Reconstructing Acupuncture: Cheng Dan’an and the Birth of Modern Acupuncture Textbooks

• In Event: Knowledge Construction and Disciplinary Specialization in Modern China

Abstract

Acupuncture was a declining branch of Chinese medicine before the Opium War; however, it has now become the prime case used to legitimize the Chinese medical tradition in the contemporary world. A turning point for this dramatic evolution came with the efforts of Cheng Dan’an 承淡安to modernize acupuncture in the 1930s. Cheng had background in both Chinese and Western medicine. After organizing an acupuncture club in 1930, he visited Japan in 1935 and brought back the 14th century canonical work Shisi jing fahui 十四經發揮 (Elaboration of the Fourteen Channels), which had been lost in China; furthermore, Cheng translated several modern Japanese acupuncturists’ works. Those materials formed the knowledge base for his establishment of the first specialized college of acupuncture in China in 1935. Although “channels” and “points” were not accepted by the discipline of anatomy, Cheng still utilized anatomical illustrations to identify and imply the scientific value of his work. Cheng’s strategy guided the keynote of acupuncture’s future development. Medical historians have recently recognized the importance of Cheng’s work; this paper examines how Cheng managed to compile the first acupuncture textbooks in modern form, especially focusing on his strategies in defining acupuncture and in selecting among the knowledge systems of Chinese, Western, and Japanese medicine to accomplish the task of reforming Chinese medicine in order to preserve the Chinese tradition in a world where Western knowledge dominated.

Author

• Che-chia Chang, Academia Sinica