Acupuncture in Europe

At the Paris medical school in 1810, where a Dr Berlioz used acupuncture it to treat a young woman suffering with abdominal pain.

He claimed to have had great success with acupuncture, especially in treating neurogenic diseases. Nevertheless, it was not widely adopted by his colleagues.

In Britain there have been similar occasional uses of acupuncture recorded from the early nineteenth century, but these did not lead to any significantly sustained interest.

The development of acupuncture in Europe this century was given its initial impetus largely by Dr Soulie de Morant's L’ Acupuncture Chinoise, published in 1929, which he used as a text to teach traditional acupuncture to French medical practitioners.

Much of his teaching came directly from the Zhen Jiu Da Cheng, the seventeenth-century Chinese Compendium of Acupuncture. He contributed greatly to the recognition of acupuncture in France as an important part of the art and science of medicine.

The earliest references to acupuncture in Europe are found in the seventeenth century. At this time it was viewed more as a curiosity than a system of medicine, however.