Yang, Yin and Needles

What do Prince Bernhard of The Netherlands, Premier Lon Nol of Cambodia and Columnist James Reston of the New York Times have in common with uncounted, unknown Asians? All have recently undergone acupuncture, the ancient Chinese practice of inserting needles into various parts of the body to treat a catalogue of ills from arthritis to impotence. The prominence of these patients, and displays of acupuncture for the benefit of American visitors to mainland China, have increased interest in the treatment without diminishing its mystery.

> Bernhard's first experience with acupuncture dates back a year. Visiting Singapore, he suffered a recurrence of the severe pain in his back, left shoulder and arm that dates from a 1937 auto accident. Bernhard was treated by Yong Keng-ngoh, a Chinese acupuncturist, and immediately felt better. Two months ago, again afflicted, Bernhard wrote to the Singapore doctor and was referred to Yong's son, Dr. Yong Chai-siow, of London's Harley Street. The younger Yong diagnosed the problem as constipation, not the accident's legacy. Yong worked his needles for two days, after which the patient, 60, proclaimed that he felt ten years younger.

> Lon Nol had a massive stroke last winter and was flown to Honolulu, where he got the best treatment that Western medicine can offer. He made a good but partial recovery. Back in Phnom-Penh, he asked for acupuncture. For a month a Taiwanese doctor inserted needles as deep as three inches in Lon Nol's muscles and joints; the patient improved further. Of course, a stroke victim who is fortunate enough to have a good initial recovery usually will continue to progress for a year or two; added benefit from treatment cannot be assessed.

> Reston's emergency operation for appendicitis* at Peking's Anti-Imperialist Hospital went smoothly, but 36 hours later he was "in considerable discomfort if not pain" from gas pressure distending his stomach and intestines. With the patient's approval, the hospital's acupuncture specialist inserted three needles in Reston's right elbow and below the knee. He twisted them "to stimulate the intestine." Reported Reston: "That sent ripples of pain racing through my limbs and at least had the effect of diverting my attention from the distress in my stomach." Next, the doctor resorted to another traditional Chinese treatment called moxibustion: he lit two pieces of an herb called ai or ngai (Artemisia vulgaris, or wormwood) and held the smoldering wads near Reston's abdomen. Reston soon felt better, but could not attempt to explain why.

Red Revival. For these VIPs, the acupuncturists used only their traditional methods. For many Chinese patients, the doctors now show greater daring. They use acupuncture as the only apparent anaesthetic for surgery, including heart operations. Western minds cannot fathom how this can possibly work.

One reason for this lack of under-standing is that despite its wide acceptance in eastern Asia, acupuncture has been generally dismissed in the West as superstitious folklore. Only since World War II has it become the subject of serious scientific inquiry in the Soviet Union, to a lesser extent in France, Germany and Britain. In the U.S., the treatment is available principally in San Francisco's Chinatown. Even in its homeland, acupuncture was being phased out by officials before the Communist takeover in 1949. Then Mao Tse-tung realized that it would be impossible to train China's 500,000 traditional practitioners in Western medicine. So he deliberately encouraged the nation's Western-trained doctors to study the old ways as well as the new. It is this latest generation of physicians that has extended acupuncture's scope.

Gold v. Steel. Before its great leap forward into anaesthesia, acupuncture had changed little. The original text is a book about 2,300 years old. Dr. Ilza Veith, professor of the history of health sciences at the University of California (San Francisco), has translated it as The Yellow Emperor's Classic of Internal Medicine. According to this canon, the body has twelve more or less vertical channels or "meridians," and along these are 365 points at which the insertion of a needle will have a physiological effect. These points do not follow any anatomical system recognized in the West.

The mystical rationale for acupuncture is that the forces of yang and yin flow through the twelve channels and must be precisely balanced. Yang is variously translated as good, positive and "on the sunny side," while yin is bad, negative or "on the shadowy side." If a traditional acupuncturist diagnosed a patient as having too much yin somewhere, he would jab a selected point with a gold yang needle. In today's China, the newly respectable "scientific" acupuncturists rely mainly upon proletarian stainless steel. The modernists have added about 200 points to the list of accepted targets, and they sterilize their needles. But they are unable to explain how the treatment achieves its effects.

Toe to Head. There has been some speculation that acupuncture affects nerve impulses or stimulates the blood supply to nerves. Dr. Li Pang-chi, the scientifically trained physician responsible for Reston's care in Peking, once had doubts about acupuncture. Now he believes that illness can be caused by imbalance between organs--and that "acupuncture can help to restore balance by removing the causes of congestion or antagonism." In acupuncture the insertions are not necessarily close to the pain or its apparent cause. For a headache, it may be the big toe that is punctured. Adherents also claim success in treating, among other things, toothache, influenza, dysentery, nephritis, deafness, blindness, asthma, eczema, diabetes and high blood pressure.

Dr. Veith points out that in many of the conditions for which acupuncture is recommended there is a large emotional factor. Acupuncturists may be practicing a brand of psychosomatic medicine in which the patient's self-hypnosis plays an important part. Dr. Tom Po-chin, a China-trained acupuncturist now living (but not practicing) in San Francisco, says succinctly: "There's nothing miraculous about acupuncture. It's pragmatic medicine, based on thousands of years of application." One certainty is that for many patients, acupuncture helps--somehow.

*In reporting on his operation, Reston whimsically attributed the attack to Henry Kissinger. "The first stab of pain went through my groin," the columnist wrote, when Chinese officials disclosed that Kissinger's visit to Peking had taken place while Reston was being kept out of the capital. "In my delirium," he went on, "I could see Mr. Kissinger floating across my bedroom ceiling grinning at me out of the corner of a hooded ricksha."

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