200501: TCHS Users Newsletter
TCHS Users Newsletter Rocky Mountain Herbal Insitute Issue 2005 #1
www.rmhiherbal.org
This issue:
[1] Installing and using TCM Herbal Tutor and TCM Pulse Simulator
[2] Mac OSX users: Slow scrolling in the TCM Herbal Tutor tables
[3] Help files and your default browser
[4] TCHS Users' Forum
[5] Admission to Level-1 training, on-site seminars in Hot Springs,
Montana
This newsletter contains important updates and suggestions for users of the
Traditional Chinese Herbal Sciences (TCHS) software.
If your email address changes, please let us know by using our convenient
contact form at
http://www.rmhiherbal.org/contact/
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[1] Installing and using TCM Herbal Tutor and TCM Pulse Simulator
The TCM Herbal Tutor and TCM Pulse Simulator software, complete versions of
which are included with all "Pro" licenses for the TCHS CD-ROM, provide
invaluable learning opportunities. If you have not yet installed and/or
activated these programs on your computer, we encourage you to do so now.
Contact us if you need help:
http://www.rmhiherbal.org/contact/
Each "Pro" license allows you to use this software on one computer (up to
two if you are the primary user and the computers will not be in
simultaneous use). If you upgrade your system to a new computer, just ask
for a new set of activation codes. (Please delete the software from your
old computer.)
I recommend that after reading the recommended chapters in the
Self-Study Reference once or twice, you try the recommended Herbal Tutor
exercises, even if you feel you don't understand the material. Guess. Use
the "Peek" button if you have no idea what the answer is. Play around.
Examine the answers to better understand them. It is actually possible to
learn the material without even reading the Self-Study Reference, although we
do recommend reading it also.
The TCM Herbal Tutor embodies a radically new way to learn Chinese
herbology. I've discovered that many users are still caught up in the
old-fashioned idea of exam-taking, and that they hesitate to do the
exercises in the Herbal Tutor until they feel that they are ready to "take
the exam". First, think of them as GAMES, not exams, because they really
are games; they are intended to be fun, just like crosswords and other
puzzles.
Unlike conventional exams, you can make as many mistakes as you like at the
beginning. Really! If you eventually plan to submit your Progress File for
certification, the only thing that matters is your final score. If you
eventually learn the material, the software forgets your earlier mistakes.
So there is NO advantage to holding off using the software until you feel
you "know" the material.
Chinese herbology cannot really be learned well only by reading books. You
need to get your hands dirty. Put together your herb kits, as recommended
in the Lesson Plans in the Self-Study Reference. And do the exercises in the
Herbal Tutor - they come closest to representing the types of decisions
you will be making when working on real clinical cases. No amount of
textbook reading can prepare you for this. It is like the difference
between reading books on how to play chess vs. actually playing. And
actually playing is a lot more fun!
For those of you who are learning to do pulse palpation, use the TCM Pulse
Simulator to understand how all of the physical qualities of a pulse
interact to create the sensation you feel beneath your fingertips. When
feeling a client's pulse at a given position, see if you can recreate the
pulse you feel using the Pulse Simulator. By using this method in our
on-site seminars, we have trained people to a level of mastery that others
claim can only be achieved after years of practice. One of the problems in
traditional Chinese pulse taking is that practitioners are using a Tower of
Babel of terminology - in idiosyncratic and illogical ways. The Pulse
Simulator helps cut through a lot of this confusion in a short period of
time.
In summary, I encourage you to install, activate, and use both the TCM
Herbal Tutor and the TCM Pulse Simulator, if you have not already done so.
If you would like to upgrade to from the Basic to the Pro version, please
contact us.
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[2] Mac OSX users: Slow scrolling in the TCM Herbal Tutor tables
Some users have commented on the slow scrolling performance when running
the software in OSX. I recommend that you use OSX version 10.3.3 or later
on a 1GHz G4 or faster. Scrolling delays will still appear, but they will
be shorter in duration than on some of the older G3 and G4 Macs.
We've determined that the bottleneck is in the Apple Java engine,
specifically in the way that Apple's Java interfaces with the system
graphical display routines. Each new version of Apple's Java engine seems
to improve in efficiency and speed.
If this slow performance is a problem for you, I recommend installing the
Mac OS (8.1-9.2) version of the TCM Herbal Tutor software, and either
running it in the Classic environment (works OK for some, still slow for
others), or by booting up and running the software directly in OS 9.2 (this
way works the best).
(We are currently writing a major upgrade using the new Java-2 standard,
which should run more efficiently, especially on the Mac. In a future
newsletter, we will let all registered users know when this is available.)
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[3] Help files and your default browser
On some systems, if your default browser is not specified correctly, the
"Help" commands in TCM Herbal Tutor and TCM Pulse Simulator will not work.
There are two simple solutions to this:
(1) Specify the default browser for your system. (We highly recommend the
new Firefox browser for either PC or Mac OSX - it is much less susceptible
to digital mischief than is Microsoft's Internet Explorer.)
OR:
(2) Instead of using the Help commands, open up the "Help" files directly
in your favorite browser by launching ("running") the browser and then using the
browser's file menu "Open..." command to open the following files:
TCM_Herbal_Tutor_3.0.4 / Help.html
TCM_Pulse_Simulator_1.0 / Help Files / PulseSimulator.html
Enter each of these files in the browser's "bookmarks" or "favorites" list,
so that you can quickly access them in the future directly from the browser
rather than by using the "Help" commands in the TCM software.
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[4] TCHS Users' Forum
The TCHS Users' Forum can be found on our website's homepage:
http://www.rmhiherbal.org/
- see the "TCHS Users' Forum" link near the top of the page on the same level as the "Professional Self-Study Reference + TCM Herbal Tutor" link.
Or go directly to:
http://www.rmhiherbal.org/tchs-cd/cdforum-main.html
I intend to archive all back issues of this newsletter there.
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[5] Admission to Level-1 training, on-site seminars in Hot Springs, Montana
If you are interested in becoming certified by RMHI, you are encouraged to
apply for admission to the Level-1 training program. Mimimum prerequisites
include having completed courses in human anatomy and physiology. Most of
our enrolled students are health professionals and will have already
completed these subjects.
We offer one-week seminars each July (in Hot Springs, Montana) that show
you how to apply the course material to real clinical cases. You will have opportunities to develop your skills by practicing pulse palpation, tongue inspection, pattern analysis, herbal formula development, and dietary and environmental health counseling on other students and local volunteers. In
addition, we will show you how to take advantage of all of the features of
your CD-ROM software in the analysis and development of tailored herbal
formulas for individual clients.
To participate in the seminars, you must first be enrolled as an RMHI
student and have made significant progress toward completing Level-1
certification requirements.
For complete information on admissions, please register on our website at
http://www.rmhiherbal.org/contact/index.html
The information will be sent to you by email autoresponder within a few
minutes.
Our next seminar will be 2005 July 7-13.
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