Acupuncture & Tuina — the 2 books the tradition kept on this shelf
Point-based practice: where the points are, how they were located on the body, and what the texts say about using them. Our own product deliberately stops at self-massage and says so on every page.
Every entry below is taken from the same catalogue the product is built on: the title, the hand behind it, when it sits in time, what the book works on, and what it changed. Sentences in bold are the ones we can point an outside source at; the rest is our summary of the book, not a claim from it.
A-B Classic of Acupuncture (针灸甲乙经)
晋·皇甫谧 · Jin (282) · Zhen Jiu Jia Yi Jing
Works on: Needling and moxa. Our text sits in 147 headed blocks: a Song editorial preface, the author's own preface and a note on how to read the book, then 139 numbered essays that open on spirit and the five organs, move through the channels, the twelve origin points and the four seas, then map points region by region — head, face, front and back of the ear, neck, shoulder, chest — closing with complaints of women and of children. The regional titles keep their own census: one inch into the hairline along the mid-head as far as Wind Mansion, eight points, second; the face, twenty-nine points, tenth.
What it changed: It is a book made by sorting. Its preface says the three texts then available — the Needle Classic, the Suwen and the Hall of Points — overlapped and contradicted, so Huangfu Mi, disabled by wind-stroke and deafness, "compiled the three, arranged them by kind, cut the padding and the repeats" into twelve scrolls. Classification plus an editorial convention is what later let readers find a point by region and a disease by category. It is the earliest surviving systematic book on needling, and the needling section of Japan's Ishinpō drew straight from it.
Great Compendium of Acupuncture (针灸大成)
明·杨继洲 · Ming (1601) · Zhen Jiu Da Cheng
Works on: A practical manual plus an index. Scrolls 1–5: sources, verse summaries, five phases and six qi, measurement for locating points, the nine needles, reinforcement and reduction, contraindications, and time-based needling. Scrolls 6–7: points and their indications channel by channel. Scroll 8: treatment by disease across specialties. Scroll 9: general treatment compendium, other physicians' methods, moxibustion, and Yang's own case records. Scroll 10: the Shen Ying Jing point system, paediatric needling and massage, and supplements.
What it changed: Its contribution is compilation made searchable: earlier needling literature reordered by topic, with points laid out by channel on one side and indications laid out by disease on the other, so a complaint resolves to a set of points. Contraindications are given their own headings rather than buried — under 刺禁论 sit "the five depletions must not be drained", "seasons that must not be needled" and "death dates that must not be needled". It indexed points by channel and complaints by specialty, so a lookup lands; carried by ships and embassies into Japan, Korea and Vietnam, it remains one of the most-cited Chinese bases of acupuncture teaching outside China.
Where this leaves our product
Qicura reads a described symptom against this kind of material and returns a pattern in plain language with the sources named. It does not dispense: no herb quantities, no formula composition, no preparation instructions, and no needling technique - those are deliberate limits enforced on the server, not wording we soften for a page.
Educational, self-care content - not a medical diagnosis. For personal advice, consult a qualified practitioner.