The spread of acupuncture to other countries probably started with Japan in the third century BC, when Xu Fu, a Daoist with medical knowledge, took seeds, plants and medical herbs along with three thousand Chinese children, with him to Japan. Many medical books and medicines were introduced during the Han Dynasty, and in the Tang Dynasty, Monk Jian Zhen (755 AD) taught medicine in Japan. For a time, during the modernisation of medicine in Japan (1884-1924), Chinese medical science was abandoned with the exception of acupuncture.
Chinese medicine spread to Korea in the third century BC, and later to Vietnam in the second century BC. Korean medical practice is based mainly on Chinese literature of the Han and Tang Dynasties. Vietnam was also under the influence of Chinese civilization during the Han Dynasty.
In Europe, the early knowledge of acupuncture began with the first missionaries. The Jesuits, in particular, studied Chinese culture and returned to amaze Europeans with their findings. The Jesuits were responsible for coining the word acupuncture, from the Latin 'acus' (needle) and 'punctura' (puncture).
The first European treatise on acupuncture (1671) was published by the Rev. Father Harvieu. It was splendidly entitled 'The Secrets of the Medicine of the Chinese, consisting in Perfect Knowledge of the Pulse, Sent from China by a Frenchman of Great Merit'. The first published article in Europe was by Girolama Cardano (1508-1576), a teacher of medicine in Milan. He reported on returned travellers' experiences of acupuncture treatment in China. Ear acupuncture was subsequently described in 1707 by Valsalva, the famous anatomist. Later, a more comprehensive study was undertaken by Gandini in 1769.
Germany was introduced to acupuncture from Japan by Dr. E. Kaempfer (1651-1716); his work Amoenitatum Exoticamm was published in 1712. He introduced the word 'Moxa' from the Japanese 'Mogusa' (the herb that burns) and 'moxibustion' to acupuncture vocabulary. The German Acupuncture Association was formed in 1937.
Roughly contemporary with Kaempfer, a Dutch physician, Wilhelm Ten Rhyne, devoted twenty pages to acupuncture in a small book written in Latin and published in London in 1683.
The most significant treatise to be published in France was 'Medicine among the Chinese' by the French consul-in China, Dabry de Thiersant, in 1863. A complete chapter was devoted to acupuncture and needling techniques. Another French consul, Solie de Morant, studied acupuncture in Shanghai after observing its miraculous effects. On his return to Europe twenty years later, he demonstrated the efficiency of acupuncture at several hospitals. In 1934 he was eventually persuaded to publish his 'Synopsis of True Chinese Acupuncture', and in 1939 two volumes of 'Chinese Acupuncture'. It was largely due to this man's influential writings that acupuncture at last secured a firm hold on European imagination.
In England the first book on acupuncture - and probably the first book in English on the subject - was written by the Rev. D. Lawson Wood. It was called 'Chinese System of Healing' and was published in 1959. 'Chinese Acupuncture' by Dr Felix Mann followed shortly afterwards in 1962. The English Acupuncture Association was formed in 1960.
In 1956, following a lapse of some three hundred years, Soviet doctors again studied acupuncture in China. On their return they revived interest by opening research centres in Moscow and Leningrad.
Over forty countries are now practising acupuncture and moxibustion.
© Copyright Society for Anglo-Chinese Understanding (SACU) 2006 : an extract from SACU's magazine China Now 61, Page 9, April 1976
