Dr. Sciammarella graduated from American University of the Caribbean in June, 1985. He is a Diplomate of the American Board of Internal Medicine, and the American Board of Emergency Medicine and has practiced Emergency Medicine for 19 years.
Melissa Conrad Stöppler, MD, is a U.S. board-certified Anatomic Pathologist with subspecialty training in the fields of Experimental and Molecular Pathology. Dr. Stöppler's educational background includes a BA with Highest Distinction from the University of Virginia and an MD from the University of North Carolina. She completed residency training in Anatomic Pathology at Georgetown University followed by subspecialty fellowship training in molecular diagnostics and experimental pathology.
The earliest known source of information on acupuncture is a text called the Huang Di Nei Jing, or Yellow Emperor's Inner Classic, which is believed to have originated as early as the second century BC.
The Nei Jing regarded the human body as a miniature representation of the universe as a whole and taught that a state of health could be achieved by balancing the body's internal environment with the external environment of the entire universe.
The earliest European reports about acupuncture came from Jesuit missionaries in the 16th and 17th centuries. In fact, the word acupuncture was coined by French Jesuits, from the Latin acus (needle) and punctura (puncture).
Although it has been widely believed that this represented the earliest European introduction to acupuncture, acupuncture may have actually been a practice familiar to ancient Europeans. The mummified remains of the so-called Austrian Iceman, who has come to be known as
Oetzi, were found in the Italian Alps in 1991. The mummy is believed to be over 5,000 years old. A series of tattoos was discovered on
Oetzi's body, which correspond to the locations of traditional acupuncture points still in use today. It has been suggested that these ancient Europeans might have been aware of the practice of acupuncture earlier than had previously been thought.
In the United States, accounts of acupuncture began to appear in the medical literature in the mid-1800s. In fact, Sir William Osler included a section on the use of acupuncture for the treatment of "lumbago and sciatica" in his respected textbook The Principles and Practice of Medicine from 1892 through its final edition in 1947. The 1901 edition of Gray's Anatomy included this statement: "The sciatic nerve has been acupunctured for the relief of sciatica."
A turning point in the introduction of acupuncture in the United States came in 1971. James Reston, a reporter for The New York Times, was in Beijing to report on a ping-pong match between China and the United States. While there, he developed acute appendicitis and required an emergency appendectomy. The report of his firsthand experience with acupuncture for the management of his post-operative pain was published on the front page of The New York Times. This sparked an intense interest in acupuncture by the public. Several months later, a report favorable to acupuncture was published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.
In 1987, a major step forward in the acceptance of acupuncture by Western
medicine occurred with the founding of the American Academy of Medical Acupuncture. The AAMA became the sole physician-based acupuncture society in North America.
It is estimated that, by 1991, 8,000 nonphysicians and 1,500 physicians were practicing acupuncture in the United States. An article published in the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine in 1993 by David Eisenberg, MD, and colleagues reported that $14 billion were spent by Americans in 1990 on "alternative therapies." It was becoming apparent that the public was embracing complementary medicine.
A significant development in the acceptance of acupuncture in the United States occurred in 1996, when the U.S. Food and Drug Administration reclassified acupuncture needles from the Class III, or "investigational" category, to Class IIb, the category that means "safe, effective, but with special restrictions." By no longer being considered investigational, acupuncture moved forward toward medical legitimacy.
In 1998, the Office of Alternative Medicine was expanded to become the National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM). The NCCAM is one of the twenty-seven agencies that are part of the National Institutes of Health. One of NCCAM's major goals is to research and present information on complementary medical systems under rigorous scientific practice.
Another first in Medical Acupuncture occurred in April of 2000, with the establishment of the American Board of Medical Acupuncture. The board offered its first certifying examination for physicians in October 2000, allowing physicians the opportunity to demonstrate proof of proficiency in the specialty of medical acupuncture. Physicians who pass the ABMA certifying examination are referred to as Diplomates of the American Board of Medical Acupuncture (DABMA) and are considered to be board certified in medical acupuncture.
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