Acupuncture is often described as ancient, and it is, but the version most people in Canada know today took shape over the last fifty years. This short history follows acupuncture from its earliest written sources in China to its arrival in North America and its regulation in Ontario. Sherman Lai's own career in Guelph, from 1986 to 2017, ran through the middle of that story.
Early written sources
The oldest major text describing acupuncture is the Huangdi Neijing, or Yellow Emperor's Inner Classic, compiled roughly two thousand years ago. It sets out the core ideas that TCM still uses as its vocabulary: Qi, Yin and Yang, and the channels, often called meridians, along which acupuncture points are mapped. Over the following centuries, Chinese physicians produced detailed atlases of acupuncture points and refined needling methods. Acupuncture also spread to Korea, Japan and Vietnam, each of which developed its own styles.
These texts describe a theory of the body, not a modern scientific account of it. Historians and researchers read them today as records of how medicine was understood and practised at the time. An introduction to these concepts is in What Is Traditional Chinese Medicine?
Arrival in North America
Acupuncture was known in Europe from the 1600s onward, but it drew wide public attention in North America only in 1971. That July, New York Times journalist James Reston published an account of his emergency appendectomy in Beijing, during which his post-operative pain was treated with acupuncture. The surgery itself used conventional anesthesia. The article appeared in the same period as the reopening of U.S.–China relations, and it prompted a wave of interest from physicians, researchers and the public.
Over the following decades, acupuncture moved from curiosity to research subject. In 1997, a U.S. National Institutes of Health consensus panel reviewed the evidence and concluded that acupuncture showed efficacy for some conditions, while noting that much of the research was limited. A plain-language summary of what research has found since then is in What Does Research Say About Acupuncture?
Acupuncture in Guelph
When Sherman Lai began practising Traditional Chinese Medicine and acupuncture in Guelph in 1986, acupuncture in Ontario was still unfamiliar to many patients and physicians. There was no provincial body regulating who could practise it. From 1988 until his retirement in 2017, he directed the Centre of Integrative Natural Medicine. In 1996 he presented a comparative clinical observation on acupuncture and cupping at the Fourth World Conference on Acupuncture in New York, co-sponsored by the World Health Organization. His conference work is listed on the Research & Practice page, and the city's wider TCM history is in Traditional Chinese Medicine in Guelph: A Local History.
Regulation in Ontario
In 2003 and 2004, Lai served on the advisory committee appointed by Ontario's Minister of Health to help design a regulatory framework for TCM and acupuncture. The province passed the Traditional Chinese Medicine Act, 2006, and the College of Traditional Chinese Medicine Practitioners and Acupuncturists of Ontario began regulating the profession on April 1, 2013. Since then, anyone practising under the protected titles in Ontario must be registered with the College, which sets entry standards and handles complaints. Members of the public can check a practitioner's registration on the College's public register. Lai's account of the advisory process is in Why Ontario Regulated Traditional Chinese Medicine.
Why the history matters
In fifty years, acupuncture in Canada went from a newspaper curiosity to a regulated profession with a growing body of research. Practitioners like Sherman Lai, who practised through most of that change, saw the profession build its standards, regulation and research base over the course of a single career.
Sources
- U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs Evidence Synthesis Program. Evidence Map of Acupuncture as Treatment for Adult Health Conditions: Introduction. NCBI Bookshelf, National Library of Medicine.
- Acupuncture's Journey to America. The MIT Press Reader, November 2020. On James Reston's July 26, 1971 New York Times article.
- NIH Consensus Development Program. Acupuncture. Consensus statement, November 3–5, 1997.
- Government of Ontario. Traditional Chinese Medicine Act, 2006, S.O. 2006, c. 27.
- Regulating Traditional Chinese Medicine Practitioners and Acupuncturists in Ontario, Canada. Health Reform Observer, McMaster University, 2015.