By Eric Brand

Bob Damone, the current Academic Dean of San Diego’s Pacific College of Oriental Medicine, was one of my most influential teachers during the formative period of my Chinese medical education. Bob’s classes laid a strong foundation that I rely on daily, and his advice that I continue studying Chinese ended up shaping my professional life to a profound degree. I knew Bob’s academic work from his class notes and his efforts on books like Jiao Shu-De’s Ten Lectures on Formulas, but I was really moved when I first saw his andrology book in print.

Oddly enough, prior to the publication of Bob’s book no one had ever done a proper textbook on men’s diseases in Chinese medicine. Gynecology is a prominent field in Chinese medicine, but andrology (its male counterpart) is uncommon to the point that people don’t even recognize the name. In the Chinese literature, gynecology is ultimately a larger and more well-developed field than andrology, largely because of the focus on female fertility in traditional Chinese society. Books on men’s diseases, known in Chinese as Nan Ke, are few in number compared to gynecology texts but the discipline is nonetheless far more developed than we see here in the West. By writing the first comprehensive English-language text on Chinese medical andrology, Bob has made this knowledge available to Western readers for the first time. Men may be less common than women in the average acupuncture waiting room, but they still constitute about 50% of the general population so it is a safe bet to say that every practitioner needs a copy of this book.

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This phenomenal book is one of the best titles that Blue Poppy carries. Meticulously sourced from the best Chinese texts on the subject, Bob’s compilation has actually surpassed the vast majority of andrology texts in the Chinese language. His use of clear, consistent terminology takes the reader straight to the depth of the Chinese source material, and the well-organized style that Damone’s students loved in class comes through beautifully in the text.

The 430 page text is divided into two sections, and covers both acupuncture and herbal medicine. Here is a link to the title here at the Blue Poppy store.

Section 1 introduces the foundations of Chinese andrology and includes all of the following:

• The history of andrology in Chinese medicine
• Anatomy of the male genitourinary system
• The channels and network vessels in andrology
• The viscera and bowels in andrology
• Andrological disease causes and pathomechanisms
• Chinese andrological diseases
• General treatment principles in andrology

Section 2 covers specific andrological diseases including:

• Scrotal and penile diseases
• Benign prostatic hyperplasia
• Prostatitis
• Erectile dysfunction
• Male infertility
• Peyronie's disease
• Priapism
• Andropause

My feelings about Bob’s book are summed up in the quote that I wrote for the back cover:

“With a depth of scholarly research that often surpasses even the Chinese source texts that inspired it, Bob Damone has created a masterpiece that weaves centuries of accumulated knowledge into one well- organized, clinically focused reference work. The authenticity, accuracy, and utility of this text will make it the defining work in the field of Chinese medical andrology for decades to come.”