The Acupuncturist's Guide to Conventional Medicine, Second Edition

This book is the main Conventional Medical Sciences textbook we use at the College of Integrated Medicine for our students. There is no other textbook to touch it in terms of its clarity. It offers a “translation” of Western medical disease descriptions into Chinese medical terms and also provides a summary of ‘Red Flags’ of diseases for use in the clinic situation. It is also relevant for any practitioner of complementary medicine as its layout and terminology makes it such an easy book to use in order to understand from a Western medicine point of view the problems one’s patients encounter. I cannot recommend it highly enough. – Peter Mole, Dean of the College of Integrated Chinese MedicineClare Stephenson has achieved what many others have failed to do in providing a thorough, but clear and accessible, description of aspects of Conventional Medicine which every acupuncture practitioner should know about. She has used her in-depth knowledge of both Conventional and Chinese Medicine, as well as years of clinical experience in both disciplines, to create an informative, fascinating and ultimately practical book. – Rebecca Avern, Traditional Acupuncturist and Senior Lecturer at the College of Integrated Chinese MedicineClare Stephenson has created a resource we have waited decades for; one that painstakingly and comprehensively straddles the different landscapes of western and Chinese medicine…This is an invaluable tool for practitioners and for students from the outset of their studies, both as an aid for learning and as a point of reference for assisting us and giving shape to how we might share information with our patients. Similarly, it offers an explanation of the pharmaceutical approach to disease and frames the clinical impact of medication through the lens of Chinese medicine. This offers the potential for a systematic course of learning as well as the text standing alone as a comprehensive body of knowledge…I think I’d have been much more enlightened and wakeful if I’d had it for guidance as an undergraduate. The online material is an excellent guide for the revision of essential knowledge of physiology and pathology…While this is a weight book, it is written with an elegant simplicity that illuminates the complex clinical language often used in scientific texts. It is accessible enough to be an absorbing and fascinating read. This book is insightful and yet methodical in layout, which makes extracting specific information straightforward and quick…With this book I believe she bridges the gap between our often incompatible ways of seeing and I applaud her great progress in doing this for our profession. This book is a phenomenal achievement and would make a valuable addition to the library of any acupuncture practitioner. – Vanessa Lampert * Acu, Issue 16, Autumn 2017 *

Dr. Clare Stephenson is a qualified medical practitioner who worked in hospital medicine, general practice, and public health medicine for a number of years before training in Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) and acupuncture. Over the course of a decade, she developed and taught an undergraduate course for students of Chinese medicine on Western medicine and how it relates to TCM. She divides her working time between the practice of palliative care medicine, acupuncture, and lecturing acupuncture students and is based in Oxfordshire, UK.