Jing) was published. Acupuncture flourished in China throughout the Ming
period (1368–1644). Subsequently, it went into gradual decline until 1822,
when it was finally banned by Emperor Dao Guang, who disapproved of its
practices. In the early part of the twentieth century acupuncture became part
of the ongoing debate as to whether Chinese culture should be overtaken by
western influences or maintain its own traditions. With the arrival of western
medicine, acupuncture was increasingly relegated to rural and remote back-
waters.
In the 1950s the discipline was reintroduced by the communist authori-
ties, who saw TCM as a solution to the problem of providing healthcare to
an ever-growing population. Acupuncture developed once again as people
were quickly trained and pressed into service. Today it is practised alongside
western medicine.
News of the success of acupuncture was brought to the west in 1683 by
Dr Willen Ten Rhijn, a physician working for the Dutch East Indies
Company in Japan. Dr Rhijn’s report was not the first, but it was the most
reliable. Usage of the English word ‘acupuncture’ is attributed to him.
Acupuncture was widely practised in France in the late eighteenth
century with Dr Berlioz, a Parisian doctor, becoming the first western prac-
titioner of acupuncture in the early nineteenth century. John Churchill, the
first British acupuncturist, used the technique in the treatment of rheuma-
tism in 1821. Acupuncture was even mentioned in the first edition of The
Lancet in 1823 as being chiefly used in ‘diseases of the head and lower
belly’.^25
When China opened up to visitors shortly after President Nixon went to
the country in 1971, physicians and others from the west made visits to
witness how acupuncture was being used.^26 Indeed in 1972 one of the
authors of this chapter (SK) visited Nanjing and saw a surgeon directing her
own abdominal operation, and observed several other minor operations and
the delivery of a baby; all the procedures were performed with the aid of
acupuncture needles to control the pain.
Acupuncture is now among the best-known complementary therapies in
the UK. In Scotland, a random survey found that an impressive 94% of
respondents in a random survey knew something about acupuncture and
25% said that they would consider using it, although in practice only about
6% had actually done so.^27 It would be interesting to know why there was
such a large discrepancy between the two figures.
Principles of acupuncture
In addition to the classic principles of Chinese medicine outlined above,
there is one key aspect of practice still to consider. This is the theory of
acupuncture points that are stimulated usually by the superficial insertion of
Traditional Chinese medicine | 135