IsisCB Explore

Article ID: CBB456797600

Acupuncture Anesthesia on American Bodies: Communism, Race, and the Cold War in the Making of “Legitimate” Medical Science (2021)

Baum, Emily Lauren (Author)

Bulletin of the History of Medicine
Volume: 95
Issue: 4
Pages: 497-527

URI: http://muse.jhu.edu/article/846642

DOI: 10.1353/bhm.2021.0055

Outside Links

PubMed

WorldCat

Google Scholar

JSTOR

Academia.edu

Authority of medicine Cross-national interaction Therapeutic practice; therapy; treatment Anesthesia Acupuncture Communism Cold War Medicine and politics 20th century, late United States

This article explores the brief American fascination with acupuncture anesthesia, a technique in which needling was used in place of, or in combination with, chemical anesthetics during surgery. In 1971, a series of American medical delegations began traveling to China to observe the procedure and gauge its viability. While some of these physicians were optimistic about the technique’s therapeutic possibilities, others were antagonistic to its feasibility in an American context. Previous studies have explained the quick rise and rapid delegitimization of acupuncture anesthesia by invoking the professional interests of biomedical doctors. In contrast, this article rethinks the history of the procedure by casting it against the backdrop of the Cold War. In discussions about the legitimacy of the technique, assumptions about race, communist politics, and Cold War bipolarity were omnipresent, causing acupuncture anesthesia to become a synecdoche for the promises and perils of Chinese communism writ large.

...More

Citation URI

https://data.isiscb.org/isis/citation/CBB456797600/

Citations Indexes

Similar Citations

Article Wang, Zuoyue; (2010)
Transnational Science during the Cold War: The Case of Chinese/American Scientists (/isis/citation/CBB000954447/)

Article Amy Wiese Forbes; Amanda Smithers; (2018)
Combatting the ‘Communistic-Mulatto Inspired Movement to Fuse the Two Ethnic Groups’: The Mississippi State Sovereignty Commission, Sickled Cells, and Segregationists’ Science in the Atomic Age (/isis/citation/CBB004012193/)

Thesis Rohde, Joy Elizabeth; (2007)
“The Social Scientists' War”: Expertise in a Cold War Nation (/isis/citation/CBB001560853/)

Article King, Nicholas B.; (2004)
The Scale Politics of Emerging Diseases (/isis/citation/CBB000750320/)

Thesis Huff, April Nicole; (2014)
Constructing Abortion's Second Victim: Science and Politics in the Contemporary Antiabortion Movement (/isis/citation/CBB001567570/)

Chapter Kunkel, Sönke; (2011)
Amerikanischer Wissenstransfer im Nigeria der frühen 1960er Jahre (/isis/citation/CBB001211844/)

Article Roberts, Peder; (2013)
Intelligence and Internationalism: The Cold War Career of Anton Bruun (/isis/citation/CBB001212892/)

Book Paul U. Unschuld; (2018)
Traditional Chinese Medicine: Heritage and Adaptation (/isis/citation/CBB822775450/)

Article Moore, Bradley Matthys; (2014)
Roy Porter Student Prize Essay For the People's Health: Ideology, Medical Authority and Hygienic Science in Communist Czechoslovakia (/isis/citation/CBB001550847/)

Article Donig, Simon; (2010)
Appropriating American Technology in the 1960s: Cold War Politics and the GDR Computer Industry (/isis/citation/CBB001231736/)

Book Michaels, Paula A.; (2014)
Lamaze: An International History (/isis/citation/CBB001551040/)

Article Su, Jingjing; Zhang, Daqing; (2011)
A Study of the First Medical Delegation Sent from the PRC to the USA (/isis/citation/CBB001221345/)

Article Oreskes, Naomi; (2010)
Science, Technology and Free Enterprise (/isis/citation/CBB001021960/)

Article Bassett, Ross; (2009)
Aligning India in the Cold War Era: Indian Technical Elites, the Indian Institute of Technology at Kanpur, and Computing in India and the United States (/isis/citation/CBB000953936/)

Article Beatriz Martínez-Rius; (2020)
For the Benefit of All Men: Oceanography and Franco-American Scientific Diplomacy in the Cold War, 1958–1970 (/isis/citation/CBB421077621/)

Article Heymann, Matthias; Martin-Nielsen, Janet; (2013)
Introduction: Perspectives on Cold War Science in Small European States (/isis/citation/CBB001212891/)

Book DeJong-Lambert, William; (2012)
The Cold War Politics of Genetic Research: An Introduction to the Lysenko Affair (/isis/citation/CBB001213212/)

Article Oram, Matthew; (2014)
Efficacy and Enlightenment: LSD Psychotherapy and the Drug Amendments of 1962 (/isis/citation/CBB001214594/)

Book Halliwell, Martin; (2013)
Therapeutic Revolutions: Medicine, Psychiatry, and American Culture, 1945--1970 (/isis/citation/CBB001550859/)

Thesis Lin, Chien-Ting; (2014)
Fugitive Subjects of the “Mi-Yi”: Politics of Life and Labor in Taiwan's Medical Modernity (/isis/citation/CBB001567627/)

Comments

{{ comment.created_by.username }} on {{ comment.created_on | date:'medium' }}