This edition is a great improvement over the last. My main complaint is the terse index which limits its clinical usefulness. It is a good reference for learning or examining the formulas themselves, but less good as an efficient reference tool in the clinic. The formula descriptions refer to symptoms common to diagnoses for which formulas are used, but the index doesn't reference those symptoms. Even responsible practitioners of Chinese herbalism who prescribe according to diagnosis and not primarily to symptoms can find it useful to have an index in a book like this that contains symptomatic and western diagnostic references...after all, the information is in the book, why not be able to find where it is? The Materia Medica by the same publisher does a much better job of indexing this material.