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Curriculum Vitae
from segittarius17
23/10/2006 07:36:00
Acupuncture: Nonsense with Needles(1993)
Arthur Taub, M.D., Ph.D.
Immediately before and after the visit of former President RichardM. Nixon to the People’s Republic of China in 1972, reportscirculated in the West suggesting that major surgery could beaccomplished with acupuncture as the only anesthetic agent. Theimpression was given that acupuncture was widely used andcould be applied in high-risk cases, in children, in the aged, and inveterinary surgery. Perhaps the best-known rumor about“acupuncture anesthesia” was that The New York Times’s notedpolitical analyst James Reston had his appendix removed withacupuncture as the anesthetic. Whatever the reasons for thecurrency of these ideas, they were, every single one of them,untrue.
Acupuncture as a System of Medicine
Chen-Chiu, or acupuncture-moxibustion, is a technique of medicaltreatment that began in Stone Age China. It consists of theinsertion of needles into the skin, or muscles and tendonsbeneath, at one or more named points that are said to“represent” various internal organs. These “acupuncture points”are generally located where imaginary horizontal and verticallines (“meridians”) meet on the surface of the body. The organsare also “represented” by points on the surface of the ear or onone finger. Originally there were 365 points, corresponding to thedays of the year, but the number identified by proponents hasgrown to over two thousand, and various charts locate the pointsdifferently.
According to classical theory, good health is said to be producedby a harmonious mixture of yin and yang, the fundamentalactivity characteristics of the universe, which combine to form thelife force, Ch’i or Qi. The disorganization of the flow of Ch’i is saidto produce illness. The acupuncture needle supposedly canregulate this flow. Moxibustion is a technique in which the herbArtemesia vulgaris, or wormwood, is burned at specified points onor near the skin, sometimes to the point of blistering.Classical Chinese physicians applied these techniques to theentire range of human illness. Surgery as such (save for theoperation of castration used to supply eunuchs for the imperialhousehold) was not a part of classical Chinese medicine. Thediagnosis of disease was based mainly upon examination of the“pulse.” This was not a measurement of the rate and rhythm of the heart, as is done nowadays. Rather, the “pulse” (with sixvarieties) was related to such things as the “texture” and force of the radial artery at several points of the wrist, while the arterywas being compressed lightly or forcefully. Pulse diagnosissupposedly revealed the state of health of the various internalorgans. Diagnosis was also based upon the history of the patient’ssymptoms, the appearance of the patient’s tongue, and the stateof the weather. Because dissection of the human body was notpracticed, internal organs were imagined in rather odd positionsand shapes, and some organs were invented. One of these wasthe “triple warmer,” whose precise location baffles even the mostastute translator of Chinese acupuncture classics.
Herbal pharmacology has played and continues to play asignificant role in classical Chinese medicine. Herbs weregenerally made into a sort of tea. Some of these herbs (such asma huang, which is known to contain ephedrine, a drug useful inthe treatment of asthma) possess useful therapeutic properties. The majority of such preparations, however, are worthless. Inrecent years, many classical preparations have been“adulterated” with active agents that have not been listed asingredients.Classical Chinese medicine was practiced for thousands of years,maintained by the force of Buddhist and Confucian conservatism.Discerning Chinese were not always content with it, however,particularly when other forms of medical and surgical treatmentbecame known to them.
Resistance to Acupuncture in China
In the late nineteenth century, efforts by the waning Manchudynasty toward modernization included an unsuccessful attemptto forbid acupuncture. In the following years, vigorous oppositionto acupuncture was mounted by both right- and left-wingintellectuals. Notable among the latter group was Lu Hsun, amajor figure in the literature of the People’s Republic of China andan author much favored by then Communist party chairman Mao Tse-tung. Lu Hsun ridiculed traditional notions of physiology andindicted Chinese medicine for ineptness, ignorance, and greed.
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Acupuncture
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Your a medical doctor...ofcourse your not for Acupunture. You want to prescribe medicine (toxins) and cut on people. I have found more relieve and answers to my medical condition than any MD ever has....all they did was cut me open 6 times, insert all their new titanium toys in my back. After all that the surgeries didn't work and could only make it through the day with 7 medications and one being a morphine pump and internal neuro stimulator. I still have pain with all that. But not now do to Auricular Therapy that I do on my own with Ear Pellets and my chiropractor.