Once you start studying Chinese Medicine, probably the first name you learn to say is “Giovanni Maciocia” (or “Peter Deadman”, depends on which class you are in).
The Chinese Medicine world, according to Maciocia, is pretty simple- when you have this, you do that.
This creates a very “dry” text, things repeat themselves many times in the books.
When you remember that Giovanni was a student of the late Dr. Van Buren, you realize that there must be something not quite right here, and you start thinking that there’s more to Giovanni’s books than meets the eye.

Giovanni Maciocia speaks fluent Chinese, which opens up a wide range of knowledge for him.
Combine that with many years of clinical experience and knowledge of the Chinese culture, and you understand that Maciocia has deep understanding that goes beyond what is presented in the books.

The first book- The Foundations of Chinese Medicine, and the second one- The Practice of Chinese Medicine, are important in the way they present the world of Chinese Medicine and philosophy to newbies, not a very easy task to do. Not only must the book introduce the new world, but also explain basic ideas which are the very foundation to the newbies future career. That only complicate things.
Maciocia uses words that are not very common when English is not your first language, which frustrates many students, as they are constantly reading two books- a Maciocia book and a dictionary.
But the choice of words is not meant to make our lives harder. I find that the author picks the words that are best suited for keeping the idea that is originally in Chinese. Something always gets lost in translation, I believe that Maciocia tries to keep the things that are lost to a minimum by choosing the words that are best suited to describe what the original author meant to say.

We need a book that will be our textbook, there’s no way to avoid it.
It is not easy to learn all these new concepts, all these syndromes, and we need a good book that can get us started by teaching us everything by keeping it rather simple- maybe sometimes too simple. Simple enough to start off with something.
I think Maciocia’s work on his books is very good, everything is in order: tables and lists are an easy way to remember things that we don’t understand fully.
For a start- these books are very good, which is probably the reason why these books are the main textbooks in schools for Chinese Medicine all over the world.

Personal Note
I remember being very frustrated in my early years in Chinese Medicine, mainly from the way Giovanni Maciocia presents the ideas of Chinese Medicine in the books I mentioned above.
On my 3rd year I started to read his third book, Obstetrics and Gynecology in Chinese Medicine, and thought that it was a better book than the first two.
Later on that year, I came across a video recording of a lecture he gave here in Israel a few years back about the 8 extraordinary meridians, and thought it was fascinating.
I was truly amazed to see how much knowledge Maciocia had on the subject and how he was able to teach it in a clear and rather simple way.

What are your thoughts about the Giovanni books? I’d love to read your thoughts.