Brochure Notes and History

This brochure represents one of Walter’s first “rants” and already you can see the rebel showing through. I expect it was initially written during early 1973 as we struggled to set up the full Lesson structure for the Modern and Traditional Acupuncture course. Classified advertising was placed in hundreds of magazines, newsletters, journals and papers for this course. If memory serves me, it was $39 (US or CDN) for the first three lessons. From opening our doors on July 2, 1972 through to mid-1974, we went from the two of us struggling to “do everything” to a staff of three or four and over 6,000 participants in the full course. At that point in time less than half of that course had been completely written.

This brochure would have been typed (on an old IBM Selectric typewriter) onto paper, “copied” via a special scanning device onto paper or metal “masters”. Then they were printed on our first small ABDick “office” printing press. They were printed onto 8½ x 17” paper, collated, folded in half and stapled in-house (by CLW initially) by the thousands. Then sent out by mail to all enquiries along with information on how to order the lessons and enroll in the training program. We were initially registered as a “Trade School” in Ontario.

Note there is no literature or sales materials from this time period still remaining. Amazing even that I found and kept the little green brochure that holds Walter’s “check marks” that he had set the pagination correctly for the various pages.

Fifty-two years later, at the end of June 2024, here are those first introductory pages . . .

Carolyn L. Winsor
Managing Director, OIRF and
Praxis2Practice Consulting

ACUPUNCTURE

Copyright © 1974 by O.I.C.S., Toronto, Canada

Notice to the Reader

The following booklet has been prepared by Occidental Institute of Chinese Studies for the purpose of giving truthful overview and vital facts on the current status of it’s subject, for prospective students of this Institute. Almost every word, sentence, statement ad paragraph in it is thoroughly documented from correspondence, articles, texts, and research reports.

This booklet should be read several times, with care. Be warned, it may change your entire attitude toward medicine and science as we know it today. You may never be able to accept any medical theory again – unless it is, or includes, acupuncture.

“That a needle stuck into one’s foot should improve the functioning of one’s liver is obviously incredible. It can’t be believed because in terms of currently accepted physiological theory it makes no sense. Within our system of explanation, there is no reason why the needle prick should be followed by improvement of the liver function. Therefore we say it can’t happen. The only trouble with this argument is that as a matter of empirical fact, it does happen. Inserted at precisely the right point, the needle in the foot regularly affects the function of the liver.”
Aldous Huxley (1895 – 1963)

It was typical of Huxley’s genius and vast learning to help introduce the West to the world’s oldest system of medicine, and one of the most baffling mysteries ever to come out of the Orient. It is called acupuncture. He would be pleased to know of the controversy sparked by serious interest in need puncture over a decade later.

PART I

With the gentle raising of the bamboo curtain, increasing reports to the American public from the People’s Republic of China are filtering through the press which are nothing short of staggering to the human mind. In fact, since President Nixon’s visit to China in late February, 1972, highlighted by demonstrations of acupuncture anesthesia and ensuing T.V. programs, acupuncture has become virtually a household word.

Not only is acupuncture presently the focus of growing interest in the West, but it is also undergoing a resurgence of serious study in the Orient as well. Acupuncture has been keeping pace with advances in technology, using the most highly sophisticated electronic equipment. Some of acupunctures’ more advanced aspects are now being proven on the frontiers of nuclear physics, biochemistry and para-psychology.

For over 5,000 years the Chinese have been treating patients by inserting hair-thin needles into their bodies During this extraordinarily long period of continuous experimentation, a body of knowledge has been accumulated that specifically locates the different points of insertion that must be applied in dealing with each of an incredible variety of ailments. Practices that go back to the beginnings of humanity and have been improved through the ages, some of them recorded in texts 2,500 years old, are still used in administering to a good percentage of the earth’s people.

– 1 –

Its history is fascinating, its potential results to all of us are immeasurable. In the next few years it may be recommended generally and for illnesses that so far have proved resistant to Western methods of treatment. Careful research and clinical observations; combined with great oriental wisdom, since 3,000 years before Christ – no other nation, not even the U.S.A., can boast such impressive medical credentials. Its challenge to the complacency of our previously unquestioned methods is fundamental, and may no longer be ignored.

Acupuncture is one of the oldest forms of healing known to mankind, and one that has truly withstood the test of time. The fact that it is still being practiced today, thousands of years later, speaks much for the efficacy of this treatment and for the laws and principles on which it is based. Ignored or condemned by scientific man for more than five millennia, the art of acupuncture is finally emerging from the shadows. It may well be, as the New York Times states, that the latter part of the 20th century will one day be called the “Golden Age of Acupuncture”.

Acupuncture is a complete and effective system of medicine, in use across the globe in virtually every civilized nation – and some not so civilized. Some Eskimos practice simple acupuncture with sharp stones. An isolated cannibalistic tribe in Brazil shoot tiny arrows with a blowpipe at specific parts of the body for a healing effect. Tibetan and Mongolian nomads have for centuries succeeded in producing insensibility to pain in their horses with acupuncture.

– 2 –

Acupuncture is recognized and respected throughout the Far East and has been the main medical system for over 400 million people. In both Communist and Nationalist China (Taiwan), traditional acupuncturists without any scientific training, have the same legal rights and status as their modern counterparts. Acupuncturists practice in every major hospital and clinic in China, and it is estimated that 90% of the medical care in China is dispensed through this traditional system. Chinese dentists use acupuncture in place of novocaine. One needle inserted between the thumb and index finger is all the anesthetic needed by dentists when pulling teeth or performing oral surgery.

Since acupuncture requires less training than Western medicine, China’s million new short-course “barefoot” doctors use acupuncture extensively. “Barefoot” doctors are agricultural workers who receive only about three months of formal training. They have become a new force in the overall preventative medical picture of China, and are similar in some ways to the development in the U.S.A. of the “physicians assistant”. Even in China’s grade schools, youngsters are taught in their health classes about acupuncture and how to use it to cure themselves of illnesses.

– 3 –

It has been practiced in Japan for about 2,600 years, and developed there through the close economic and cultural interchange with their neighbour country of China. In Japan, acupuncturists practice side by side with their Western-trained colleagues. The Japanese have produced the same results by finger-pressing the acupuncture points as by piercing them with needles. This spot pressing gives quick relief to things like toothache, headache, back troubles, and so on.

China and Japan are not the only major nations where acupuncture is used. European countries became acquainted with this Chinese practice in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Acupuncture has been researched and practiced in Europe for over a hundred years. There are hospitals and clinics throughout France and Germany. There are well established societies of acupuncture practitioners, with headquarters in Paris. Most of the important works on acupuncture in the West have been published in France and Germany. [It is interesting to note that precisely those European nations which represent the cradle of modern medical science have accepted acupuncture as a valid therapeutic method.]

France and Germany are not alone in the use of acupuncture or research into its possibilities. People in at least a dozen of the world’s most civilized countries outside of the Far East, can visit acupuncturists, at anytime they wish. Patients are being treated daily in every major nation – except the United States of America.

– 4 –

The Swiss have found it effective against ‘whiplash’ injuries. Czechoslovakians use it to cure muscular spasms. In Italy, acupuncture specialists apply it to cardiac patients. Ukrainian pediatricians treat childhood diseases with needles, and the Polish use it to treat baldness. The British prescribe it for the mentally ill. Spanish doctors cure skin diseases with acupuncture alone. Rumanian dentists (and many others) rely on it in diseases of the mouth. Similarly, the list continues in such countries as Austria, Argentina, Belgium, Canada, Scandinavia, and so on.

Peru has recently accepted acupuncture in its own right. Australia, New Zealand and South Africa have no official policy towards acupuncture, and it may be practiced without interference. In the Soviet Union, acupuncture is taught in medical schools, and is being used and researched very extensively. Modern technology has not yet discovered the reasons why acupuncture cures ills and eliminates pain, but after many years, the Soviet researchers have reached two main conclusions about acupuncture: The acupuncture points do exist, exactly as the Chinese have claimed for five thousand years, and that it works, as the Chinese have proved.

For thousands of years in the East acupuncture has been used to help the body help itself, and in the last hundred years it has spread to every Western country. Between Canada and France, 1,000 practitioners per year are being graduated in acupuncture. In Europe, it is widespread. In every Western country except the United States, it’s an age-old and accepted tradition of therapy.

– 5 –

China currently has one million specialists trained in this field, of which only 150,000 are physicians. Japan has 50,000. Perhaps three thousand are scattered throughout the Western world, primarily in France, West Germany, Russia, Switzerland and England. There is but a handful in the U.S.A.

Acupuncture is now practiced in three-quarters of the world. Every nation in the world that plays a role of any importance in the development of medicine has accepted it, and has acupuncture clinics where the public can ‘legally’ go for treatments, with one exception: The United States.

The cynic’s first question usually is: “If it has been practiced for such a long time, and is so successful, why didn’t it catch on before now in the U.S.A.?” The answer is difficult to accept. Through a combination of ignorance and prejudice that in physicians is startling, the American medical establishment lags behind almost every nation in the world in its knowledge of Chinese Medicine.

Some would argue that the Western scientists and physicians are jealous because they do not know how to cure by acupuncture – that they don’t want to be made to look foolish by China’s “barefoot doctors”. Others say that today’s doctors are trying to discourage the growth and spread of acupuncture because it would mean less business for them. Doctors are perhaps playing down the role of acupuncture as a therapy – indoctrinating us to accept it as an anesthesia only. Doctors have tried to dismiss acupuncture as “a hoax” – “hypnosis” – “quackery” – “impossible” – “unscientific” –

– 6 –

Because of its philosophical derivation and its en-shroudment in Oriental mysticism, acupuncture has appeared to be an irrational practice when viewed by Western science. But, to declare that something is “impossible” because it cannot be explained on a physiological basis by our current state of knowledge is like saying aspirin should not be used for relief of pain because the exact mechanism of how it works, is not yet clearly understood either.

Certainly, there is a great hatred of unorthodox ideas, particularly those which imply that there may be therapeutical forces which science has not yet explained. To call acupuncture “unorthodox” though, is a little presumptuous, considering that it has been the standard form of medical treatment in China and other Eastern countries for thousands of years.

The universal precept in medical practice since ancient times has embodied the belief that beneficial cures and treatment should be made available to all mankind. We cannot afford to ignore or wave aside any method of helping mankind simply because it sounds at first to our Western ears a little odd or even incredible. The question must be asked: Are many American doctors skeptical because of justifiable suspicions or simply because acupuncture threatens all they have been taught?

– 7 –

Health care has now become the second largest industry in the U.S.A. Already, there are barely enough doctors to go around. It is exceedingly difficult to get a bed in a hospital when it is needed. Many thousands of people, if too ill to get to the doctor themselves, simply have to do without proper medical attention because so many doctors are too busy to visit. Costs of illness are skyrocketing, yet there is more and more sickness, instead of less and less.

For the great majority of Americans, the “health care crisis” is exactly that – an on going crisis of survival. Every day three million Americans go out in search of medical care. Some find it, others do not. Some are helped by it, others are not. Another twenty million Americans probably ought to enter the daily search for medical help, but are not healthy enough, rich enough, or enterprising enough to try. The obstacles are enormous. The stakes are high – health, life, sanity – and getting higher all the time. But, the odds of winning are low, and getting lower.

As the health system gets bigger, more centralized and industrialized, that 5 or 10 minute face-to-face encounter with a harried physician becomes more and more a luxury. Ordinary, middle class Americans are finding themselves up against a health system which promises far more than it delivers, and costs far more than it is worth. Something is missing! The medical-industrial complex is not making it, and everyone now has a stake in the creation of a revolutionary, people-orientated health system – that works!

– 8 –

The number of people needing help for illness brought on through the strains of modern living is soaring every year. We must begin now, by changing radically our methods of training doctors and utilize paramedical personnel, if we expect the situation to change. The pressure of numbers must be taken off our present general practitioners by directing a much greater proportion of qualified men and women into the health fields. The acupuncturist can play a vital role in the prevention of ill health, as the Soviets and the Chinese have already realized. It may well be the medicine of the future because it deals so effectively with the ills of civilization – stress related illnesses.

If acupuncture were to become common in the United States, doctor’s incomes would fall. Anesthesiologists would be the hardest hit if acupuncture replaced general anesthesia, as it might. The huge amounts of drugs American doctors prescribe would also fall. Fewer prescriptions would mean less money for drug manufacturers, a powerful lobby in Washington. Drug companies contribute huge sums of money to medical research. They are unlikely to support research into a medical system that is not founded on the use of drugs.

The Chinese would look with horror upon a civilization which feeds its young with white sugar until the teeth rot and then puts fluorine into the nation’s drinking water to enable the folly to continue. Drugs and chemicals may bring great relief to many sufferers but in the long run they harm the body and introduce something further for it to battle with.

– 9 –

But, the fundamental problem – how to rescue modern medicine from dependence upon drugs, has yet to be tackled. It must be! Modern medicine is too drug-orientated. Acupuncture could knock out a high percentage of the inappropriate drug usage in the Western world.

To the individual, acupuncture would mean far lower medical costs. Hospital stays could be considerably shortened. Lower health insurance rates would result. The time required for medical education could be drastically reduced, using acupuncturists either as independent practitioners or as auxiliaries under a doctor’s formal supervision. The New York Times states: “Acupuncture anesthesia could turn out to be an area of work for persons who had undergone relatively little training compared with the long preparation required by an anesthesiologist. This might reduce significantly the cost of anesthesia in surgery.”

The fact that acupuncture is not yet more widely used is due more to lack of skilled manpower and training facilities, than to any resistance to it. The public demand for this system of healing is overwhelming. Newsweek magazine speaks of waiting lists of 3,000 people for some acupuncture centers already, and states: “It is small wonder that the demand for acupuncturists is already far outrunning the supply – and that a massive effort is under way to create the requisite battalions of new experts.” It is estimated that approximately 6,000 acupuncturists are needed in North America immediately for arthritic patients alone.

– 10 –

Lay acupuncturists in the Western world have begun to push for rights to practice their treatments without a doctor’s license. In three-quarters of the world acupuncture is practiced mostly by non-M.D.s, and that’s the way it should be in North America. If the medical profession gets hold of it, it’s finished as an all-round method of treatment. (A quote from the Wall Street Journal)

It is gratifying to see our hope gradually attaining fulfillment, in that acupuncture is slowly becoming available evermore widely to the public through individual practitioners, groups and associations of healers whose knowledge, experience, skill, sincerity of purpose and professional code are at the highest level. The majority of these practitioners are non-registered, non-medical Health Practitioners.

The biggest advance in decades in the practice of medicine came when the Governor of the State of Nevada signed into law a bill that permits the practice of Chinese medicine, including acupuncture, by practitioners who don’t have to be physicians. In California, a recently signed bill permits non-licensed medical personnel to do acupuncture and other related Chinese medicine under the supervision of a licensed physician. Some other states allow the practice only on an experimental basis so far. But sadly, in most places it is still an “illegal” practice. This must change, and soon!

– 11 –

In preparation for increased practice of acupuncture the Teamsters Union recently decided to include acupuncture coverage in its health insurance policies. This may be one of the first steps toward popularization of the practice in the U.S. Health Insurance Plans in some places recognize acupuncture. The U.S. Internal Revenue Service in a ruling has stated: “The cost of acupuncture services is a deductible medical expense if rendered in connection with diagnosis, cure, mitigation, treatment, or prevention of disease.” (Rev. Rul. 72-593)

We wish to point out that training in current Western (allopathic) Medicine, far from being the essential preliminary that some would have the public believe, is far more likely to be a serious hindrance to sound acupuncture, for the simple reason that the basic medical philosophies of East and West are poles apart. There are some who assert that before being allowed by law to practice acupuncture, there should first be a qualification and registration as a doctor of medicine. Such critics show lamentable ignorance of Oriental Medical Philosophy; and, in our view, any practitioner expressing such “closed shop” restriction should himself not pretend to practice traditional acupuncture.

In the field of sport, it would be absurd to require knowledge and skill in table tennis or football in order to play basketball. So too in the therapeutic field it appears absurd to require knowledge of one set of rules in order to observe an entirely different set.

– 12 –

There are those who feel that clinical acupuncture must not be left to doctors alone to make it into another form of rich man’s medicine. And, is it no wonder that certain money-orientated medical practitioners are literally falling over each other in an effort to learn enough about acupuncture to reap a portion of the harvest gold that can be had.

It is regrettable that a doctor should be able to set himself up as an acupuncturist after having spent a few evenings reading a book on the subject. As matters stand now, you might be safer getting needled by someone who is not practicing legally than by someone who is. An M.D. with no formal training in needling can puncture away without violating the law, for he is “legally” entitled to do so. What these agencies are actually doing is putting a “For Doctors Only” sign on acupuncture, all in the name of guarding the public from “quackery”, “unsure” therapies, or “dangerous” practices.

When, however, it is practiced in accordance with the appropriate medical-philosophical orientation and knowledge, acupuncture is a valid therapy and it is not dangerous. It can be dangerous only when practiced by someone so conditioned in an inappropriate discipline that his mind has not the flexibility so necessary to the understanding of Far-Eastern Philosophy and basic principles of their art and science of healing.

– 13 –

As a medical procedure, the insertion and manipulation of acupuncture needles is fairly simple. For all practical purposes, no hazard to the general health of the patient is incurred provided, of course, that acupuncture is correctly practiced. On the strength of its simplicity and effectiveness, acupuncture has enjoyed  a wide acceptance as a home cure performed by self-taught friends and family members.

It must be stressed that the rationale for acupuncture is totally unrelated to any Western reasons for inserting needles into the human bod. Acupuncture needles are not hollow and do not serve to inject any material into the body, nor are they used to withdraw any body fluid. (It is the effect of the needle in the body, not the needle itself that exerts any influence.)

Although the very thought of inserting needles into the skin may cause you to shudder, in spite of the thousands of injections that are given almost every hour of the day, you may take it from us as an actual fact that the many patients whom we have known have experienced either no pain whatsoever, or only such a very trifling sensation as to be less annoying than a mosquito bite. (The sterilized needles as fine as a human hair make injection needles look thick and clumsy.) In fact, it is often much less painful than when you accidentally stick a pin or needle in yourself. The patient is quite unaware often that the needles have been inserted. There is generally no bleeding when the needle is removed. (Instead of needles, a special form of finger pressure may be used on the acupuncture points to accomplish the same end.)

– 14 –

Just as a doctor will prescribe aspirin because he knows what are its effects in the body of a patient, so an acupuncturist will needle a certain acupuncture point because he knows what the consequent reaction of the body will be. It is of secondary importance to the doctor to know just why it is that aspirin has its specific effects, no matter how intellectually interesting such knowledge might be. At the time of writing little is understood of why the known effects of aspirin take place, yet aspirin, with its simple chemical formula, is the most commonly/used drug in the world.

The only thing of real Importance in the study of acupuncture is to know at what point to pierce the skin in relation to which disease. The points are then carefully located from charts of the human body and any given problem is usually treated through only four or five points. There are over a thousand acupuncture points, but it is only necessary for a person to learn between 100 and 200 most frequently used points to become a good (if not great) acupuncturist. Points on the lower legs, the feet, the forearms, and the hands are ones frequently used. Generally, the needles are not inserted to any great depth.

One of the modern advances in acupuncture has been the development of electronic instruments to detect the acupuncture points. One such instrument is supplied to students of this school, along with their course in the latter lessons. That the acupuncture points exist and can be measured and demonstrated is accepted, and the basic claims of acupuncture have now been scientifically verified.

– 15 –

Although acupuncture needles are now sterilized and the process has been modernized, the basic principles and philosophy remain the same. There are no undesirable side effects from acupuncture treatments as there are with many modern synthetic drugs. Also, acupuncture does not produce iatrogenic diseases – the offspring of our Western medicine. Furthermore, if an acupuncture point is used that has no relation to the condition to be treated, generally no effect takes place. Since the points of insertion avoid vital organs, the needles do not damage the body.

Most people in the United States have been misled to believe that acupuncture can only be used to kill pain for anesthetic purposes, or can only treat such diseases as rheumatoid arthritis. Many people think that acupuncture has but the pain killing value, and this is the most erroneous concept concerning acupuncture at the present time. It is a well established fact that there are many diseases which were considered a “Hopeless” or “Incurable” by the Western medical practitioners that have been cured with acupuncture alone.

Acupuncture is a complete medical system based upon a single principle: Man is part of nature. Nature is precise; therefore man is precise. Predictable order reigns in nature and in man. Disturbance in that order results in illness, and it is the acupuncturist’s work to restore that order and thereby cure illness.

– 16 –

One of the finest acupuncturists in the world puts it this way: “Any disease is curable by acupuncture provided that the acupuncturist has enough experience, the illness has not advanced too far (particularly with cancer), and there is not too much physical damage.” All diseases are reversible provided they are diagnosed early enough . . .”In China we eat with chopsticks; in the West you use knives and forks. What matter, they both feed the body.” (Quoted in True Magazine)

A single example of what other nations have accomplished with acupuncture from the many, makes the tragedy of the situation in the U.S.A. apparent. Paraplegics who had been pronounced incurable by Western doctors are able to walk after acupuncture treatments. Nerve deafness in children and adults who now, thanks to acupuncture, can hear. The blind, for several to forty years, regained their eyesight through acupuncture therapy. The residual effects of infantile paralysis. Diabetes, high blood pressure, hay fever, bronchitis, tuberculosis, cirrhosis of the liver, with an average success rate of 90% in more than two hundred types of illnesses.

Acupuncture can help two day old infants to ninety year old men, as its effect is mild and its application is relatively painless. In China acupuncture is used for birth control, abortions, impotence, sterility, and to facilitate an easy, natural childbirth. Also for epileptic seizures, obesity, insomnia, migraine, color blindness, and the treatment of hard drug addiction. In a Shanghai hospital, acupuncture is practiced to combat the harmful effects of treatment with radioactive substances. In Germany, for Parkinson’s.

– 17 –

disease; in France for heart diseases, in Hungary for stomach ailments. In Russia, it is used for ulcers, colitis, asthma, glaucoma. This is by no means a complete list, for the list is endless. People whose illnesses could not be helped by Western medicine have been helped by acupuncture.

Among those people who claimed to have benefited by acupuncture are famous athletes such as: Roman Gabriel, Ed Lothamer, Sam McDowell, Willie McCovey, Bill Sudakis; movie and T.V. stars like Zsa Zsa Gabor, Lorne Greene, Merv Griffin. Gov. George Wallace and the late President John Kennedy of the United States, Aldous Huxley and Sir Winston Churchill former Prime Minister of England, have all benefited from treatment of acupuncture. Some physicians are referring patients to acupuncturists, or turning to acupuncture to treat themselves of illnesses. Now, the general pubic is starting to demand that which was previously available mostly to the rich or famous.

Ultimately however, any therapy must be judged on its merits rather than whether or not it fits in with present theories of medicine. When speaking strictly about results, it can only be concluded that acupuncture must eventually become accepted in the U.S.A. As a simple, efficient, and more important, effective means of medical therapy, acupuncture has successfully withstood the test of time, scrutiny, and of acceptance. There is little doubt that acupuncture is here to stay, but its future will be greatly determined by the seriousness with which its study is undertaken.

– 18 –

In the old days, teaching of the techniques of acupuncture had been limited to verbal instructions between a teacher and his trusted and highly selected students, and it was guarded as top professional secrecy not tobe revealed to any outsiders or other professionals. It was initially a science transmitted orally for thousands of years. Most traditional Chinese doctors were, and many today still are, nearly or totally illiterate. Later, texts were written in Chinese on the subject, but this did little for widespread teaching of the subject, as only a small minority, the highly educated, were able to read and study them. Outside of China, came the problem of translating these ancient Chinese texts.

Now-a-days, this is not the case, and it may be effectively taught in a written text format. Certainly, a written form should make for better and more accurate teaching than the old word of mouth method. We all know how highly inaccurate facts can be when spread verbally from one person to the next, especially when this bridges generations. Then too, guarded professional secrecy and restricted training has no place when it comes to helping alleviate human suffering. It is the task of this Institute to take acupuncture out of this environment and disseminate it for the betterment of mankind.

– 19 –

PART II

One of the biggest problems towards recognition of acupuncture in its own right, is the lack of skilled manpower. Occidental Institute of Chinese Studies feels that if it can present enough qualified people in acupuncture to the North American scene, acupuncture will have to be accepted and ‘legalized’ everywhere. Hence, we want to disseminate training in this therapy as quickly as possible, to as many interested people as possible – before it can fall into the exclusive control of any one medical system, or be dismissed because of lack of properly trained and available practitioners. To be able to train such numbers rapidly, Occidental Institute is using the correspondence or home-study method.

Our home-study course is based upon both modern and ancient Chinese methods. But also, we have drawn from the European approach to acupuncture, for they have learned how best to apply the Chinese methods in an acceptable Westernized manner. Yet, this course is still in accord with the strict Chinese tradition; a tradition whose accumulated knowledge is the result of immense experimentation, for it is possible that at least one out of every four persons has been treated by acupuncture over a period of almost fifty centuries. The product of this tradition is an empirical body of knowledge with well defined, often rapid, therapeutic results.

– 20 –

The course is up to date, using translations of materials officially published in Peking as recent as 1973, for the training of acupuncturists throughout China. It is a major new work of over 500 pages. We are convinced that anyone who has studied and understood this course will be ready for practicum as a final step to becoming a ‘professional’ acupuncturist.

The surprise at the spectacular results of acupuncture, even among beginners will lend support to the consideration of the facts above. Both the knowledge and the results will then combine to bring about acceptance of acupuncture as a most valuable therapy. Explanation, ever behind practice, will necessarily follow later, along with the progress realized in our own Occidental medicine.

Indeed the efficacy and speed in healing by acupuncture is often astonishing. This is especially so since we only know that it works, but not why or how it works. From the pragmatic standpoint, the question arises whether it is really necessary to explain how it works, as long as it works. However, except for the area of religion, man will always seek scientific explanations of the unknown.

Yet, not even Western medicine can stand up to the close scientific scrutiny being demanded of acupuncture, especially in clinical practice rather than theory. We still don’t know exactly how or why the aspirin works, but still it is being commonly prescribed. If scientists and physicians continue to insist on a high quality of scientific explanation which cannot be given even for our own drugs and methods, then they are doing great disservice to the American public. The important thing is that it works! Perhaps, we should not be looking a gift horse in the mouth.

– 21 –

The new demand for a better approach to medicine in America, together with a growing faith in Chinese herbal remedies for an age steadily poisoning itself on artificial foods, may account for almost total acceptance of Chinese acupuncture among the vast majority of the people. Despite the uncertain legal status of acupuncture, the craze for its treatment, either by an M.D. or an unlicensed acupuncturist, has spread out over the whole country. For those enduring unnecessary pain, the legality of acupuncture doesn’t concern them; they just want relief that the Western doctors have failed to give them. Old ideas can become revolutionary when the time is ripe, for millions might benefit from treatment by ancient acupuncture.

Treating a sick citizen of the twentieth century with nothing but simple metal needles seems anachronistic. Nor is this the only anachronism we see today. Yoga, for example, is no longer regarded as a dead relic of the past; this Hindu philosophical system, thousands of years old, gains new adherents every day, and is taught in Soviet and American universities. Similarly, you can see this with Herbalism, Judo, Kung-Fu, etc.

– 22 –

Many researchers have commented that there may be a relationship between the workings of acupuncture and some of the phenomena observed in the field of parapsychology. They feel that acupuncture is more closely related to the ‘psychic’ form of healing, rather than the physical forms of healing, and as such may belong more to the realm of the ‘spiritual’ healer rather than the medical doctor.

Current psychic researchers see acupuncture as a sort  of ‘missing link’ between the physical plane and the psychic or paranormal plane, in that it is something that seems to “put it all together”. Acupuncture for them, relates or ties together many of the concepts of metaphysics, parapsychology, life energy theory, and so on, to the physical world or plane.

Western medicine, in this latter part of the 20th century, is missing something. It doesn’t take a great deal of education, nor does it take a great amount of thought, to realize that something is wrong, things are not going well. In fact, something must be missing in the medicine of today. The Chinese have learned our Western medicine too, but still they have not discarded acupuncture – instead, they utilize and rely upon it to fill in that which is “missing”.

Man in the reaches of space-medicine cannot afford to disregard what the Chinese have discovered about the body, the mind and the spirit, for what they have to teach us has withstood that test of time and has even met the challenge of radioactivity.

– 23 –

Is it not significant that what is perhaps the world’s oldest system of healing has proved to be of incontestable value in the treatment of what is perhaps the world’s newest affliction? The fact that it is an effective countermeasure against nuclear radiation makes its study and practice almost mandatory today.

A large number of individuals have been sufficiently anxious to learn the principles and philosophy of acupuncture and to train in its completely different methods of treatment and diagnosis, to have undertaken study in these subjects. This speaks much for their enthusiasm and for the future of acupuncture in the United States. The last bastion of Western medicine, these United States has now been forced to re-evaluate its opinion of this form of medicine and admit finally that acupuncture is effective in analgesia and healing.

 The circle is turning. Once again man is searching for natural and harmonious ways to help the body resist disease. The need for techniques to restore body energies so that it can resist disease is now spreading. We are grateful to all those who are helping spread the new concept of harmony. This will grow and dominate in the years to come. It must! But, we must also remember with gratitude, the developers of the art of acupuncture over several thousand years – the Chinese. For the future, equal dedication will be needed by those practitioners with the foresight to learn and apply this long overdue therapy. It might help save the human race.

– 24 –

“The constitution of this Republic should make special provision for Medical Freedom as well as Religious Freedom . . . To restrict the art of healing to one class of men and deny equal privileges to others will constitute the Bastille of medical science. All such laws are un-American and despotic. They are fragments of monarchy and have no place in a Republic.”

Benjamin Rush, M.D.
Surgeon General of the Continental Army of the United States and a signer of the Declaration of Independence.

The First Brochure from the Archives of
Occidental Institute of Chinese Studies
Originally Publshed July 1972

© Copyright 1972, Sturm/Occidental Intitute, BC Canada