture techniques, and this covers them in more depth. While the book states that one objective is to understand the limitations of acupuncture technique training in the West, there is little empirical support presented for the claims of these limitations.
Audience: The book's audience is clinicians who utilize acupuncture on patients. It is intended to improve the effectiveness of acupuncture as well as promote the discipline. The book covers a wide variety of acupuncture techniques, though the depth of coverage varies considerably. The credentials of the authors indicate that they are recognized experts in their field.
Features: The book presents a wide variety of acupuncture, moxibustion, and cupping techniques. Some methods are covered in more detail than others. This often leads to a cursory introduction to techniques rather than a presentation to teach clinicians new techniques of which they are unaware. The writing is generally clear and well-presented. The book includes illustrations and photographs of these presentations, but some are presented in more detail than others. More illustrations in some areas would be beneficial. There is no index. The book claims that Western training in acupuncture techniques is limited and has several areas of weakness, but support for these claims is minimal.
Assessment: This book is of good quality and effectively exposes readers to various acupuncture techniques. It covers a wider variety of techniques than similar texts but goes into less detail on some methods than others. In that regard, it is a handy tool for exposing clinicians to techniques they may not have mastered, but it is less successful in training them to use those techniques. It covers some situations and disorders for which techniques presented may be helpful but only covers some conditions, though that would be beyond the scope of a book of this size.
