title: Acupuncture in ancient China: how important was it really?
abstract: Although acupuncture theory is a fundamental part of the Huangdi Neijing, the clinical application of the needle therapy in ancient China was always a limited one. From early times there have been warnings that acupuncture might do harm. In books like Zhang Zhongjing's Shanghanlun it plays only a marginal role. Among the 400 emperors in Chinese history, acupuncture was hardly ever applied. After Xu Dachun called acupuncture a "lost tradition" in 1757, the abolition of acupuncture and moxibustion from the Imperial Medical Academy in 1822 was a radical, but consequent act. When traditional Chinese medicine was revived after 1954, the "New Acupuncture" was completely different from what it had been in ancient China. The conclusion, however, is a positive one: The best time acupuncture ever had was not the Song dynasty or Yuan dynasty, but is now - and the future of acupuncture does not lie in old scripts, but in ourselves.
authors: Deutsches Institut für TCM, Cranachstr. 1, D-12157 Berlin, Germany. Lehmann@tcm.de
authors: Hanjo
authors: H
authors: Lehmann
mesh_terms: D015670:Acupuncture Therapy / Q000266:history*; D001877:Books / Q000266:history; D002681:China; D049670:History, 17th Century; D049671:History, 18th Century; D049672:History, 19th Century; D049673:History, 20th Century; D006801:Humans; D008516:Medicine, Chinese Traditional / Q000266:history