Trick or Treatment—The Undeniable Facts about Alternative Medicine (Electronic book text)

The first detailed description of acupuncture appears in the Huangdi Neijing (known as the The Yellow Emperor’s Classic of Internal Medicine), a collection of writings dating from the second century BC. It presents the complex philosophy and practice of acupuncture in terms that would be largely familiar to any modern practitioner. Most importantly of all, Huangdi Neijing describes how Ch’i, a vital energy or life force, flows though our body via channels known as meridians. Illnesses are due to imbalances or blockages in the flow of Ch’i, and the goal of acupuncture is to tap into the meridians at key points to rebalance or unblock the Ch’i.

Although Ch’i is a core principle in acupuncture, different schools have evolved over the centuries and developed their own interpretations of how Ch’i flows through the body. For instance, some acupuncturists work on the basis of fourteen main meridians carrying Ch’i, while the majority support the notion that the body contains only twelve main meridians. Similarly, different schools of acupuncture have included additional concepts, such as yin and yang, and interpreted them in different ways. While some schools divided yin and yang into three subcategories, others divided them into four. Because there are so many schools of acupuncture, it is impractical to give a detailed description of each of them, but these are the core principles:

Each meridian is associated with and connects to one of the major organs.

Each meridian has an internal and an external pathway. Although the internal pathways are buried deep within the body, the external ones are relatively near the surface and are accessible to needling.

There are hundreds of possible acupuncture points along the meridians.

Depending on the school and the condition being treated, the acupuncturist will insert needles at particular points on particular meridians.

The penetration depth varies from 1 centimetre to over 10 centimetres, and often the therapy involves rotating the needles in situ.

Needles can be left in place for a few seconds or a few hours.

Before deciding on the acupuncture points, as well as the duration, depth and mode of needling, the acupuncturist must first diagnose the patient. This relies on five techniques, namely inspection, auscultation, olfaction, palpation and inquiring. Inspection means examining the body and face, including the colour and coating of the tongue. Auscultation and olfaction entail listening to and smelling the body, checking for symptoms such as wheezing and unusual odours. Palpation involves checking the patient’s pulse: importantly, acupuncturists claim to be able to discern far more information from this process than any conventional doctor. Inquiring, as the name suggests, means simply interviewing the patient.

Claims by the Chinese that acupuncture could successfully diagnose and miraculously cure a whole range of diseases inevitably aroused interest from the rest of the world. The first detailed description by a European physician was by Wilhelm ten Rhyne of the Dutch East India Company in 1683, who invented the word acupuncture in his Latin treatise De Acupunctura. A few years later, a German traveller and doctor named Engelbert Kaempfer brought back reports of acupuncture from Japan, where it was not restricted to specialist practitioners: ‘Even the common people will venture to apply the needle merely upon their own experience…taking care only not to prick any nerves, tendons, or con siderable blood vessels.’

In time, some European doctors began to practise acupuncture, but they tended to reinterpret the underlying principles to fit in with the latest scientific discoveries. For example, in the early nineteenth century Louis Berlioz, father of the famous composer, found acupuncture to be beneficial for relieving muscular pain and nervous conditions. He speculated that the healing mechanism might be linked to the findings of Luigi Galvani, who had dis covered that electrical impulses could cause a dissected frog’s leg to twitch. Berlioz suggested that acupuncture needles might be interrupting or enabling the flow of electricity within the body, thereby replacing the abstract notions of Ch’i and meridians with the more tangible concepts of electricity and nerves. This led to Berlioz’s proposal that the effects of acupuncture might be enhanced by connecting the needles to a battery.

At the same time, acupuncture was also growing in popularity in America, which prompted some physicians to conduct tests into its efficacy. For example, in 1826 there was an attempt in Philadelphia to resuscitate drowned kittens by inserting needles into their hearts, an experiment based on the claims of European acupuncturists. Unfortunately the American doctors had no success and ‘gave up in disgust’.