Japanese acupuncture and moxibustion in 16-18th-century Europe / 全日本鍼灸学会雑誌

ABSTRACT

Despite China's cultural impact, Japanese physicians used the medical knowledge they adopted from their great neighbor with surprising independence. Being more open to interactions with Westerners, even after the adoption of a semiseclusion policy in 1639, Japan played a significant role in the early knowledge transmission of acupuncture and moxibustion to Europe.<BR>The first reports on traditional Far Eastern medicine by Europeans came from 16th-century Japan, where Jesuit missionaries accumulated considerable knowledge of acupuncture, moxibustion, pulse feeling, and materia medica. However, their observations were dispersed among a variety of letters, 'historias', and dictionaries, and there was no significant impact among European readers.<BR>Medical interactions in Japan changed significantly in 1641 with the relocation of the Dutch trading post from Hirado to Dejima (Nagasaki). Establishing a permanent position for a surgeon/physician laid the foundations for continuous exchange between Japanese physicians and their Western colleagues.<BR>European scholarly interest in moxibustion began with a booklet by Hermann Buschoff, a Dutch clergyman in Batavia, about a remedy against Podagra that he called Moxa (in Japanese, mogusa). Buschoff found it difficult to understand the physiological principles underlying his miracle cure. After serious debate in the German Academy of Natural Science, Andreas Cleyer, a licensed physician and trading post chief in Japan, clarified the botanical background and the production methods of Moxa. However, unable to understand Eastern pathology, Western physicians inevitably looked for similarities with their own tradition and in Egyptian medicine. Although Engelbert Kaempfer demonstrated its broad range of applications in Japan, Moxa was assimilated as a remedy against gout following the old Western principle of 'revulsion'.<BR>After many earlier remarks by Portuguese Jesuits, Willem ten Rhijne's article on acupuncture marks the beginning of scholarly discussions on the art of needling. He and his eminent successor at Dejima, Kaempfer, presented recent Japanese inventions such as the 'tube needle'and the 'hammer needle', which were unknown in China. While the tube needle was a simple technical improvement, the hammer needle was used as part of a new therapeutic concept that ignored the Chinese 'meridians'. Both highly educated physicians were unable to overcome the language barrier and depended on Japanese interpreters with limited knowledge of Dutch. Thus 'meridians'were considered to be blood vessels, ki became 'wind'(flatus), and the accumulation of ki in the abdominal area seemed to be a kind of 'colic'. As Kaempfer described, the use of needles in such cases inevitably led to rejection by Western medical authorities.