http://worldcat.org/entity/work/id/33733090

Acupuncture, expertise, and cross-cultural medicine

When does a needle in the flesh constitute 'acupuncture', and for whom? Who were Britain's historical acupuncturists? From the exotic tales of seventeenth-century missionaries in the Far East, through reinvention at the cutting edge of adopted French clinical experimentalism, to partial assimilation into British orthodox therapeutic practice in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, acupuncture in Britain has a long and fascinating history. In this original and well-researched volume, Roberta Bivins describes this history and its implications for the study of continuity and discontinuities in the cross-cultural transmission of medical knowledge, techniques and instrumentation. Through detailed textual analysis, examination of patient and practitioner networks in the process of medical change, and a case-study of acupuncture and the National Health Service, she looks back to ask, how have we inscribed meaning on to the therapeutic needle? And what does this tell us about technologies and their relationship to culture?

Open All Close All