About that Acupuncture Treatment in 1971…

Many essays on the growth of acupuncture use in America cite a 1971 article by James Reston in The New York Times as the report which captured our collective imagination. However, Reston’s was not the first article on acupuncture to appear in the Times, nor the only one. A search of the Times archives to confirm date and title of Reston’s article reveals that the earliest report on acupuncture appeared in 1854 (1). Thereafter, there was about one a year, until 1971, when 41 articles are cited. Why so many articles in one year, and what made Reston’s unique?

In 1971, a team of U.S. diplomats led by Henry Kissinger went to China, an event speculated to be negotiations for a trip by President Richard M. Nixon. James Reston was invited to join the press corps that accompanied Kissinger. It was during this time that a number of reports about life in China, including acupuncture use, began to appear.

On July 16, while Reston was in Beijing (at that time, spelled Peking) he experienced a searing pain in his abdomen, accompanied by a rising fever. The next day he checked into the Anti-Imperial Hospital, where doctors made a quick diagnosis of acute appendicitis and prepared Reston for surgery. The surgery was performed under a local anesthesia and went well. However, the next day Reston experienced significant pain due to pressure and distension of the stomach. It was at this point that Li Chang-yuan, a doctor of acupuncture at the hospital, was called in.

A week later, Reston explained his experience to the world in his famous article, "Now, About My Operation in Peking", published in The New York Times on July 21, 1971. Reston reported that the doctor, "inserted three long, thin needles into the outer part of my right elbow and below my knees and manipulated them….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. Meanwhile, Doctor Li lit two pieces of an herb called ai, which looked like the burning stumps of a broken cheap cigar, and held them close to my abdomen while occasionally twirling the needles into action.

"All of this took about 20 minutes, during which I remembered thinking that it was rather a complicated way to get rid of gas…but there was a noticeable relaxation of the pressure and distension within an hour and no recurrence of the problem thereafter."

Though previous articles about acupuncture that year were sensational-a report on miraculous "cures" for deafness in children (2) and use as anesthesia for open heart surgery (3)-it was Reston's report that got the attention of physicians and ignited a quest to find out more. Why? All of the other Times reporters shared with Reston an association with a major news organization and a compelling journalistic style. However, only Reston could write about acupuncture from personal experience. We could identify with this American, who reported his encounter with sincere people who were sophisticated enough to use modern surgical procedures, while maintaining an ancient system based on a completely different view of the human body.

The article did set the stage for changing attitudes, as subsequent articles began to discuss acupuncture's possible role in American medicine, i.e., "U.S. Study of Chinese Medicine Urged" (4) and "Acupuncture Demonstrated at Medical Parley Here"(5).

A later article by Reston on August 22 (6) described his witnessing surgical patients receiving only acupuncture anesthesia during removal of a brain tumor, a tubercular lung, a thyroid gland and a submaxillary tumor. Reston admitted that, though it was clear to neither Western professionals nor to Chinese doctors about what was happening, the Chinese were " increasingly convinced that it does work, and they are operating on the pragmatic evidence and not waiting for theoretical justifications." Reston, was convinced that "something important is going on here", and pleaded for a much wider exchange of information between East and West.

The exchange of information became an outpouring that continues to this day. The first Western school of acupuncture was established in Vancouver, Canada before the end of 1971. Today, America has over 50 schools of acupuncture. A book entitled The Chinese Art of Healing by Stephan Palos appeared in the beginning of 1972; its review in the Times (Jan. 30, 1972, p. BR23) ends with the notion that acupuncture's widespread acceptance in the West will lead to a "Golden Age of Acupuncture." Now, catalogs like Redwing Books offer hundreds of texts on Oriental medicine, with new translations continuously appearing. And while the National Institutes of Health undertakes a scientific understanding of its effectiveness, millions of Americans, like the Chinese, are making practical use of acupuncture every day.

1. The Practice of Medicine in China. New York Daily Times. July 12, 1854, p. 3.

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