Acupuncture History

Acupuncture is an ancient healing modality used to promote good health and maintain a healthy body. It is carried out by inserting hundreds of tiny needles into special acupuncture points in the body where "qi". Qi is reported as being the body's natural energy source, travels through channels around the body.

Acupuncture can be classified as one of the oldest, medical practices still used today. By following the roots of acupuncture , we can see that archeologists have found ancient remnants of the medical practice. These remnants were found in the form of Hieroglyphs in cave dwellings and date back to one thousand years before Jesus Christ was born, making them 3,000 years old. Looking even further than this, there is evidence that acupuncture was used thousands of years prior to the archeological finds mentioned.

A five thousand year old mummy was found in the Alps mountain range and named Otzi. When scientists were investigating the mummy and what it could tell us, they were interested to find that Otzi had several ailments, and what they found more intriguing was that Otzi had tattoos located at the acupuncture points that would be used today for the ailments he suffered with.

It may be disheartening, or interesting to learn that the origins of acupuncture in China are uncertain. The reason this is uncertain is that the first mention of acupuncture in a Chinese medical text dated to three hundred years before Christ but Chinese medical texts found from the first century before Christ, two hundred year later, had no reference to acupuncture in them.

It has been a much talked about debate, but research has shown that the first needles used by those of years gone by were made from sharp Bian stone, this changed through the years to bronze, gold and then silver.

Fast-forward to today and we still use acupuncture. The acupuncture we use is a descendant of that used by Daoism philosophers two thousand years ago; this shows that although the material used for the needles has changed, the actual treatment of acupuncture has not changed through the millennia.

There has been ripples of talk through the scientific and archeological communities that Europe may have had its own version of acupuncture pre Christ but there is no evidence to support this. As far as we are aware, acupuncture did not cross over to the west until the late 1960's and 1970's where it became the interest of people in Great Britain.

Acupuncture has grown in stature and become a widely used alternative treatment in the western world, which shows that there must be some positive affect from the treatment.

This is the history of acupuncture to date. It will be interesting to see what will lie in the future use of acupuncture. If acupuncture can last through centuries of war, illness and famine, through times where publication of material was not as easy as it is done, then it is clear that it will last for many years to come.