Antiquity Acupuncture

In India, the use of acupuncture is mentioned there are about 5 000 years in Ayurveda (Treaty of Ayurvedic medicine) and is still used today in traditional Indian medicine.

Ebers Papyrus (Eber 854a), which dates from 1 500 in full and visible ancient Egypt at the British Museum, gives a channel in which circulates a fluid (blood or Qi [3]) and called metu.

First traces of Chinese acupuncture [edit]
Acupuncture points and meridians on a drawing by the time of the Ming dynasty
Acupuncture points and meridians on a drawing by the time of the Ming dynasty

The first traces could go back to the Stone Age where sharp instruments were used to treat pain. Bone needles or bamboo could be used before the discovery of the technique of casting bronze (Chang dynasty - from sixteenth to eleventh century BC.) [4].

The Nei Jing Su Wen is a compilation of writings on acupuncture, moxibustion, but also the use of drug therapy, massage and gymnastics, dated the combatants Kingdoms period (-500 to -220) and Han dynasty (-206). It is the historical source oldest, although only after publishing his writing have been recovered assumed. The theory and acupuncture meridians are described in some books dating from the early Han Dynasty (-168, 50 years after the Zhanguo) found in a tomb of Han (Mawangdui, 1973-75).

Acupuncture History

In Europe, was found in 1991 in a glacier located across Italy and Austria a body frozen, and relatively well preserved by a man nicknamed Ötzi by scientists. This man, preserved in ice for 5 300 years (and who lived around 3300 BC. Approx.), covers his body a number of tattoos. An Austrian team noticed that among the 15 groups of traits that were tattooed Ötzi, nine were close to points of Chinese acupuncture.

However, as noted by L. Renaut, "the current practice identifies 670 points symmetrically distributed throughout the human body along meridians of 12 (or channels) and two bilateral axial meridians. The surface of the human body is literally constellation of entry points can be estimated as lacking any kind of statistical significance that the tattoos of Ötzi, elongated and quite widespread, coincide from time to time with some of these points.