Yes, but do they work??(was emotional acupuncture)

[Guest guest]

I read this on the history of garlic use in TCM, and I thought it

might be appropriate to share here.

 

Mbanu

 

How Garlic Became a Herbal Medicine

 

There was once a farmer who wanted desperately to become a doctor like

his famous neighbor. He pleaded with his neighbor to take him as a

student, but the doctor refused. In those days, it was customary to

only teach the medical profession to members of one's own family.

 

Knowing that the doctor generally taught his family in the

evenings after his clinic closed for the day, he secretly hid beneath

his window to listen in on the teachings.

 

That evening, the family conversation went like this: " They've

already put off paying for a long time, do you want to charge

interest? " The doctor said, " Just collect for the diagnosis and the

medicine " , " You can forget the interest (suan li k'o chih) " .

 

The farmer, hearing only the last four words of the conversation,

misunderstood the doctor as saying " garlic can cure dysentery (suan li

k'o chih) " , which has the same pronunciation.

 

It so happened that the farmer's uncle was seriously ill with

stomach troubles, so the farmer set off to help him. He gave his uncle

garlic to ingest, and sure enough, it worked. The uncle recovered

completely.

 

The farmer stayed at his uncle's house and started a medical

practice of curing dysentery. The herbal treatments worked on all his

patients and the farmer's reputation spread far and wide. When the

famous doctor heard of this, he visited the farmer and said, " I hear

you have a cure for dysentery, who taught you? "

 

" Actually, it was you " , replied the farmer, describing the

incident under the window. Laughingly, the doctor explained that the

comment was about late payment of a patient's bill, not a cure for

dysentery. He then said, " It seems you are smarter than I first

thought, so I've decided to take you as a student after all " .

 

Although the treatment was based on a misunderstanding, it turned

out that it really worked. Garlic has been used in China as a popular

medicinal ingredient for many stomach disorders since that time.

 

 

> But one thing he brought up a couple of times is that there are a number

> of ideas, theories, techniques that have been presented to us western

> practitioners that are not classical. Which means someone made them

> up. Sometimes the people that make them up don't tell you that they

> made them up. The solution for the reader is to look for references and

> sources for every piece of info. Most books aren't that

well-referenced.

>

> In any case, all that to say that there is some controversy surrounding

> the usage of the outer back-shu points for emotional purposes.

>

> According to Philippe, it's not in any of the classical books he

studied.

> Only one of the outer back shu was used for emotional disorders:

> B44 for insomnia

>

> I know that Giovanni uses them that way, but I have no idea where he got

> that theory. No wait, I believe he says he drew that conclusion

from their

> name. Each one has the name of the 'spirit' related to the organ of the

> inner shu point at the same level- e.g. B47 hun men is at the level

of B18,

> the Liver back shu.

>

> However, a non-Chinese-speaker using a translation of the name

> to infer and create point functions makes me doubtful... in fact, it

has been

> pointed out to me how in the 5 phase acupuncture style, several

points are

> misused based on mistranslation of their names and what we might call

> over-emphasis or over-attribution from the translated name.

>

> Philippe speculated that the points may have been named that way to

> aid in the memorization of their location.

>

> So, the jury is out, but I no longer use them for that purpose.

>

> B

>

>

>

> Brian Benjamin Carter

> Editor, The Pulse of Oriental Medicine

> Columnist, Acupuncture Today

>

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