Acupuncture

TCM is based on a pre-scientific paradigm of medicine that developed over several thousand years and involves concepts that have no counterpart within contemporary medicine.

In TCM, the body is treated as a whole that is composed of several "systems of function" known as the zang-fu

These systems are named after specific organs, though the systems and organs are not directly associated.

The zang systems are associated with the solid, yin organs such as the liver while the fu systems are associated with the hollow yang organs such as the intestines.

Health is explained as a state of balance between the yin and yang with disease ascribed to either of these forces being unbalanced, blocked or stagnant.

The yang force is the immaterial qi a concept that is roughly translated as "vital energy.

The yin counterpart is Blood, which is linked to but not identical with physical blood and capitalized to distinguish the two. TCM uses a variety of interventions, including pressure, heat and acupuncture applied to the body's acupuncture points (in Chinese meaning "cavities") to modify the activity of the zang-fu.

Acupuncture

In the 1970s, acupuncture became better known in the United States after an article appeared i by James Reston who underwent an emergency appendectomy while visiting China.
While standard anesthesia was used for the actual surgery, Mr. Reston was treated with acupuncture for post-operative discomfort.
The National Acupuncture Association (NAA), the first national association of acupuncture in the US, introduced acupuncture to the West through seminars and research presentations.
The NAA created and staffed the UCLA Acupuncture Pain clinic in 1972. This was the first legal clinic in a medical school setting in the US citation needed .
The first acupuncture clinic in the United States is claimed to have been opened by Dr. Yao Wu Lee in Washington, D.C. on July 9, 1972.unreliable source.
The Internal Reve Service allowed acupuncture to be deducted as a medical expense beginning in 1973.
In 2006, a BBC documentary Alternative Medicine filmed a patient undergoing open heart surgery allegedly under acupuncture-induced anaesthesia. It was later revealed that the patient had been given a cocktail of weak anaesthetics that in combination could have a much more powerful effect. The program was also criticised for its fanciful interpretation of the results of a brain scanning experiment.

Acupuncture

Acupuncture spread from China to Korea, Japan and Vietnam and elsewhere in East Asia.
Around ninety works on acupuncture were written in China between the Han Dynasty and the Song Dynasti and the in 1023, ordered the production of a bronze statuette depicting the meridians and acupuncture points then in use.
However, after the end of the Song Dynasty, acupuncture and its practitioners began to be seen as a technical rather than scholarly profession.
It became more rare in the succeeding centuries, supplanted by medications and became associated with the less prestigious practices of shamanism, midwifery and moxibustion.
Portugues missionaries in the 16th century were among the first to bring reports of acupuncture to the West.
Jacob de Bondt a Danish surgeon travelling in Asia, described the practice in both Japan and Java.
However, in China itself the practice was increasingly associated with the lower-classes and illiterate practitioners.
The first European text on acupuncture was written by Willen ten Rhijni a Dutch physician who studied the practice for two years in Japan. It consisted of an essay in a 1683 medical text on arthritis; Europeans were also at the time becoming more interested in moxibustion, which ten Rhijne also wrote about.
In 1757 the physician Xu Daqun described the further decline of acupuncture, saying it was a lost art, with few experts to instruct; its decline was attributed in part to the popularity of prescriptions and medications, as well as its association with the lower classes.
In 1822, an edict from the Chinese Emperor banned the practice and teaching of acupuncture within the Imperial Academy of Medicine outright, as unfit for practice by gentlemen-scholars. At this point, acupuncture was still cited in Europe with both skepticism and praise, with little study and only a small amount of experimentation.

Acupuncture

Acupuncture's origins in China are uncertain. One explanation is that some soldiers wounded in battle by arrow were cured of chronic afflictions that were otherwise untreated, and there are variations on this idea.
In China the practice of acupuncture can perhaps be traced as far back as the Stone Age, with the Bian shi, or sharpened stones.
In 1963 a bian stone was found in Duolon County, Mongolia pushing the origins of acupuncture into the Neolithi age.
Hieroglyphs and pictographs have been found dating from the Shang Dynasti (1600-1100 BCE) which suggest that acupuncture was practiced along with moxibustion.
Despite improvements in metallurgi over centuries, it was not until the 2nd century BCE during the Han Dynasti that stone and bone needles were replaced with metal.
The earliest records of acupuncture is in the Shiji with references in later medical texts that are equivocal, but could be interpreted as discussing acupuncture.
The earliest Chinese medical text to describe acupuncture is the Huangdi Neijing the legendary Classic of Internal Medicine (History of Acupuncture) which was compiled around 305–204 B.C. The Huangdi Neijing does not distinguish between acupuncture and moxibustion and gives the same indication for both treatments. The Mawangdu texts, which also date from the second century BC though antedating both the Shiji and Huangdi Neijing, mentions the use of pointed stones to open abscesses and moxibustion but not acupuncture, but by the second century BCE, acupuncture replaced moxibustion as the primary treatment of systemic conditions.
In Europe, examinations of the 5,000-year-old mummified body of Ötzi the Icema have identified 15 groups of tattooson his body, some of which are located on what are now seen as contemporary acupuncture points. This has been cited as evidence that practices similar to acupuncture may have been practiced elsewhere in Eurasi during the early Bronze.