Acupuncture

3. Acupuncture

The principles of acupuncture are based on cell paralysis. The idea on which Chinese medicine is founded is the “Doctrine of the Two Principles: Yang and Yin.” According to this philosophy, everything in the universe is governed by these two principles. Yang is the masculine principle, Yin the feminine. They are opposite in all aspects. Yang stands for heaven, Yin for earth. Yang is heat, Yin is cold. Life and death, strong and weak, positive and negative, day and night, dry and wet, hard and soft, light and dark—all these are Yang-Yin—pairs of opposites. Unless these two forces are in exact balance, according to Chinese folklore, health, peace, and well-being are impossible to attain. When the relationship between Yang and Yin get out of balance within a person’s body, illness results. The task of the physician, then, is to restore health by renewing the equality of Yang and Yin, according to the Chinese acupuncturist.

The Chinese regard acupuncture as a complete medical system based upon the principle that man is a part of nature. Since nature is precise, then therefore, man is precise. Predictable order reigns in nature and in man. They claim that disturbance in that order results in illness and it is the acupuncturist’s work to restore that order and thereby “cure” the illness. By inserting hair-thin needles into certain points on the body, acupuncturists treat disease and malfunctions of every organ of the body. The Chinese people believe that channels of energy, called “meridians” run through the body. In acupuncture, needles are inserted at specific points along the meridians.

Illness is explained in terms of disharmony between man and nature, and in man, between Yin and Yang. Illnesses are either Yin or Yang and the therapy used to “cure” them will be either Yin or Yang.

Ch’i comes into the body at birth and leaves at death. During person’s lifetime it flows in a specific and continuous pattern in the forms of Yin and Yang. Ch’i does not inhabit the body at random, although it is present throughout the organism. Instead it flows inside a system of channels called “meridians” that extend into the arms and legs and around the torso beneath the surface of the skin. These meridians are not the vessels of the circulatory system that carry blood. They are not the nerves of the central nervous system.

The Chinese contend that Yin and Yang may not be equal—one rises as the other falls—but their total amount must be properly distributed among the organs for the body to remain healthy. In any organ, Yin and Yang are delicately balanced with each other. Illness results if the balance is disrupted. At certain times of the day, the Yin or Yang “influence” will be stronger than its counterpart, but this is a normal rhythm and will not cause illness or disease. When an imbalance causes sickness, the acupuncturist tries to discover where Yin or Yang has become too strong and with his needles restore the balance, as prescribed in an ancient book called the Nei Ching. The illness supposedly disappears when he has done this successfully.

Such treatment based on superstition and opposed to physiology must be discarded. Acupuncturists hold no “cures” and their needles cannot possibly heal. They can do harm if they strike a nerve and damage it. Cleverly-placed needles distress the nerves, resulting in the secretion of narcotizing encephalins, but this procedure cannot possibly restore health. One is anesthesized into relative unawareness of illness.