The lecture uses an outline I made of a bunch of parts of chapter 14 (Mechanisms of Action) of Donald Kendall’s book, the Dao of Chinese Medicine. This book is one of the most scientific and rational I’ve seen of American acupuncture books, and this chapter, though dense and hard to understand, is a significant contribution to the profession.

What I am doing in the lecture is explaining the basics, or an overview of how acupuncture works in the body- and I don’t mean in terms of qi, but in terms of the body’s response to needling with the:

  • immune complement system, .
  • nervous system, and
  • blood coagulation system.

A rudimentary knowledge of the nervous system is required, so you should first study nervous system terms and listen to my lecture on that. Even then, this lecture will stretch your knowledge. I believe all the relevant immune system elements are discussed in the acupuncture lecture, and the blood coagulation system is not covered in detail, so that other lecture is probably all you need to start with.

I also have created a dictionary of nervous system, immune system, etc. terms in this lecture for you to refer to.