After ten years spent studying the Classics of Chinese medicine, and in particular the Classic of the Interior (Huang di nei jing), Dr Jean-Louis Lafont delivers the great history of acupuncture in a new light. Every stage of its evolution is placed back within its cultural, social and political context.

Page after page, the author lifts the veil on the contradictions and obscurities of the founding text. In the manner of the classical scholars, he neither subtracts nor adds anything: he illuminates, explains and guides the reader through nearly ten centuries of the life of acupuncture, from its origins to the shaping of its classical system, moving from one dynasty to the next as if through a novel.

This book will fascinate the scholar as much as the novice, the student as much as the teacher — four complementary postures which define Jean-Louis Lafont's approach and which enabled him to carry this work to its completion.