When Nazi occupied Paris in 1940, Hitler posed in front of his favorite place in Paris, the Eiffel tower. Why he posed in front of Eiffel tower instead of posing on the top of the Eiffel tower? The lift of the tower was sabotaged before Nazi conquered Paris. Therefore, there was a saying that Hitler conquered Paris, but he never conquers Eiffel tower (Selwyn-Holmes, 2010). Speaking of that famous picture, the picture was taken in the front terrace of the Musée de l’Homme, an anthropology museum that contains collections of human in evolution, diversity of human and human in social contexts. On one of our class trips, we visited Musée de l’Homme. Among all of the historical human skeletons and artifacts, I saw a familiar Chinese acupuncture man model with lots of acupuncture points labeled on the body. After being practiced in China and other countries for thousands of years, acupuncture became one of the alternative medicine in western world. How does acupuncture become a common practice and how does it work?
Me with the super tall guys
Acupuncture was practiced to blood drawing. The detailed description of the practice of acupuncture described in The Yellow Emperor’s Classic of Internal Medicine, which dated back to 100BCE. There is a set of 365 acupuncture points (acupoints) on the body. Modern neurological models explained that acupuncture stimulates nerve endings and triggers intrinsic pain inhibitory mechanism. The spread of acupunctures date back to sixth century. Actually, French adopted acupuncture much sooner than other countries, which dated back to 19th century (White & Ernst, 2004).
Acupuncture man model
A recent study studied used functional MRI to study the effect of acupuncture in mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and Alzheimer disease (AD). Acupuncture practitioner stimulated MCI and AD patients on their Tai chong and Hegu acupoints, which were located on feet and hands. Then, fMRI scans were taken before acupuncture and after acupuncture. Researchers found that after the application of acupuncture, there was increased activation in temporal lobe and frontal lobe, the areas closely related to the memory and cognition (Wang, et al., 2012).
It was really interesting see that there were lots of clinical research studying acupuncture. I was also amazed that back in those old days, the knowledge of acupuncture was developed only based on observations of living subjects since the human dissection was forbidden. I hope there will be more collaborations between traditional Chinese and western medicines!
References:
Selwyn-Holmes, A. (2010, May 05). Hitler in Paris. Retrieved from https://iconicphotos.wordpress.com/2009/08/12/hitler-in-paris/
Wang, Z., Nie, B., Li, D., Zhao, Z., Han, Y., Song, H., . . . Li, K. (2012). Effect of Acupuncture in Mild Cognitive Impairment and Alzheimer Disease: A Functional MRI Study. PLoS ONE,7(8). doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0042730
White, A., & Ernst, E. (2004, May 01). Brief history of acupuncture | Rheumatology | Oxford Academic. Retrieved from https://academic.oup.com/rheumatology/article/43/5/662/1788282