Acupuncture has been used successfully for over five millennia.

A Short History of Acupuncture

Stone acupuncture needles dating back to 3000 B.C. have bee found by archeologists in Inner Mongolia, and acupuncture has been widely practiced in China for around 3,500 years. In the 17th century, physicians and missionaries brought acupuncture to Europe, where it slowly gained a foothold. In 1972, James Reston, a journalist for the New York Times, had an emergency appendectomy while in China. He gave acupuncture an enormous boost when he described how it had eased his postoperative pain. Spectacular examples of acupuncture as an alternative to conventional anesthesia during surgery were subsequently reported in the West.
Since the opening of China to the West after the 1970s, many Western physicians have studies acupuncture techniques and use "medical acupuncture", as the practice is known, to supplement conventional treatment in hospitals and pain clinics. In the West, traditionally trained practitioners who are not physicians tend to practice in private clinics. The use of acupuncture in anesthesia is mainly confined to China.

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