HISTORY
It is impossible to understand the vast and convoluted history of acupuncture without taking a global view.
The authentic history of Acupuncture is documented but mostly passed down orally from master to disciple. Fortunately, some of the scholars that took the huge task of putting it in writing are still alive today.
ACUPUNCTURE IN THE WEST
Acupuncture was introduced in Europe in the seventeenth century by Willem Ten Rhyne, a Dutch doctor of the East India Company (1679) who discovered it in Nagasaki in Japan where he stayed for two years, and by Kæmpfer.
A century later, Dujardin and Vicq d'Azyr recount the process in their respective works.
However, it seems that it was Louis Berlioz, father of the composer who, first, tried the
practice in France (1810), then imitated, despite a certain skepticism, by many doctors, including Dr. Laennec. From 1853, the consul Dabry and the doctors Frederik Liubenstein and Jules Cloquet participate in its diffusion in Europe.
But it is really only from 1927 that it will become popular thanks to the works of the sinologist George Soulié de Morant who studied acupuncture during his long stay China and published on his return to France an imposing treaty.
France is one of the first countries to have established hospital consultations for acupuncture (1932, Paul Ferreyrolles at Bichat Hospital).
ACUPUNCTURE IN ASIA
In China, acupuncture was banned in 1822 by the Ching dynasty (A.D.1644-1911) and removed from the program of the Imperial Medical College.
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Mao Zedong also tried to eliminate this practice - because of its Taoist foundations incompatible with Marxist ideology - before rehabilitating it, albeit in a simplified form.
Nowadays, acupuncture is used in China to treat a wide range of pathologies, particularly in hospitals.
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Taiwan and Hong-Kong, where master acupuncturists had been able to escape the Maoist purges, became the high places of traditional acupuncture. It is hard to ascertain whether taoist acupuncturists continue to practice nowadays, but the contemporary teachings seem to have disappeared in Asia. Many old or modern approaches are taught, but « Tradition » itself is no longer available in Chinese institutes, schools or universities.