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

The only remaining mystery seemed to be the mechanism that was making acupuncture so effective. Although Western doctors were now becoming sympathetic to the notion that needling specific points on the body could lead to apparently dramatic changes in a person’s health, they were highly sceptical about the existence of meridians or the flow of Ch’i. These concepts have no meaning in terms of biology, chemistry or physics, but rather they are based on ancient tradition. The contrast between Western incredulity and Eastern confidence in Ch’i and meridians can be traced back to the evolution of the two medical traditions, particularly the way in which the subject of anatomy was treated in the two hemispheres.

Chinese medicine emerged from a society that rejected human dissection. Unable to look inside the body, the Chinese developed a largely imaginary model of human anatomy that was based on the world around them. For example, the human body was supposed to have 365 distinct components, but only because there are 365 days in the year. Similarly, it seems likely that the belief in twelve meridians emerged as a parallel to the twelve great rivers of China. In short, the human body was interpreted as a microcosm of the universe, as opposed to understanding it in terms of its own reality.

The Ancient Greeks also had reservations about using corpses for medical research, but many notable physicians were prepared to break with tradition in order to study the human body. For instance, in the third century BC, Herophilus of Alexandria explored the brain and its connection to the nervous system. He also identified the ovaries and the fallopian tubes, and was credited with disproving the bizarre and widely held view that the womb wandered around the female body. In contrast to the Chinese, European scientists gradually developed an acceptance that dissecting the human body was a necessary part of medical research, so there was steady progress towards establishing an accurate picture of our anatomy.

Autopsies were becoming common by the thirteenth century, and public dissections for the purpose of teaching anatomy were taking place across Europe by the end of the fourteenth century. By the mid-sixteenth century, the practice of dissection for teaching anatomy to medical students had become standard, largely thanks to the influence of such leading figures as Vesalius, who is acknowledged to be the founder of modern anatomy. He argued that a doctor could not treat the human body unless he understood its construction, but un fortunately obtaining bodies was still a problem. This forced Vesalius, in 1536, to steal the body of an executed criminal still chained to the gibbet. His aim was to obtain a skeleton for research. Luckily much of the flesh had already rotted away or had been eaten by animals, so much so that the bones were ‘held together by the ligaments alone’. In 1543 he published his masterpiece, De Corporis Fabrica or The Construction of the Human Body.

Early European anatomists realized that even the most elementary discoveries about the human body could lead to profound revelations about how it functions. For instance, in the sixteenth century an anatomist named Hieronymus Fabricus discovered that veins contain one-way valves along their length, which implies that blood flows in only one direction. William Harvey used this information to argue in favour of blood circulating around the body, which in turn ultimately led to a clear understanding of how oxygen, nutrients and disease spread through the human body. Today, modern medicine continues to develop by ever-closer examination of human anatomy, with increasingly powerful microscopes for seeing and with ever finer instruments for dissecting. Moreover, today we can gain insights into a living dynamic body, thanks to endoscopes, X-rays, MRI scans, CAT scans and ultrasound — and yet scientists are still unable to find a shred of evidence to support the existence of meridians or Ch’i.

So, if meridians and Ch’i are fictional, then what is the mechanism behind the apparent healing power of acupuncture? Two decades after Nixon’s visit to China had re-introduced acupuncture to the West, scientists had to admit that they were baffled over how acupuncture could supposedly treat so many ailments, ranging from sinusitis to gingivitis, from impotence to dysentery. However, when it came to pain relief, there were tentative theories that seemed credible.