1. Cheng Dan'an was a Chinese acupuncturist who founded the first school of acupuncture in modern China, made widespread changes to the practice, and served as chairperson of the Chinese Medical Association.
11 Facts About Cheng Dan'an
1. 2.
Cheng Dan'an first developed an interest in acupuncture in 1923, after suffering from severe lower back pain which was relieved by his father's acupuncture.
3.
Cheng Dan'an attended the Tokyo College of Acupuncture in Japan, before establishing the first school of acupuncture in modern China.
4.
Cheng Dan'an began the first acupuncture journal, Zhenjiu zazhi, in 1933.
5.
Cheng Dan'an returned to Jiangsu in 1947 to discover that his acupuncture school had been destroyed; it was re-established in 1951 in Suzhou.
6.
Cheng Dan'an suffered from ill health in his final years; he died of a heart attack on 10 July 1957 in Suzhou, at the reported age of 59.
7.
Cheng Dan'an's book was therefore an attempt at " acupuncture points and meridians to correlate more closely with peripheral nerve distributions" in order to give acupuncture more credibility.
8.
Whereas acupuncture had previously been performed in tandem with bloodletting, so as to allow a "smooth flow" in the blood vessels, Cheng Dan'an argued that acupuncture that resulted in blood being drawn was the product of an inept practitioner.
9.
Additionally, Cheng Dan'an sought to uncouple acupuncture from astrology and divination.
10.
Cheng Dan'an refrained from thinking of time in terms of yin and yang, and considered the tradition of treating men and women on their left and right sides respectively to be mere superstition.
11.
Crucially, Cheng Dan'an dispensed with bodkins and scalpels, instead preferring to perform acupuncture with the now-ubiquitous filiform metal needles.