Selected Readings from the Inner Canon

This book is a national-level planning textbook for undergraduate higher education under the 14th Five-Year Plan and a 14th Five-Year Plan textbook for higher education in the national traditional Chinese medicine industry. Edited by Zhai Shuangqing and Li Jingbo, it is intended for the Selected Readings from the Inner Canon course for majors including Traditional Chinese Medicine, Integrated Chinese and Western Clinical Medicine, and Acupuncture and Tuina. The book is divided into two parts. The first part covers the introduction and foundations, presenting the authorship and dating of the Inner Canon, the meaning of its title, and the process by which it was transmitted and finalized; surveying important commentators and editions through the ages (along three lines: categorical annotation, running commentary, and textual criticism and glossing); outlining the conditions under which the Inner Canon's theoretical system took shape, its main contents, and its academic characteristics; and explaining the Inner Canon's place in traditional Chinese medicine and the key points for studying it. The second part is a guided reading of the original text, organized according to the Inner Canon's theoretical system and practical considerations into eight chapters—philosophical thought, visceral manifestations, meridians, etiology and pathogenesis, diseases and syndromes, diagnostic methods, treatment, and health preservation. Original passages are selected from the Basic Questions and the Spiritual Pivot, numbered in sequence, and provided with textual notes and commentaries that explain the meaning of the classics and relate them to clinical application, with the aim of enabling readers to grasp the Inner Canon's theoretical content systematically and understand the origins and modes of thought of Chinese medicine theory. The appendices include introductions to the main contents of each chapter of the Basic Questions and Spiritual Pivot and the Inner Canon's thirteen formulas, for easy reference and further reading.