cults

[Guest guest]

What kind of cults have sprung up around acupuncture?

Thanks,

Jamie

 

< wrote:

The main cogent objection I hear to doing research on TCM is that

research that embraces our model of individual treatments cannot be

done. However that is a complete falsehood. One could easily match

three groups of patients, do individualized therapy on one, tailored

therapy on the other and standard proven treatment on the third, like

Benssousan's IBS study. The tailored group could even be allowed to

have complete individualization with no restrictions and you could

still get an accurate comparison. this would not prove how well TCM

compares to placebo, but it would say how it compares to whatever is

currently being done by WM. This rational analysis could be done with

anything from tuning forks to five element. If the endpoint is

supposed to be better health, there is a way to measure it. Such

studies would instantly validate the method. I don't see the concern.

There is only one possible reason for resistance, likely an unconscious

one. In the absence of science, all many people have to keep them

promoting acupuncture is faith. Faith is always hard to keep up,

especially in modernity, so in the back of the minds of most magical

thinkers, there is always some shred of doubt. Evidence allays doubt

and thus allays fear. Fear that that the multicultural view extended

to acupuncture will fail just as miserably as it fails in the world at

large. That some ways of doing things will be shown to be better than

others. and some things may fall by the wayside. Not acupuncture

itself, but some of the cults that have sprung up around it in the past

500 years. I don't understand why people can't see that a world based

upon magic is a world where fears can easily be manipulated by the

powerful. Only the light of rational thought, as embraced by the

founders, cuts through this darkness. That's why that era was called

the enlightenment.

 

 

Chinese Herbs

 

 

FAX:

 

 

[Guest guest]

, Jamie Koonce

<untothewholeperson> wrote:

> What kind of cults have sprung up around acupuncture?

 

I was referring to this article by Roger Wicke:

 

http://www.rmhiherbal.org/review/2004-2.html

 

the topic was discussed a bit a month or so ago under topics like " kendall " and

" licensing

of herbalists " . related threads ran from around 4/20 to 5/20.

 

If you go here:

 

http://health./messages/26389?

threaded=1 & expand=1

 

You will find an expanded threaded set of messages from that period.

 

But for example, acupuncture was kept alive in some part due to the work of

taoist

religious sects that also advocated martial arts, qi gong and the use of herbs

to achieve

immortality. In these circles, the mysterious nature of acupuncture easily

became bound

up in whatever religious cosmology prevailed. I call them cults because none of

these

sects had the type of structure or endurance typically associated with religions

like

buddhism or christianity. It is not a derogatory, just a label. In fact, this

mystically

oriented type of practice in china may have actually been more widespread than

the

literate scholarly secular medicine we have inherited as TCM. The secular

practitioners

were focused solely on medicine, not at all on spiritual development. I see no

problem

with focusing on either. I just see them as 2 pretty distinct pursuits, the

latter not being

medicine in my estimate, but rather fitness and self-cultivation.

 

That has been my entire point. those who would emulate the mystical approach to

acupuncture are not following in the mainstream written medical tradition, but

rather

something else (you label it this time). Both approaches can and have

coexisted, but the

ancient confucian doctors did not feel compelled to embrace everything under the

sun as

having value and neither do some in our field. In fact, the literate doctors

often railed

against the damage done by the cultists and illiterates. Though, to be fair,

this may have

been largely a matter of competition. OTOH, the literate doctors did not write

their

diatribes to influence the masses, but rather future generations. Granted,

herbology got

bound up in its share of mysticism as well. The cinnabar debacles, for example.

However,

herbs had a rich history of empirical use in china long before the advent of

systematic

correspondence. This general tendency towards rational empiricism amongst

herbalists,

as documented by Paul Unschuld in his history of pharmaceutics, probably

prevented the

same degree of rampant mystical speculation that has been a consistent part of

acupuncture's heritage since the han era.