Angela Raney, age 14, of New Bedford, Mass., for her question:
WHEN WAS ACUPUNCTURE FIRST USED?
Acupuncture is an ancient Chinese medical procedure that nvolves the insertion and manipulation of needles at more than 360 points in the human body. Acupuncture needles dating from 4,000 years ago have been discovered.
Back about 2000 B.C. when acupuncture was first used, the needles were made of stone. A bit later bronze, gold and silver were used. Today the needles are usually made of steel.
Acupuncture needles were developed originally only to prick boils and ulcers. Then the whole theory of acupuncture expanded and developed in response to the idea that there are special "meridian points" on the body connected to the internal organs and that "vital energy" flows along the meridian lines. According to this theory, diseases are caused by interrupted energy flow and inserting and twirling needles restores normal flow.
Acupuncture is still used today in most hospitals in China and by some private practitioners in Japan and elsewhere to provide local anesthesia during surgery, to relieve pain in rheumatic conditions and to treat many other illnesses.
Acupressure, a variant of acupuncture in which the practitioner uses manipulation rather than penetration to alleviate pain or other symptoms, is in widespread use in Japan and has begun to find adherents in the United States. Also known as shiatsu, acupressure is administered by pressing with the fingertips and sometimes the knees or elbows along a complex network of trigger points in the patient's body.
Acupuncture is used primarily in China today for surgical analgesia. Chinese surgeons estimate that 30 percent of surgical patients obtain adequate analgesia with acupuncture, which is now done by sending electrical current through the needles rather than by twirling them.
American doctors, after some investigation, have put this figure closer to 10 percent.
Chinese surgeons claim that acupuncture is superior to Western drug induced analgesia in that it does not disturb normal body physiology and therefore does not make the patient vulnerable to shock. They say that brain surgery is especially amenable to this form of analgesia.
Chinese doctors also treat some forms of heart disease with acupuncture.
As part of an attempt to put the practice of acupuncture on a more scientific basis, Chinese doctors studied the effects of the treatment on more than 600 persons with chest pain caused by reduced flow of blood to the heart. They claimed that almost all the patients greatly reduced their use of medicine and that most were able to resume work.
Other physiological conditions regularly treated with acupuncture are ulcer, asthma, hypertension or high blood pressure and appendicitis.
The mechanism by which acupuncture works remains a matter of controversy by many doctors in the West and even some in the East.