A genuine history of Acupuncture

 

Traditional Chinese medicinal methods, including acupuncture, have been very recently promoted as a system on par with, if not superior to, medicine in the West. However, alongside the introduction of Chinese medical methods to the West have come some pretty common and basic misconceptions about what acupuncture is and was, and how it originated.

 

These misconceptions seem to have acquired popular credibility. For example, the statement may be made that Chinese medicine is more ‘holistic’ than Western medicine, however, historical truth does not support such attributions. Another basic misconception is that acupuncture, and other aspects of Chinese medicine currently described as traditional Chinese medicine, TCM, is a reflection of the traditional medicine that is most commonly practiced in China, and, furthermore, that the medicine that is practiced in China is a true reflection of the ancient practice. Neither premise is accurate.

 

Indeed, acupuncture, and ‘what is very much today an “alternative” Chinese medicine is merely a minimum relic of concepts and practices… drawn from a fairly astonishing range of medical philosophy, and augmented with current components of Western reasoning …’The adaptation of Chinese medicine marketed in China as zhongyi since the mid-1970s is, in reality, not an authentic depiction of the tradition of Chinese medicine, measured from ancient times to the present.

The evolution of Chinese medicine The oldest traditions of Chinese medicine Shang dynasty, 17th and11th century BC were tied to the beliefs of ancestors. Deceased ancestors were capable of threatening or even destroying human life, and healing methods aimed to repair not only the living but also the dead. As traditional medicine diminished, magical, demonological, or supernatural beliefs became the source of all sickness. The demons of the human body may create such things as swellings, and the insertion of needles or stone lancets, for example, could be utilized in an attempt to destroy or expel them.

 

The most prominent formative phase of Chinese medical traditions was during the Han Dynasty approximately 2nd century BC to 2nd century AD, roughly 2nd century BC to 2nd century AD. It was around this time that the Chinese intellectual elite first began to classify occurrences into a restricted set of causes and consequences. Here, Chinese health care made a radical shift. Natural laws, conceptualized in theories like ‘Yin-yang’ and ‘Five elements,’ were employed to explain health and illness, and to design preventative and therapeutic techniques. Although Han medical thinkers probably addressed older conceptions of demonological and ancestral impacts on human health, by contrast, their beliefs were more reasonable. But from that time on, Chinese medicine coexisted and interacted with older kinds of health care. However, Han Chinese beliefs were not pervasive, commonly recognized, or consistent.

 

For example, one school of Chinese thinking separated the two categories of yin and yang into four yin and yang subcategories while a second school recommended three subcategories for each. Both of these schools of thought, albeit conflicting, seem to have concurred in their rejection of the ‘Five Phases' notion that is crucial to other Chinese philosophies.

 

The Chinese obviously never made any effort to address such discrepancies. This has resulted in several factions within the area of ‘traditional’ Chinese medicine and even more within the sphere of what eventually became acupuncture.

 

Over time, two independent traditions of medical writing evolved in post-Han China. Pharmaceutical and prescription literature was generated and implemented without regard to what has been termed as notions of ‘systematic correspondence.’ In contrast, the needling and moxa cautery literature that arose extended such notions. 

 

In this literature, as conceptions of systematic connection gained prevalent, anatomy and physiology tended to become less relevant and more metaphorical. As a consequence, ‘in the history of Chinese medicine, rather than going from a decent, if partial, understanding of the body to a more comprehensive one by methodical dissection, the medical authors proceed in the other direction, under the spell of the cosmologists, to a less accurate picture.’ Although attempts to merge the pharmacological and needling traditions were undertaken, notably in the 12th–15th centuries, such efforts were never effective.

 

Another crucial aspect of the development of acupuncture and TCM has been the idea of ‘qi.’ However, the notion of invisible, vapor-like agents that are responsible for preserving life and health is not distinctively Chinese, rather, it is one of the core principles of traditional medicine of practically every culture. For example, the Greek doctors Praxagoras and Erasistratus hypothesized that arteries transmitted the vital force pneuma and not blood. This and other parallels have led to conjecture that much of Chinese medicine may simply be an adaptation of Greek medicine, and, in view of the exchanges that happened between China and the West in Han times, such thinking is not unjustified. What can be claimed is that the passage of qi inside channels is a very ancient, but not widely acknowledged, idea.

 

Nevertheless, acupuncture and Chinese medicine, as understood by Western authors, at least offer to cure the ‘energy’ issue inside the individual's own body. In truth, the ancient meaning of the term qi has little resemblance to Western ideas of energy. However, by translating qi as ‘energy’, and by explaining sickness in terms of ‘energetic disturbances', the newly formed Chinese medicine has acquired legitimacy. This plausibility, however, emerges out of conceptual adaptation to Western worries, not because of the historical actuality of Chinese thought.

 

Acupuncture in China

 

The history of acupuncture is pretty well known but over a rather uneven period. Assertions that acupuncture is many thousands of years old are doubtful; no archaeological nor historical evidence shows acupuncture was practiced in China prior to the mid-2nd century BC at the oldest, and those claims are up for controversy. Indeed, precisely when acupuncture may be considered to have originated in China relies on two things: the readiness to accept the early dates of historical writings and ii the meaning of ‘needling.’ If the use of any form of the piercing device ‘needling’ is termed acupuncture, then acupuncture originated early in China but also in contemporaneous societies, who also utilized bleeding and cautery at places on the human body.

 

The oldest archaeological discovery, from the 1970s, is four gold and five silver needles, found in the tomb of Han Dynasty Prince Liu Sheng 154 BC–113 BC in Hebei Province. Since these items were discovered in combination with other therapeutic tools, they may have been utilized in therapeutic ‘needling’ of some type. However, the specific nature of this ‘needling’ is unknown and it may not have been employed for reasons that we think of today as acupuncture for example, according to the Chinese classic medical literature Huang Di neijing, ‘needles' were also used to extract ‘water’ from joints or to lance abscesses.

The oldest Chinese medical literature known today was found at the Mawangdui burials, sealed in 168 BC and the Zhangjiashan burial site closed between 186 and 156 BC.

 

These manuscripts include the earliest descriptions of mai, mythical ‘channels' that were related to diagnosis and therapy. However, in these works, therapeutic procedures, or needling, are never discussed. The oldest literary mention of any type of therapeutic ‘needling’ Zhen is found in a historical, rather than a medical, work, the Shiji, Records of the Historian, of Sima Qian, written 90 BC. The Shiji describes one incident of ‘needling’ in the writings but that needling was not coupled with a system of insertion sites or with the basic system of conduits detailed in later centuries whose qi flow may be altered by such needling. Indeed, the myth of resuscitating a dead prince with a needle implanted in the back of his skull may, in reality, only represent the lancing of a boil or abscess.

 

The classic work Huang Di neijing presented the practice and theoretical foundations of what obviously became human acupuncture in the historical meaning i.e. the manipulation of qi flowing in vessels or conduits by means of needling i.e. the manipulation of qi flowing in vessels or conduits by means of needling. The book, which today encompasses three unique redactions, is built up from literary bits by many writers writing in various eras. Although it is not clear when individual pieces were written or included in the larger textual tradition, the main content of the book dates from later centuries, and the earliest recoverable versions date to between the 5th and 8th centuries AD, although the Han Dynasty origins are claimed for the Huang Di neijing, they are based on dubious bibliographical references that may or may not have anything to do with existing versions of the texts although Han Dynasty origins are claimed for the Huang Di neijing, they are based on dubious bibliographical references that may or may not have anything to do with existing versions of the texts. Most of the writings extant now went through final modification as late as the 11th century AD and such alterations may not represent previous work.

 

The Huang Di neijing established the notion that the body comprised functional centers ‘depots' and ‘palaces' linked by a number of main and secondary conduits that enabled influences qi to travel inside the body and to come from outside. Older portions of the text are inspired by instructions to cure disease through bloodletting. 

 

It has been theorized that bloodletting ultimately morphed into acupuncture and the emphasis moved from eliminating visible blood to controlling unseen qi. Interestingly, the book primarily overlooks precise skin sites at which needles may be put. In truth, needling is a minor tradition in the book and most of the treatment detailed in the text involves minor surgery, bloodletting, and massage.

 

Subsequently, presumably in Song times, AD 960–1279, acupuncture, or at least a prototype thereof, became progressively systematized, as illustrated by the work of Wang Weiyi in conjunction with his acupuncture bronze figure.

 

Later further, notions of systematic correspondence were combined with acupuncture. The last phase, taking place no earlier than the late Qing period AD 1644–1911 was the creation of fine steel needles. Still, throughout Chinese history, acupuncture was a small practice, and only in the past few decades has it become a dominating tradition, even to the near exclusion of Chinese herbal medicine which was, traditionally, far more significant.

 

Doubts concerning the effectiveness of needling treatment develop early. Repeated quotations stating, that if one does not believe in needling, one should not employ it, exist throughout Han period works. Subsequently, for unexplained reasons, needling lost most of its attractiveness by the middle of the second millennium. By at least 1757, the ‘loss of acupuncture tradition’ was regretted and it was observed that the acupuncture sites, channels, and methods in use at the time were considerably different from those detailed in the ancient scriptures.

Eventually the Chinese and other Eastern civilizations made efforts to attempt to abolish the practice completely. 

 

In an effort to modernize medicine, the Chinese government sought to outlaw acupuncture for the first of multiple occasions in 1822, when the Qing administration banned the teaching of acupuncture and moxa cautery in the taiyiyuan. The Japanese formally abolished the practice in 1876. By the 1911 revolution, acupuncture was no longer a topic for examination at the Chinese Imperial Medical Academy.

 

During the Great Leap Forward of the 1950s and the Cultural Revolution of the 1960s, Chairman Mao Zedong promoted acupuncture and traditional medical techniques as pragmatic solutions to providing health care to a vast population that was terribly undersupplied with doctors and as a superior alternative to decadent ‘imperialist’ practices even though Mao apparently eschewed such therapies for his own personal health. Here they remained until unearthed in the most recent surge of interest in Chinese medical methods, dating from US President Richard Nixon's 1972 visit to the People's Republic of China, which ended almost a quarter-century of China's isolation from the USA.

 

Acupuncture in the West

 

Chinese medicine was first described in Western literature as early as the 13th century AD in the travels of William of Rubruck, but the Western world became aware of needling a few centuries later. In the late 16th century, a few stray manuals, presently housed by the Escorial in Madrid, Spain, had reached Europe. Accounts of real practice quickly emerged, some fairly detailed. It entered the USA slightly later. 

 

It has since been rejected, forgotten, and rediscovered again in at least four major waves, including the current one. For a period, acupuncture became very well established in areas of Europe, notably in France and Germany concurrent with Chinese efforts to outlaw the practice concurrent with Chinese attempts to ban the practice. 

 

Several renowned French physicians embraced acupuncture in the 18th and 19th centuries, but other equally distinguished doctors were not pleased, accusing proponents of raising a foolish theory from well-deserved obscurity.

 

 

Nineteenth-century England also had a short period of popularity for acupuncture; one 1821 journal observed that acupuncture consisted of ‘inserting a needle into the muscular regions of the body, to the depth, occasionally, of an inch.

 

’ However, by 1829 the editor of the Medico-Chirurgical Review was able to write: ‘A short while ago the town rang with “acupuncture”, everyone spoke of it, everyone was healing incurable ailments with it; but today scarcely a word is uttered concerning the subject.’Georges Souli de Morant, a French diplomat living in China who got attracted to acupuncture as a therapy for cholera and later published his important book L'Acupuncture Chinoise in 1939, sparked the first of the 20th-century waves of interest in acupuncture. Souli de Morant was key in constructing the myth of acupuncture, for example introducing the word ‘meridian,’ now frequently used in Western acupuncture literature to indicate pathways along which qi travels, although there is, regrettably, no direct counterpart in Chinese literature.

 

 

In the USA, acupuncture experienced a short period of popularity during the first half of the 19th century, notably among doctors in the Philadelphia region.

 

 

In 1826, three local doctors started tests with acupuncture as a potential technique for resuscitating drowned individuals, based on reports by European experimenters that they had successfully resurrected drowning kittens by putting acupuncture needles into their hearts. 

 

Those same doctors were unable to reproduce their accomplishments and later ‘gave up in disgust.’The 1829 edition of Tavernier's Elements of Operative Surgery has three chapters on how and when one may conduct not just acupuncture but also ‘electro-acupuncturation.’ Publications promoting the method emerged on occasion throughout the following 20 years.

 

 

Although none of the early American tales of acupuncture make any mention of acupuncture points, channels, or meridians, they all claim great success as a consequence of placing needles directly into, or in the near vicinity of, painful or otherwise diseased places. However, by the second half of the 19th century, Western practitioners had mostly abandoned acupuncture. In 1859 it was judged that ‘its benefits have been considerably overstated, and the practice… has fallen into disrepute.

 

’The Index Catalogue of the Surgeon-library General has just half-a-dozen works on the topic for the whole half-century of 1850–1900. The 1913 edition of Webster's unabridged dictionary describes acupuncture only as, ‘The insertion of needles into the living tissues for remedial purposes,’ and acupressure, another modern transmogrification, as a mode of arresting hemorrhage resulting from wounds or surgical operations, by passing under the divided vessel a needle, the ends of which are left exposed externally on the cutaneous surface.’

 

 

Conclusions

 

 

Twentieth-century researchers have conceptualized a trial and error pattern of evolution wherein information was collectively amassed into a medical ‘system.’ One interpretation has been that, over time, crude stone lancets were replaced with tiny metal needles, and acupuncture sites and channels were standardized, leading to a new era of medical expertise. 

 

However, there are currently many questions regarding the existence of a trial and error system, as well as the assumption that ‘needling,’ as described in medieval Chinese medical writings, represents today's acupuncture. 

 

Indeed, notwithstanding antecedent concepts and practices, contemporary acupuncture, which includes innovative varieties such as electroacupuncture, may never have existed in ancient China in anything like the manner in which it is performed today.

 

 

Notes systematic correspondences' followed a system of ‘magic correspondences' in history. 

 

In magic correspondences, the Chinese sought to organize the universe in terms of intricate sympathetic magic. For example, the ancient Chinese saw a walnut and envisioned an open brain; they do look alike. 

 

Hence people in antiquity concluded that they must be linked. To expand the correlation, it may also be suggested that if one were to consume walnuts, the brain would be enhanced. Magic correspondence has numerous elements; nevertheless, the key idea is that the universe was considered as a composite of innumerable independent, i.e. mutually unconnected pairs of correspondences.

 

In early Han times came the big conceptual jump: all world occurrences, tangible or not, were connected via a system of correspondences. In this approach, any occurrences might be impacted by changes elsewhere in the system. 

 

The body and its functions were, of course, also part of the systematic correspondences. The medicine of systematic correspondences was, as a result, constructed on this form of organization of the universe. 

 

All emotions, all functions, and all morphological entities are regarded as part of the wider encompassing universe of systematic correspondences; the organism in all its functions and morphological components is related to the seasons, the surrounding physical environment, etc. To disregard this system may result in sickness, for example, if in winter one acts as one should in summer, negative things could ensue.be title Huang Di neijing has been the subject of various English translations. 

 

The material, which is really three independent volumes, may be translated in numerous ways. Some disagreement regarding the title seems to arise from a mistranslation by Dr. Ilza Veith, who, in her translation of the book, proposed that the title be translated as The Yellow Emperor's Classic of Internal Medicine. 

 

However, the term merely means the ‘Inner Classic of Huang Di’. Huang Di is the name of the fabled ‘Yellow Emperor’, originally a deity of the Yellow Springs of Hades, therefore his hue. He is also sometimes referred to as the ‘Yellow Thearch’ Thearch = god-ruler. The ‘inner’ Chinese nei signifies an inner or esoteric tradition transferred from master to pupil as opposed to wai, an ‘outer’ tradition for public consumption. The Chinese term jing signifies ‘canon’ or ‘classic’. Accordingly, any translation referring to this material as being relevant to ‘internal medicine’ is absolutely erroneous.