In the Footsteps of the Yellow Emperor: Tracing the History

Code: BK1986

  Eckman, Peter
  2007
  General Acupuncture titles - A05
  Acupuncture (A1-A5)

Description

This book traces the history of traditional acupuncture, focusing on the Eight Principles (TCM) & on the Five Elements. Explore the rich healing traditions of the East & learn the transmission of knowledge from teacher to student to happen. (2007)245pp

Part-Introduction

There have been three seminal events that catalyzed the tremendous popularity of acupuncture and Oriental medicine in the U.S. in the latter half of the twentieth century.

The first two were President Nixon’s visit to the People’s Republic of China in 1972 following shortly after the successful acupuncture treatment for post-operative pain of New York Times reporter James Reston in Beijing.

Nixon’s overture to China bespoke an about-face on the part of the previously belligerent power elite towards this communist giant, while Reston’s experience had a serious impact on the media and the intellectual community, which together may be as influential a force in modern America as the power structure’s infamous military-industrial complex.

The third event was the publication in 1983 of Ted Kaptchuk’s best-selling book, The Web That Has No Weaver Understanding Chinese Medicine, a work that for the first time explained many of the principles of Chinese medicine in a personal style that began to affect a much larger segment of the American populace, one which was already in the midst of a period of questioning the monopoly on health care of conventional Western medicine.

What ties the affairs of Nixon, Reston and Kaptchuk together in the context of the story you are about to read, is that the image they project of Chinese medicine is that of a well-defined, homogeneous, almost monolithic discipline.

It is curious that no thorough historical account of the development of this popular style of Chinese medicine has as yet been written, at least in English.

Were such a history to be documented, I believe it would show that Traditional Chinese Medicine, this officially approved methodology which is promoted by the Chinese government, and which I will henceforth refer to as TCM, was itself a creation of the latter half of the twentieth century, and is in fact only one line of development among many from a conglomeration of theories and practices in the Orient stretching back to the stone age, and which I will refer to by the more generic and inclusive label, traditional Oriental medicine, or TOM.

Date reviewed

13/12/2007

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