The Birth of Acupuncture in America
The White Crane’s Gift
by
Book Details
About the Book
The Birth of Acupuncture in America: The White Crane’s Gift is the first accessible and entertaining introduction to acupuncture and Traditional Chinese Medicine for the ordinary reader. A basic overview of the field that has long been missing—a short and readable, but authoritative guidebook that thousands of Americans who rely on acupuncture have always wanted. Even better, its author is one of the actual founders of this field in the U.S., Dr. Steven Rosenblatt. Among its many virtues, The Birth of Acupuncture is a narration of the story of Dr. Ju Gim Shek. As revealed in this book for the first time, Dr. Ju was a real-life medical hero, a deeply devoted teacher who first brought the gift of acupuncture and Chinese medicine to America. Beginning with a chance meeting in 1968, Dr. Ju passed his knowledge to the author, Steven Rosenblatt—who he affectionately called “the Chairman”—and to a handful of other students. This small group of bold pioneers was the first “graduating class” in a field that has now grown to 18,000 licensed practitioners in the U.S.
About the Author
Steven Rosenblatt was a graduate student in physiological psychology at UCLA when he began to train in acupuncture and oriental medicine under Dr. Ju, Gim Shek in Los Angeles. After a two-year apprenticeship, he went to Hong Kong, where he graduated from the Hong Kong Acupuncture College as the first Western student of Dr. James Tin Yau So. On his return to Los Angeles, he organized and was the clinical director of the UCLA Acupuncture Research Project in UCLA’s Department of Anesthesiology, the first acupuncture clinic in a medical school in the USA. Dr. Rosenblatt brought Dr. So to this country to work on the UCLA clinic project for several years before moving to Boston, where they organized the James-Stevens Acupuncture Center, the first training program in the USA, which grew into today’s New England School of Acupunctre.