ancient doctrine of Chinese medical practices
titled, Huangdi Neijing. This text has been the
fundamental guide and primary source for
TCM for over two thousand years. The
popularity of acupuncture began to see a
decline after the Chinese Civil War in 1950.
After the Communist takeover, the Chinese
Communist Party (CCP) ridiculed TCM and
acupuncture as unfounded. Soon later Nixon
visited China in 1972 and solidified America's
relations with the People's Republic of China.
This newfound Western and Eastern union
was coupled with an article written around the
same time by a political journalist named
James Reston, who wrote for the New York
Times an article that spoke of his acupuncture
treatment of post-operative pain in Beijing,
China. After Reston’s article, acupuncture
soon became popular in the West. Stories
began to circulate that patients in China had
open heart surgery using only acupuncture
(Atwood 2009). The idea of an alternative
anesthetic, stimulated massive interest within
the American public. Many had not heard of
this foreign healing practice, and viewed it as a
mystical substitute for biomedical methods.
The emergent relation formed between the
People's Republic of China and the United
States following the Chinese Civil War
allowed acupuncture to catch the attention of
Westerners, stimulating a cultural transfer of
traditional Chinese practices into the United
States.
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