Acupuncture: history and scientific observation

 Acupuncture: history notes
 

                Are we too superior in our conceits to recognize the ability we ought to see in others?

               

             I write here in hope that we may more enjoy the fruits of acupuncture. The French and Russians began to enjoy those fruits of the acupuncture part of Chinese Health Care many years ago. Our AMA has not pointed us to a legal road to making acupuncture an active part of our health care system. It  that seems finding and setting up that road is up us, we the people. 

               

                 The people of some countries have struggled a bit with deciding how to regulate acupuncture, bur most have allowed it legal practice. Russian elites have demanded it. Chinese demand that extensive education and careful oversight of the the practice be established and maintained. European countries have demanded that all acupuncturists be medical doctors as well. Some of them have neglected the supervision of its teaching.

 

                Some knowledge of the history of acupuncture may prove of help to to us. Allow me to pass on some of that history which have begun to learn.

 

                A medical school was established in China during the Tang dynasty before 900 AD. Its name, translated to English can be, the Imperial Institute of Physicians. The college trained 350 students at a time in herbal medicine and surgery. Herbal medicine seems to have been the more important part of the instruction. Surgery was mainly limited to fractures, skin diseases, and wounds.

 

                Tang emperors also organized the nation's doctors into the grand Medical Service. It will be great when we can organize our healthcare to include the best of the kinds available in other countries. The development of organized healthcare in China began at least as early as 600 AD. Certainly we ought to be able to improve and extend our healthcare in the near future.

 

                 Chinese health care was regulated and delivery improved beginning in about 700 AD. Prospective doctors underwent rigorous examinations. Future doctors were examined on their familiarity with the principles of acupuncture and its diagnosis and techniques, also on the best written works. 

 

                Chinese controlled the quality of their health care then and now. There were and are laws prohibiting the practice of healthcare and cure without licenses.

 

                According to surviving healthcare books and documents from as far back as the Tang, a variety of maladies were treated. their practice dealt with tuberculosis, goiter, rickets, beriberi, dropsy, Cholera, dysentery, measles, smallpox, and leprosy.

            As we begin to use our choice of the very best European and Asiatic healthcare, we can learn from and adopt some of their methods of  control and safety. There  is much of value we can learn if we would. We can learn to benefit from acupuncture as have the French, and Russians, and others. Our healthcare professionals have much to teach others.

            Let's get back to the Tang dynasty way of dealing with acupuncture. On the second day of their examinations was a demonstration of one's effectiveness of dealing with the needles of acupuncture. A great deal more of Chinese history is becoming available these days and the Chinese share share much of their modern healthcare understanding, knowledge, and techniques. We can learn from them and help them to learn from us.

 

                In 1027 AD the sung dynasty emperor, Je Tsug ordered Wang Wei, a noted acupuncturist and sculpture to cast two hollow figures with the acupuncture points points marked by their names and small holes. The figures were covered with wax and filled with water. These figures were used to train and test students. Similar figures are used by students and teachers and students today, Since the Sung dynasty only about a dozen points have been changed, added, or deleted. I understands that a total of about 365 points are used today. For the interested person there is much historic and present day information available online.

 

                During the reign of Chaing Kai-shek, western medicine was extolled and acupuncture was repressed and schools closed. Still, the Chinese people looked to their traditional medicine. Thousands were killed by quacks and the untrained in the use of traditional medicine. Many came to doubt their ''medicine."

                When the communist consolidated power acupuncturists began to use the needles where they were most likely to be used correctly, on themselves. A graduate from their schools may have pricked himself ten thousand times refining his skills and touch until teachers and testers were sure of his ability. There remained much to be learned of diagnosis.  

 

                Now, acupuncture has been modernized by Chinese doctors also trained in western medicine. Acupuncture is used extensively. Electronic needles are used, and their use has moved into most modern Chinese medicine. 

 

                In 1893 Sir Henry Head, a British nerve specialist, noticed that some patients suffering from diseased gallbladders and kidneys felt pain in parts of the body far from from the stricken organs. The pain was external, on the surface of the skin, and a specific disease always resulted in pain from the same place. Think of the diagnostic possibilities, Some wise doctors have been trained in "Head Zones."

            

            German doctors soon began to use their knowledge of "Head Zones" to deaden areas of the skin to relieve pain in internal organs. Does that remind you of anything in particular?

 

                Some American doctors add to this practice by injecting these surface areas with chemical Anesthesia to get the same result. American doctors were amazed to find that their injections in Head Zones not only relieved pain, but in many cases cure diseases. Head Zones have been too largely forgotten, but there is still a bit of ongoing work being done in the U.S. and elsewhere. 

 

            By the way, the areas of the skin Dr. Head linked with the gallbladder and kidneys are the same ones acupuncturists use today and the same ones they have used for many hundreds of years.

 

                I believe that we can benefit from careful training of good acupuncture practitioners in the U.S. I believe we would benefit even more by good appropriate oversight of those practitioners and of all physicians and health practitioners. For developing appropriate training of acupuncturists in the U.S. we could increase exchange of healthcare practitioners between China and America.

 

                Check RCS Posts for health related posts.

            Thank you for reading

 

 

                                                                    RCS 

Europeans, Vampires, Republicans, and Democrats.

                     Perhaps we are at the point of losing our right to take care of ourselves, which is our right to self-governance, because we do not know who we are. We do not know each other because we do not practice good organization and communication. While we do not talk among our selves well a co-operate well, how are we to know who we are? While we did not do well together that which we were doing together 40 years ago, and do not remember much of what we were doing 300 years ago, and practically less what was happening to us only 2,000 years ago, and are not even sure how we nearly lost it all, what Have we decided to do to take care of ourselves tomorrow? How do we intend to send to participate in our governance to give our next generation a good chance of surviving and thriving? Are we acting like we don't care or pleading ignorance?  I think that most of us do care most of the time. Ignorance is not an excuse. We mostly learn by doing and paying attention to that which we do. Let's do something now. We can attend to or doing and to the results and then use our observations to make our doings good. You and I do not have too much to do because their are millions to help us. We are the people. Even just you and I personally co-operating with 30 or 40 need not have much to do.

                    The more we are careless of ourselves the more we are likely to become slaves of a new kind. The kind that are not valued, even as slaves, because most no longer have any use for slaves. They become almost at type of sub-human who have not practiced self-governance and cannot even imagine self-governance, much less than practice it. I am talking about us. I still have some memory of an us which practiced much more civic organization and who, at least practiced local self governance, and some organization to protect ourselves from some of the natural depredations from farther afield. 

                    When we care so little for ourselves that we seem careless of ourselves, might not others finally take advantage of us, or just push aside from the goods of this world and Earth. We remembered ideas of fairness and justice and concepts of governance to support fairness and justice among us. We called those ideas republicanism and democracy and loved them enough to pay dearly for them. Many of us did much toward the development of democratic republics.

                    We had a good game going. It has a kind of great rally. Then, often real reasons, we dropped the ball, then lost it, and then forgot it. Some of our great grandfathers did not learn about about self-governance well. A look at history can tell you why.  Our grandfathers learned a bit about it, but began to see it as something in the hands of others and did not support their schools in teaching its nature and practice. Our parents scarcely imagined supporting our schools in teaching us our history or that which once seemed to be our birth rights. Some us are learning some of our history now, and perhaps a few more are remembering that we are collectively responsible for taking care of ourselves. Some say it is never to late to learn and never to late to value our responsibly. I wonder if one dinosaur ever told another dinosaur that they would never lose their position and perhaps their very being. 

                    Some learned that Vlad was bad vampire. It seems that the truth of the matter is, he represents an example of the best of many of, perhaps all, of us of European extraction. He did much to save Europeans from invasions from the East. But more importantly he represented those Europeans who were not crushed by Greco-Roman culture of classical times after the fall of the Late Bronze Age, but learned from it and learned to adapt it to their own benefit. A part of that new culture to which they adapted seemed congenial to many of them. It came with the name "democracy." "Democracy" gathered and named a whole little bundle of ideas and values they already had, and clarified them. Vlad may have never been a republican or democrat, but he was one of those who adapted Greco-Roman culture to greater Europe. He even came to speak a Latinized language.

                The classical culture of the longish Greco-Roman have been heading toward Vlad by 2,000 BC or not long after the fall of the Late Bronze Age cultures. It continued to reach him and beyond to as recently as the recent 1400s! That culture touches us less, but still with some meaning to this very day. It seems we have had to reclarify the meaning of democracy a couple of time since Vlad's time. Maybe we can revivify it again today. We need to take up our responsibility in some way soon, or it is likely that we will believe that we no longer deserve the power of responsibility and freedom. Our continued loss of the "weness," which we have called unity, will, for a time, be more unpleasant than that we have already begun to experience.

                When we fail to enjoy our responsibility we lose our civic strength, energy, and power and finally our being. We could lose our all, even with good use of our power of responsibility, but with responsibility our power to survive and thrive is strongly supported. 

                Please help me to proof read this piece.

               Let hear from you. I love to hear comments on content.

               Thank you for reading!

                                                                                                                            rcs