Peter Deadman

In 1990, alongside my clinical practice of acupuncture and Chinese herbal medicine and my international teaching commitments, I began working on A Manual of Acupuncture, a hefty textbook of the acupuncture points, with Mazin Al-Khafaji & Kevin Baker. Initially we thought it might take eighteen months to complete, but in fact it took eight years.


Mazin and I co-wrote the Chinese medicine portion of the book. Mazin translated point indications and comments from a whole variety of Chinese sources, which we compared with available English language texts. Then  together we began the lengthy process of ordering, digesting and  cross-referencing this information, and finally creating the point commentaries which are an important feature of the book.


Kevin Baker and I spent almost three years writing the anatomical point locations, location notes and needling instructions - again consulting numerous texts.  Kevin's achievement in coming second in the country in his anatomical examinations for membership of the Royal College of Surgeons and his three years of acupuncture studies made him the ideal partner for this work. I had a clear image in my mind of the kind of illustrations we wanted and spent many hours trawling through bookshops looking at medical books. Finally I struck lucky and tracked down Kevin Marks, a wonderful medical illustrator, who produced the elegant and old-fashioned drawings that grace the Manual. I then spent a couple of years adding on the points and location information to these drawings, aiming for the clearest and most user-friendly illustrations.


Since we had decided to self-publish, it was also necessary to become competent in typography, book design and layout, paper and bindings.


A Manual of Acupuncture has established itself as the primary acupuncture points text throughout the English speaking world. Alongside the textbook we have also produced a boxed set of cards for ease of learning, and a CD-ROM for ease of reference and searching.