Views on acupuncture

Press, Volume CXIV, Issue 33521, 30 April 1974, Page 15

Views on acupuncture

(5 T. Press Association) AUCKLAND, April 28. The secret of Chinese surgical acupuncture is probably hypnosis and auto-suggestion plus the prior administration of Western drugs, an Auckland medical scientist believes.

Sir William Liley, professor of pre-natal physiology at the National Wortien’s Hospital, formed this impression during a visit to China as one

of a five-man delegation from the Royal Society of New Zealand. He said he saw several operations done under acupuncture, including two hysterectomies (surgical removal of the womb) and a tubal ligation (female sterilisation).

“All the patients had had pre-medication with drugs, and they had been given what we in the West would consider a pretty generous dose,” Sir William Liley said. “While the surgery was being performed the anaesthetist was all the time singing the patients a little sing-song, telling them that they were sleepy and it was not going to hurt.” HYPNOSIS Sir William Liley said he was struck by similarities between this procedure and a caesarean operation he had seen in the United States done entirely under hypnosis. “It is known that you can do major surgery under hypnosis without sticking needles into patients,” he said.

“All the doctors I spoke to in China admitted that it was possible to use acupuncture successfully with some people but not with others.

| “To select your patients ■ properly you need to know the scientific basis of acui puncture, and this is what 'they are now trying to find iout in China.” ; Sir William Liley said that I the medication that was commonly given by the Chinese 'doctors before an operation under acupuncture consisted jof pheno-barbitone, pethidine, and atropine. 1 “Besides the pre-medica-,tion. there is obviously also i an element of auto-suggestion and hypnosis in Chinese acupuncture,” Sir W’illiam Liley said. Sir William Liley said that, apart from the question of acupuncture, he was impressed by the way the Chin-

ese were trying to get medical care to everyone: by the eradication of venereal disease, by the absence of environmental pollution, and by employment opportunities offered for the physically disabled. The other members of the delegation, which spent nearly three weeks in China at the invitation of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, were Dr R. W. Willett, assistant director-general of the Department of Scientific and Industrial Research; Dr E. G. Bollard, director of the D.S.I.R. plant diseases division at Mount Albert; Professor G. A. Knox, professor of zoology at Canterbury University; and Professor K. B. Cumberland, professor of geography at Auckland University. RETURN VISIT A delegation from the Chinese Academy of Sciences is 'expected to make a return ■visit to New Zealand toward The end of this year.

Professor Cumberland was particularly impressed by the rate of economic development in China. He predicted that within the next 25 years China could achieve an “economic miracle” surpassing even the post-war recovery of Germany and Japan.