This is an extremely rare 19th century treatise on Chinese
medicine, particularly the practices of the Kung Fu school.
This has never been reprinted, and was scanned from a rare copy
in the possession of the University of California.
Although best known for a fighting style, Kung Fu
includes a whole range of medical practices based on late Taoist alchemy.
Dudgeon describes the use of yoga-like postures,
movements similar to Tai Chi, the use of healing sounds similar to mantras,
as well as massage and other techniques.
He gives specifics of compounds used to treat a wide range of ailments
in conjunction with the other methods.
Dudgeon describes Taoist deities and sages, and gives extensive background
on Chinese medical theory.
This text is an invaluable look at the esoteric medical practices
of the Chinese prior to the 20th century.
Important:
This is an historical text which includes accounts of 19th century
Chinese medical practices, presented for the purpose of education and
entertainment.
Please do not attempt any of the exercises or
treatments described in this document without
consulting your physician first.
Production Notes:
I had to scan this from a PDF created by Google books,
by printing out the PDF and then bulk-scanning the pages back in.
Because of the poor quality of the printing in the original text,
it is likely that there are additional errata which have not been corrected.
Several sections which were printed entirely in small type have been
presented in the default type size for purposes of readability.
Locations of untranscribed Chinese characters in the text are indicated
by a single hash sign (#).
Due to the number of diagrams in the text, I have broken it down
into files based on the number of images per file, so as to not
have to thumbnail the images.
--J.B. Hare, October 9, 2008.
