Acupuncture and moxibustion therapy has
a history of thousands of years in China.
In ancient China, there were many well-known doctors using acupuncture and moxibustion
therapy to treat patients, such as Bian Que of the Spring and Autumn Period (770
BC - 476 BC) and Hua Tuo of Eastern Han Dynasty (25 - 220), who had treated some
difficult and complicated cases, and thus were acclaimed as miracle-working doctors.
In 1027 AD, Wang Weiyi, a medical official of acupuncture and moxibustion of Song
Dynasty (960 - 1279), designed and made two bronze human figures marked with acupuncture
points, carefully carved 12 channels and vessels and 354 points on the figures for
people to use when learning therapy. This was the earliest bronze human figures
for medical use in China.
Nowaday, acupuncture and moxibustion therapy is not only widely used in China to
relieve diseases, it has also spread around the world.
Narcotherapy is to disable body or one part temporarily by drugs or acupuncture,
which is usually used in surgical operations.
As early as the Spring and Autumn Period and Warring States Period (770 BC - 221
BC), some Chinese doctors had known and recorded anesthesia function of some drugs.
The famous doctor Hua Tuo of Eastern Han Dynasty, on basis of carefully studying
ancient books, went to the mountains and plan to collect herbs with an anesthesia
function, such as jimsonweed, which were later made into narcotic drugs after being
roasted and processed. One day, people carried a seriously ill patient to Hua Tuo.
He let the patient drink the drug and then opened his abdominal cavity and cleared
away his rotten inestines, completing operation while the patient felt no pain.
This operation was the earliest recorded large-scale laparotomy both in China and
in the world.
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