How did acupuncture evolve?

The history of Acupuncture and Chinese Medicine

Acupuncture, which is one branch of Chinese medicine, has a very long history. The practice of needling patients for therapeutic benefit has existed for thousands of years and has descended through time periods and cultures in which ideas of health, illness and their causes differed drastically from our modern day perspective. Although there is no historical record of acupuncture needling before 90 years BC, the roots of Chinese medicine and early concepts of health and illness can be traced back to the Shang dynasty (1600BC – 1046BC).

Shang Dynasty medicine (1600BC – 1046BC)

In Shang dynasty culture there was only one possible cause of illness – injury from an ancestor. For us living in the 21^st century this world view seems extraordinary, but in Shang dynasty China the dead were considered as real as the living and ancestors were seen to require constant propitiations and offerings. Failure to do so could end up in offending the ancestor which therefore resulted in illness. Although there was no medicine as such in this time period, divination was a common way of deeming the ‘will of the ancestors’ and the splitting of tortoise shells and the subsequent patterns of the cracking were reflections of their desires.

Over time, concepts of illness evolved from ancestor worship in the Shang dynasty to demonological medicine which came to prominence in the Chou Dynasty (1050BC – 256BC)

Chou/Zhou Dynasty Medicine (1050BC – 256BC)

While divination as practiced in the Shang dynasty continued into this era, communal attitudes to the apparent existence of the non living members of community changed. Ancestors were deemed less important in the intervention of one’s health and fortune, and there grew a greater emphasis on demons as the cause of illness – an interesting but no less strange development!

During cultural festivals exorcists would charge the streets of the community to thrust spears into the air in order to rid the town of its evil demons. This early theory that illness causing agents could be vanished through piercing and stabbing may have been the early origins of acupuncture. The Chinese character for healer also originated at this time and the character depicts a shaman (doctor) with a quiver and an arrow on the left, and a spear on the right. Thus we have the concept of the healer who heals through exorcism by piercing. (This is obviously not the modern day view of an acupuncturist!)

By the end of the 2^nd century BC ideas on illness and health were evolving further. Medicine was moving away from the ideas of demons as the cause of illness and more toward nature and environment as sources of disease. At this time wind was seen to be a powerful component of illness and over time that evolved to include heat, damp, cold and dryness as well as various emotional states. Medicine was moving away from metaphysical assumptions about the cause of illness, to the realisation that man’s earthly and emotional environment may be more important in the patterns of his health.

The Huangdi Neijing

The Huangdi Neijing is a seminal text of Chinese medical practice and its formulation is dated at somewhere around the 2^nd century BC. This text represents the first compendium of Chinese medicine as an organised practice and was strongly influenced by Confucianism at the time. It presents the theory of systematic correspondence which forms a cornerstone of Chinese medical thinking. The theory of systematic correspondence details an intricate network of relationships between physical organs, the emotions they affect and are affected by, and the environmental influences which contribute to the disease of the organs. Many schools of acupuncture base their practice on these theories but developed and expanded them in their own way.

The origins of acupuncture

The origins of acupuncture are actually not very clear but many theories abound. There appears to be a significant hazy period in the history of the evolution of acupuncture. The Huangdi Neijing makes an appearance somewhere around the 2^nd century BC (although this is debated by historians) and is a highly organized text mentioning acupuncture practice, however very little other textual evidence of the use of acupuncture exists prior to this.

The most commonly accepted theory of the beginnings of acupuncture are that it evolved from boil lancing with perhaps some historical influence from the remnants of demonological medicine. One could propose that lancing boils not only served to visibly drain pathogenic substances from the body, but also that it stimulated endorphin release which contributed to the resolution of additional health problems as well as those connected to the boils. If lancing boils evidently drained illness from the body, it may have been the assumption that illness lying deeper within the body could also be extricated through methods of needling.