Chinese Acupuncture

Western missionaries and Chinese immigrants first brought acupuncture to the United States, but it was considered to be an inexact, unscientific method of therapy by outsiders who were steeped in a scientific tradition that demanded methods that could be proved, verified, and systematically reproduced. Acupuncture, like all Chinese medicine and unlike Western medicine, is intimately connected to philosophy, claiming a direct relationship between inner spiritual balance and physical health. Western medicine has only recently begun to acknowledge the efficacy of seeking such a balance in maintaining healthy vigor. More recent discoveries of the existence of natural pain inhibitors such an enkephalins and endorphins have also provided possible explanations for acupuncture's claimed effectiveness as a surgical anestheti

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lishment. Psychology as a field remains a collection of theoretical constructs proposing how consciousness functions, but scientific investigation of the brain continues to seek physiological explanations to prove those theories as unassailable fact. Western medicine also relies heavily on anatomical dissection, whereas Chinese cultural proscriptions against such invasive processes encouraged China's physicians to draw conclusions about physical properties from more subtle observation, intuition, inference, and philosophical considerations. While Western doctors were learning about the human body from autopsies of corpses, Chinese doctors gain their knowledge in ways that looked less exact and more nebulous to Western eyes. Western doctors refined their tools and their methods, refusing to accept theories or treatments that could not survive the rigors of experimentation and recorded observation. Because no autopsy had ever revealed any subcutaneous structures corresponding to meridians, even Western doctors who had studied acupuncture in some detail could not consider it a serious addition to medical therapy. Gevitz observes that Western medicine still tends to group acupuncture into the category of folk medicine: "The o
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Approximate Word count = 3013
Approximate Pages = 12 (250 words per page)

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