Why The Booming Acupuncture in America in 1800s Went Down with Its Ship by 1920s

On May 9, 1822, a small local newspaper in Savannah, Georgia published the following item talking about acupuncture:

"A new remedy has been discovered and introduced into practice in London, for diseases of a rheumatic and nervous nature, which is called Acupuncturation. It consists, as the name imports, in inserting a needle into the muscular parts of the body, to the depth sometimes of an inch, which has in many instances been followed by the best effects."

Acupuncture Celebrated by French and English Medicine

The 1830s featured extensive medical discourse about this needling therapy technique. Acupuncture was so celebrated by French and English medicine that a London medical journal mockingly claimed that, “a little while ago the town rang with ‘acupuncture;’ everybody talked of it; everyone was curing incurable diseases with it.”

Most of the writing on acupuncture during the period acknowledges its conspicuous effectiveness in many cases. Over the years, medical textbooks continued to support its use for selected disorders.

Turning Point Triggered by Social Changes

However, in 1850s two social changes happened that eventually led to the poor reputation of acupuncture in the US at a later time from 1910s to 1960s. One change was the rapid growth of formal institutions of medicine. American medicine, itinerant in its nature until this time, gradually accrued the political and cultural authority of a learned profession which led to the birth of the American Medical Association (AMA) founded in 1847. AMA quickly became a vanguard in the drive for state standards of licensure, education, and regulation.

The obvious efficacy that had once driven interest in acupuncture was not sufficient to ensure its transition into a medicine based on bodies of knowledge that could be recognized and regulated by the state.

The Chinese Exclusion Act in 1882

Another change was the increasing East Asian influence on Americans’ view of the world. With the flow of Chinese immigrants' arrival on the shore in the 1850s, China-towns sprung up all over the country, leading to the formation of strong notions of Asian (particularly Chinese) identity and culture.

The sudden and rapid increase in Asian immigration elicited a reactionary response such as the US-China Burlingame Treaty of 1868 and the Chinese Exclusion Act of 1882. In this context, acupuncture’s association with Asian culture became its primary characteristic.

No Meaningful Practice of Acupuncture in China in 1800s

Meanwhile, very little evidence exists to establish that acupuncture was meaningfully practiced among Chinese Americans in the 19th century. The correspondence between acupuncture and Chinese culture during this period had more to do with popular notions of racial and national difference than actual clinical practice.

These two social changes worked against the prior acceptance of acupuncture in the US. The emergent institutions of medicine focused more on acupuncture’s unreliability and inexplicability than its efficacy, while in the popular and political sphere, acupuncture was being used to cast aspersions on the superstitious nature of Asian culture.

By the 1920s, acupuncture had slipped out of medical practice, although the technique had never been overtly rejected, or discredited, as had been the case with Mesmerism and Perkinism at the beginning of the 19th century.

Reliability Overshadowed Efficacy

Another factor causing acupuncture's lost of its popularity was that the concern was gradually shifted from questions of its efficacy to that of its reliability. The prompt and obvious efficacy of acupuncture when it worked may have contributed to the perception of its unreliability. Because acupuncture was thought to achieve results in the space of a clinical encounter, its failure would also be felt immediately. Unlike other therapies whose lack of efficacy might be clouded by the passage of time or the influence of confounding factors, acupuncture was seen to either work or fail in the moment.

Ironically, tethered to its remarked efficacy, acupuncture went down with its ship.

The Miracle of Reliability of Ancient Acupuncture in China

However, tracing back 2000 years on the other side of the Pacific Ocean, the acupuncture practiced by Chinese physicians as recorded in Huangdi Neijing was not only instantly effective but also highly reliable and anatomically and physiologically explicable.

Unfortunately, the history turned that extremely few people in the world, either Chinese or non-Chinese, have been able to understand what this ancient jewel of wisdom from China is, although the jewels are just under everyone's nose mingled with rubbishes or junks.

Separation of gems from rubbishes is the first step to make this god-sent healing art available for the benefits of our human beings.

References

The Daily Georgian. 1822. “[Discovered; Practice; London; Nature; Acupuncturation; Instances],” May 9, 1822. 2. 96

Hotel Dieu De Caen: Acupuncturation. 1829. The Medico-Chirurgical Review, and Journal of Medical Science XI (XXI).

Kumar, Victor, 2019, Poetics, creativity, and the embeddedness of American acupuncture, Johns Hopkins University.

PS:

My thanks go to Victor Kumar for his PhD thesis which inspired me a lot in my search for truth of acupuncture science. This post is largely based on his research reported in his thesis which is available at https://jscholarship.library.jhu.edu/bitstream/handle/1774.2/62194/KUMAR-DISSERTATION-2019.pdf?sequence=1

#acupuncture #acupuncturehistory #america #china #ancientacupuncture #huangdineijing