A History of Acupuncture in the US
The gift of being able to know and hear the stories of one’s immediate ancestors and deities has helped young children understand how to navigate the world. The stories of success give a child pride. The stories of failure and mourning teach the child respect and purpose. The acupuncture and traditional Chinese medicine profession has a rich immediate history filled with success, failure, and mourning. The disregard of the events and human stories between ancient China and modern America is a disservice to the profession. Without the acknowledgment and understanding of our past, we will not be able to build a future as a profession that honors and respects what this medicine is and those who came before us. For any community to thrive, they must internalize and evaluate, “I am because we are”.
This essay is meant to tell the stories of some of the events that bridge the gap between ancient China and modern America. It is in no way an exhaustive history of all of the stories and people who have shaped this medicine and it’s practice.
It is believed that acupuncture medicine arrived in the United States in waves (Dandridge 2020). The Qing imperial regime of China banned the education and use of acupuncture in 1822. Acupuncture medicine continued through lineage instead of formal education in China. In 1825 Dr. Franklin Bashe’, the great-great-grandson of Benjamin Franklin, was given a French book on acupuncture medicine and began practicing acupuncture on prisoners in America (Wong 2019). According to documentation, the practice wasn’t administered to the general public and remained practiced within the close-knit circle of American physicians that Bashe’ surrounded himself with. Basche’s works on pain management using acupuncture were published in a medical journal in 1826 (Wong 2019). Acupuncture medicine was practiced within Asian communities in the United States and newspapers hosted advertisements for Chinese herbal medicine from Asian immigrants’ sanitoriums, but they were not receiving the same attention as Basche’ and his associates due to xenophobia.
In 1854, legislation was passed that made it so that Chinese individuals (men) could not give testimony in court against white people (men) (Immigration History 2018). In 1862, the state of California imposed a monthly tax on Chinese citizens for taking “white labor” (Immigration History 2018). In 1868, any individual practicing acupuncture or caught buying tools specifically used for or under suspicion of the use of acupuncture would be persecuted by law (Detroit Free Press 1868). In 1871, 500 white and Latino men invaded Chinatown, Los Angeles, and robbed and attacked residents. The invaders then murdered 20 Chinese people by hanging them in the city (Zesch 2007). Anti-Chinese riots continue throughout the U.S. resulting in the deaths of many Chinese individuals and isolating the populations of Asian immigrants to primarily California and New York. Asian immigrants and citizens had limited access to employment, educational opportunities, and licensed healthcare professionals due to xenophobic and racist tension.
During this time, it was still illegal to practice acupuncture and many immigrants were prohibited from practicing their own indigenous medicine for fear of violence and legal repercussions. Sanatoriums (herbal dispensaries) are the only legal form of practicing Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM). A few traditional doctors were able to keep indigenous medicine alive, gain employment, and preserve their ancestral knowledge by practicing specifically on upper-class white people; thus, allowing them to serve their communities on the side. Most notably was Li Po Tai, who died in 1893. The San Francisco Call wrote about Tai’s Death,
“The Great Chinese Doctor Passes Away…There is hardly a Mongolian in the United States who is more widely known than Dr. Li To Tal, who during a residence of over forty years in this city had done an immense business in his sanitarium… Soon his reputation as a healer spread and the number of his patients grew so rapidly as to make It necessary for him to devote all His time to them. Among the white people his services were almost as much in demand as his fellow countrymen”.
Tai’s nephews continued practicing medicine under his lineage; therefore, avoiding legal persecution while serving elite white people and their communities. Anti-Asian persecution continued and the use of acupuncture and buying acupuncture tools was still illegal. The medicine remained a mostly closed practice within herbal sanitarium services. The buying or administering of acupuncture was reserved for doctors who served elite European-Americans.
In 1900, the bubonic plague hit California and Hawaii. Newspapers called the bubonic plague “peculiar to the orient” and denied the severity of the public health issue (Doughty 2020). The San Francisco police isolated Chinatown. They did not allow the dead to leave, or the sick to get out to receive medical care. During this time, the community relied heavily on sanatoriums and traditional medicine to receive medical care for all aliments, as they were isolated. In an effort to hide the epidemic from the general public, an executive order made vaccinations mandatory in Chinatown. White American medical doctors — who had no rapport with the Asian community — were demanding compliance from individuals who had been abused and disregarded by white people for nearly one hundred years. The vaccine was not approved for humans and had severe side effects. According to the Stockton Evening Mail, Asian people were hiding and refusing to take the vaccine. To further exacerbate the fear within the community, signs had been placed along the border of Chinatown that stated the vaccine was a lethal injection from the U.S. government (Stockton Evening Mail 1900).
After the injection order, white medical doctors — who were influenced by racial bias — failed to adequately evaluate the cause of the plague. The disease continued to infect the community for nearly a decade (Doughty 2020). Documentation of traditional doctors would become more scarce. The last found documentation of Li Po Tai’s nephews was in Los Angeles in 1897.
In 1910, a schoolteacher named Albert Flexner published a report that would become the basis for our medical system. Flexner emphasized research and patenting of medicine. The benefit of these standards of care is that they ensure patient safety. On the other hand, they also encourage medical entrepreneurial endeavors that killed alternative medicine in exchange for for-profit revenue over health longevity.
Flexner’s methods of conducting research were done through a colonial lens that still limits how research on Traditional Chinese Medicine is conducted today. When Flexner’s report was first released, the attack on alternative medicine seemed to be primarily on psychiatry, as the belief was that the mind was separate from the body. Traditional Chinese medicine is at a disadvantage by being forced into categorization as either a psych-medicine or biomedicine — when it is both and neither by colonial standards. As the medicine has been torn apart and categorized to fit into colonial boxes, it is no longer a comprehensive indigenous medicine. Instead, items like dry-needling and Gratson therapy are profited by and accredited to Doctors of Physical Therapy, Medical Doctors, and Doctors of Osteopathic Medicine. Dialectical Behavioral Therapy (DBT) and mindfulness are profited by and accredited to psychotherapy. These practices are written about in the Lingshu, Neijing, and Sushruta Samhita and have been practiced consistently since their documentation. Unfortunately for Zhang Zhongling, HuangDi Neijing, and Sushurta, their descendants do not get to profit from the entrepreneurial patenting of their medicine.
The efficacy of Traditional Chinese Medicine is instead judged and isolated by the scope of acupuncture, but not comprehensive acupuncture. Colonial research limits the modality of acupuncture to point location with no constitutional diagnosis or location. They force this indigenous medicine to perform a limited treatment under biomedical diagnostic classifications and then disregard its worth. Their strict rules do not consider the patient’s constitution or humanity, as traditional medicine does. Then the mockery testing of Sham acupuncture versus sterilized needle insertion further patronizes the medicine. Points on meridians are assigned numerical identifications. Lights, heat, and pressing are done on meridians, collaterals, and sometimes on a point. The results are then compared to sterile needle insertion on numerical points. The outcome of change is supposed to prove a placebo effect. In fact, Sham acupuncture is a traditional treatment that is being tested against another form of traditional treatment, but neither of which are being performed under correct diagnostic circumstances. These colonial medical standards have consistently failed to equitably test the medicine.
The implementation of standards also further isolated Black Indigenous and People of Color’s (BIPOC) access to healthcare. The Flexner report resulted in the shutdown of 66 medical schools nationally. Only two Black medical schools were left open with minimal funding by 1923 (Savitt 2006). The results left BIPOC without safe healthcare. Historically, Black people were dehumanized and used by white doctors for experimental medical procedures. Medical Bondage by Deirdre Owens outlines the accounts of enslaved women being used for experimental cesarean sections, ovariotomies, and obstetric fistula without anesthesia. The outcome of these experiments created the myth that Black people do not experience pain, or experience little pain. These racist myths would lay the foundation for racial biases which are still present in our medical system today. The results of these experiments and the Flexner report created a medical landscape where hospitals lacked staff who had the cultural and educational background to care for diverse populations.
According to Dr.Tenisha Dandgridge, the Lincoln Hospital in South Bronx, was known as a butcher shop. Often, they would not be trained to treat BIPOC, nor did they have the language to treat BIPOC. “Someone could go in with stomach pain, speak Spanish, and not be able to communicate with their doctor and the doctor would amputate the patient and send them on their way” (Dandridge 2020). This obviously instilled more fear and further isolated individuals from healthcare.
In the 1930’s Dr. Fu Xing Fang immigrated to the U.S. and began practicing acupuncture in Los Angeles (Fan 2014). Shortly thereafter Dr. Fang started the Wuxi Chinese Acupuncture Research Association, signaling that there were others practicing as well. Dr. Fang would start a Taiqichuan community in Los Angeles, where his lineage of medicine would be passed on. Newspaper ads of the time still discussed herbal sanitariums; however, Medical Doctors began critiquing the validity of Chinese herbal medicine, citing that Chinese herbal doctors had no university degrees or legal qualifications to run herbal shops (Buell 1998). Meanwhile, in China, the government had banned acupuncture and began condensing ancient texts. It is speculated that the intention of altering the texts was to realign the medicine to fit within the Flexner model (Wong 2019).
In 1932, the “Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis in the Negro Male” began (CDC 2018). The study inoculated Black men with syphilis, while scientists observed the effects, allowing the untreated disease to spread to their partners and their offspring without medical intervention. Concurrently, in 1942 executive order 9066 passed. Asian Americans are put into concentration camps. The camps were crowded, unsanitary, and the health of individuals only improved when the forcibly detained were allowed to grow their own crops instead of eating rations (Jensen 1999). Further, it was noted that American doctors and soldiers took little care of those detained. It became the primary responsibility of Asian doctors, who were also detained, to care for and ensure the health and safety of their community.
In the 1950s the communist party of China released the altered books, began training Chinese medical doctors, and made acupuncture to the general public legal again. China hoped that the revamped implementation of Chinese medicine would allow acupuncture to be accepted by western physicians (Wong 2019).
In 1956, the U.S. Government launched COINTELPRO. COINTELPRO is a series of operations that were done by the FBI, whose mission was “aimed at surveilling, infiltrating, discrediting, and disrupting political organizations” (Blackstock 2001). In 1959, W.E.B. Du Bois and other activists walked the Black bridge and began international relations with the Chinese government that gave African-American activists special privileges in China during the cold war (Li 2018).
In 1963, J. Edgar Hoover advised COINTELPRO to bug Martin Luther King Jr.’s home and send him a suicide letter (Blackstock 2001). Hoover wrote, “in the light of King’s powerful demagogic speech…We must mark him now if we have not done so before, as the most dangerous Negro of the future in this nation from the standpoint of communism, the Negro, and national security”. The U.S. government was unhinged and fearful of the relationships that Black political activists were pursuing. During the same time, Dr. Matulu Shakur was an active member of the Revolutionary Action Movement (RAM), the Provisional Government of the Republic of New Afrika, and worked closely with the Black Panther Party (Matulu Shakur 2020). Dr. Shakur would make connections with an acupuncturist after his son was in a car accident (Dandrigde 2020).
In 1966. Miriam Lee moved to the United States from Singapore and was employed as a factory worker (Fan 2011). Miriam met her friend’s bedbound son shortly thereafter and began successfully treating him with acupuncture, despite it being illegal. Miriam practiced under her specific style of acupuncture known as the ten-insight points and utilized Master Tung points (Johnson 2009). Her practice grew through word-of-mouth and she saw 70–80 patients a day from her home (Fan 2011).
In 1968, COINTELPRO released a document internally that stated that their updated mission was to, “prevent the coalition of militant black nationalist groups to prevent the rise of a messiah who could unify the militant black nationalist movement, to pinpoint potential troublemakers and neutralize them, to prevent militant black nationalist groups and leaders from gaining respectability by discrediting them to both the responsible community and to liberals who have vestiges of sympathy”. Nixon began his campaign for presidency and drugs were used as a political strategy to demonize leftists and question the integrity of the civil rights movement (Corrigan 2018). The Young Lords political activist party moved to New York, led by Walter Bosque. The Black Panthers and the Young Lords formed an alliance called the People’s Party. The People’s Party primarily discussed the community’s struggle with heroin (Blanchard 2018). At the time, government-funded methadone detox centers were the only accessible treatment for heroin. The People’s Party did not trust the government’s medical aid and did not want their communities dependent on any substance — especially not one administered by the government. According to an interview,
“Mutulu Shakur read aloud an article about a Bangkok doctor who used acupuncture as an analgesic–a common practice–on a patient who happened to use opium. The patient reported that since receiving acupuncture treatments, he no longer wished to smoke opium. The People’s Program promptly hired two acupuncturists to perform auriculotherapy…Still, limiting the role of Young Lords workers to mediation did not quite fit with the group’s do-it-yourself ethos. “While we were helping the acupuncturists and watching them do it,” Bosque explains, excitedly, “we came to the realization that we can do this ourselves. We really don’t need the acupuncturists! So we went down to Chinatown and bought some boxes of acupuncture needles. Back then we used to say, ‘Each one, teach one.’ We started teaching each other. And that’s how deep the acupuncture clinic that formed at The People’s Program was in creating itself.” What Bosque describes so rapidly and casually would later become formalized as the National Acupuncture Detoxification Association Protocol”(NADA).
Acupuncture medicine was adapted by the Black Panthers and Young Lords, to fight health disparities of the time; mirroring how their Asian counterparts around and before them, had adapted the medicine through their own lineages to serve the evolving needs of their communities.
By 1969 Dr. Fu Xing Fang’s taiqichuan lineage had been passed down since 1930 and was now an education center that taught nutrition, acupuncture, and other modalities of his lineage in Los Angeles (Fan 2014). This center produced one of the first non-Asian taiqichuan masters. Across the city, the Institute for Taoist Study was established by Dr. Gim Shek Ju (Fan 2018). The same year, the CDC disclosed the Tuskegee experiments, which had been ongoing since 1932, to various professional medical associations. The CDC gained the support of the American Medical Association for the continuation of the unethical study (CDC 2018). The Black Panther Party leaders were added to the COINTELPRO watchlist and were “neutralized” by “being assassinated, imprisoned, publicly humiliated or falsely charged with crimes” (Corrigan 2018). To round out the year, Nixon was elected president.
Frustrated by the health inequities and disparities hitting their community, the Young Lords and Black Panther Party would take over Lincoln Hospital and turn it into the first acupuncture detox clinic (Blanchard 2018). Other Black Panthers members and Dr. Tolbert Smalls would co-currently accept an invitation to visit China on a mission trip (The Peoples Doctor 2019).
In 1971, James Reston, a member of President Nixon’s advance team, had appendicitis while in China. His appendix was removed and the Chinese medical team chose to use acupuncture as anesthesia and to treat his pain post-surgery. The following year President Nixon flew to China and observed surgeries with acupuncture anesthesia. This sparked a formal interest in acupuncture. President Nixon agreed to bring acupuncturists to the U.S., but he did not invoke any legislation and acupuncture was still illegal.
Dr. Ju traveled to Hong Kong and brought his colleague, Dr. So, back to the U.S. where he began practicing as an acupuncturist at the University of California Los Angeles (UCLA) (Fan 2019). The same year, news outlets condemned and exposed the Tuskegee experiment (CDC 2018). The transparency about the inhuman crimes committed against Black people further deepened the trust issues between the Black community and the medical community. In 1973, the Nixon administration created the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA).
In 1974, Miriam Lee was arrested in California for practicing acupuncture without a license. At her trial nearly one hundred patients showed up to court and demanded her release, stating that she was the only doctor who had helped them (Dandridge 2020). During Miriam Lee’s trial, Dr. Ju began giving presentations at UCLA and on local news outlets about acupuncture and meridian theory (Fan 2019). Dr. Ju’s presentations gave the general public positive exposure to acupuncture medicine. In 1976, Governor Brown signed acupuncture into law and Miriam Lee became the first acupuncturist to have a license in the state of California (Johnson 2009).
In 1978, Dr. Matulu Shakur moved to California and became a licensed acupuncturist. Dr. Shakur moved back to New York and he co-founded and co-directed the Black Acupuncture Advisory Association of North America (BAAANA) and the Harlem Institute of Acupuncture (HIA) (Matulu Shakur 2020). At the detox center, Dr. Shakur carried on his lineage of acupuncture medicine and taught political education along with the NADA protocol. The Lincoln Detox Center became an area of contention because it challenged the government, big pharma, and the war on drugs (Dope is Death 2020).
In 1979, UCLA’s research program established educational standards for acupuncture — following the Flexner model — and Tristate college was established (Dandridge 2020). These standards would set the baseline for theories and methodologies taught within formal acupuncture education. In 1980, Miriam Lee formed the Acupuncture Association of America (AAA) (Johnson 1980). Lee taught her students the insight points and Master Tung points as they apprenticed under her lineage. Dr. Tolbert Smalls opened the Harriet Tubman Medical Office, where he served primarily BIPOC patients using acupuncture and other medical modalities (Meng 2020).
In 1981, Dr. Shakur was accused of murder and conspiracy during a COINTELPRO raid operation. Dr. Matulu Shakur was added to the FBI’s ten most wanted list in 1982 (Dope is Death 2020). That same year, President Regan announced a war on drugs policy that further penalized BIPOC.
Mercury news stated later in 1996 that the, “war on drugs has unequal impact on black Americans…Contras case illustrates the discrepancy: Nicaraguan goes free, L.A. dealer faces life” and “Flawed sentencing the main reason for race disparity, crack smokers got 3 years; coke snorters got 3 months”.
At Dr. Shakur’s trial in 1988, it was noted that there was no evidence of Shakur at the scene of the crime and that a paid informant was responsible for the deaths (Dope is Death Podcast 2020). Dr. Shakur was sentenced to life in federal prison.
The National Certification Commission for Acupuncture and [o]-word Medicine (NCCA-M) was established in 1982 (Dandridge 2020). The professionalization of the field would begin to implement principles that insulated the many acupuncture medicine lineages being practiced within the United States and emphasized theory over practice.
In 1994, the dietary supplement act passed. The language of this act limits traditional Chinese medicine. An article published in the Journal of Complementary and Alternative Medicine states,
“The narrow definition poses a challenge to designing appropriate clinical studies that can provide data for “structure and function” claim substantiation. The process of melding Chinese herbal medicines into the dietary supplement category is complex and there is a need to define a clinical trial paradigm carefully that addresses “structure and function claims” … It is frequently not recognized that TCM favors an amalgamation of several herbs to generate the putative clinical effect. Because of this historical multiherb approach, the reliance on retrospective data to support the potential health benefits of an herb extract has severe limitations” (Chang 2007).
The significance of this legislation is that it limits and discredits traditional medicine again — through a colonial research lens — by requiring isolated and categorized trials, which is not appropriate to the medicine. The implementation of this legislation further isolated those practicing under lineage versus those with formal education.
In 1996 the Accrediting Commission for Acupuncture and [o]-word Medicine (ACA-M) was established. The accreditation committee’s approval allowed students to receive federal aid for acupuncture college. This allowed more accessibility for U.S. citizens with socioeconomic standing to have completed an undergraduate education to receive formal acupuncture education.
The same year Tupac Shakur — Dr. Matulu’s Shakur’s step-son and vocal civil rights advocate — is murdered while Dr.Shakur is in prison. The murder of Tupac Shakur and the extensive and unjust arrest of his father was received by many as a direct hit on Black people who spoke out and stood up against the ongoing disparities against the Black community. The professionalization of the acupuncture field during the 90s resulted in legislation that has limited access for the public to practice Dr. Shakur’s lineage of the NADA protocol in detox settings. Additionally, certification standards limited the availability and accessibility of apprentice/lineage learning throughout the United States.
In the early 2000s select health insurance companies began covering acupuncture. This coverage widened the gap between acupuncturists as community service providers and those who serve elite wellness culture. Many acupuncturists hold a master’s or doctorate level education. The need to make a return on investment from student loan debt results in a market value for services that create barriers to access for individuals who have been receiving this medicine historically as a part of their culture or as radical resilience medicine. Many acupuncturists who accept insurance, cannot afford to see patients who could not afford insurance that would cover their treatment. It is more profitable to treat patients who could afford to pay out of pocket. The professionalization of the field forces practitioners to set fixed prices, not prices based on community needs. This is both a protective factor for and against the greater good of the community.
In 2016, NCCA-M stopped accepting apprenticeship routes for certification. This essentially eradicated the option of lineage training in the United States. State licensing options for apprenticeships are limited. Medicare and insurance will not accept payment without NCCA-M certification as of 2020. NCCA-M released stats that 69% of practicing acupuncturists are white. Of the licensed individuals surveyed by NCCA-M, 75% held an NCCA-M certification in acupuncture, 26% held NCCA-M certification in Chinese herbology, and only 46% held NCCA-M certification in [o]-word medicine. The numbers can give insight into the practical disconnect of medicine as it is dissected and categorized. In 2019, the World Health Organization (WHO) recognized Traditional Chinese Medicine and gave the field ICD codes, further placing it into the Flexner model mold.
In the rush to professionalize, the roots of the community may be lost. The current code of ethics and legislation fail to capture the morality and historical significance of medicine. This traditional medicine has been a radical medicine that has addressed disparities through adaptation over time. Within the field, leaders have chosen to pigeonhole the profession into dated ethical and colonial standards that fail to protect patients from disparities within the community and from current acupuncturists. The categorization of the field from within has resulted in a focus on biomedical relevance, wellness culture, or untrained spiritual leaders. The hyper fixation on categorized pieces of the medicine has failed to foster practitioners who have adapted to the political landscape of the time, or who are willing to examine and challenge unjust landscapes, as previous lineages have.
As we examine the current state and dynamics of the acupuncture field, I reflect on a question proposed by Dr. Nadine Ijaz, “what does it mean to be white and practicing acupuncture in the United States during this time”?
How does the landscape of the medicine honor, or dishonor it’s past, and what is our profession’s responsibility to the future? Our practitioners are trained to learn theory over implementation. Historically there was never one right way to practice this medicine. As a profession, we have failed to fully embrace the indigenous roots and inclusiveness of the medicine. So, contributions towards addressing disparities are coming from outside of the profession, from individuals who are adapting the medicine (Rohleder). The professionalization of the field is inevitable and part of the adaptation process, but as Lisa Rohleder said, “we have a responsibility to connect the past with the future”.
References:
About Dr. Mutulu Shakur. (2018, April 10). Retrieved November 27, 2020, from http://mutulushakur.com/site/about/
Activism. (2019, April 04). Retrieved February 07, 2021, from http://the-peoples-doctor.com/activism/
Blackstock, N. (2001). COINTELPRO: The FBI’s war on political freedom. New York: Pathfinder.
Blanchard, S. (2018, November 09). How the Young Lords Took Lincoln Hospital, Left a Health Activism Legacy. Retrieved November 2, 2020, from https://filtermag.org/how-the-young-lords-took-lincoln-hospital-and-left-a-health-activism-legacy/
Corrigan, L. (2017). Prison power: How prison influenced the movement for black liberation. Retrieved November 27, 2020, from https://www.amazon.com/Prison-Power-Influenced-Movement-Liberation/dp/1496809076
Dandridge Tenisha (DACH) [Telephone interview]. (2020, November 11).
Detroit Free Press (Detroit, Michigan) · 13 Nov 1868,. (1868).
Donavon, M. (2020, March 06). Dope is Death. Retrieved October 3, 2020, from https://www.imdb.com/title/tt11828284/
Doughty, C. (2020, November 21). The Bubonic Plague in… San Francisco? Retrieved November 21, 2020, from https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=the+plague+ask+a+mortician
The Evening Mail (Stockton, California) · Tue, May 22, 1900. (1900).
Fan, A. (2014, December 09). Dr. Miriam Lee: A heroine for the start of acupuncture as a profession in the State of California. Retrieved November 27, 2020, from https://arthuryinfan.wordpress.com/2011/10/28/1260/
Frequently Asked Questions Regarding NCCAOM’s Announcement to Eliminate Certification Eligibility Route #3 (Apprenticeship) in 2021. (2020). Retrieved 2016, from https://www.nccaom.org/wp-content/uploads/pdf/Apprenticeship%20Route%20Q%20and%20A.pdf
Gim shek JU: A pioneer in Acupuncture & Chinese Medicine education in the United States. (2019, November 11). Retrieved February 07, 2021, from https://arthuryinfan.wordpress.com/2019/11/11/gim-shek-ju-a-pioneer-in-acupuncture-chinese-medicine-education-in-the-united-states/
Hlavinka, E. (2020, June 18). Racial Bias in Flexner Report Permeates Medical Education Today. Retrieved November 27, 2020, from https://www.medpagetoday.com/publichealthpolicy/medicaleducation/87171
Ijaz, N. (2020, October 24). Acupuncture Medicine Day, and the importance of cultural competence in our profession. Speech.
J;, C. (2007). Scientific evaluation of traditional Chinese medicine under DSHEA: A conundrum. Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act. Retrieved November 27, 2020, from https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/10328640/
Jensen, G. M. (1999). System Failure: Health-Care Deficiencies in the World War II Japanese American Detention Centers. Bulletin of the History of Medicine, 73(4), 602–628. doi:10.1353/bhm.1999.0171
Johnson, S. (2009, September 01). In Memoriam: Dr. Miriam Lee (1926–2009). Retrieved November 27, 2020, from https://www.acupuncturetoday.com/mpacms/at/article.php?id=32021
Kendall, D. (2013, July 15). National Center for Complementary and Alternative Medicine (NCCAM) Introduction to Acupuncture with Disclaimer. Retrieved November 27, 2020, from https://www.karger.com/Article/FullText/353908
Li, H. (2018, October 04). Building a Black Bridge: China’s Interaction with African-American Activists during the Cold War. Retrieved November 16, 2020, from https://muse.jhu.edu/article/704572/pdf
Meng, E. (2020, June 9). Dr. Tolbert Small. Of Part and Parcel. https://www.ofpartandparcel.com/blog-2/dr-tolbert-small.
Owens, D. C. (n.d.). Medical Bondage Race, Gender, and the Origins of American Gynecology. University of Georgia Press.
People v. Hall (1854). (2020, January 31). Retrieved November 27, 2020, from https://immigrationhistory.org/item/people-v-hall/
Rohleder 2020, L. (2020, November 18). Revolutionary Talks. Speech.
San Francisco Call, Volume 73, Number 112, 21 March 1893. (n.d.). Retrieved November 27, 2020, from https://cdnc.ucr.edu/?a=d
Savitt, T., PhD. (n.d.). Abraham Flexner and the Black Medical Schools. doi:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC2569717/pdf/jnma00196-0017.pdf
Tuskegee Study — Timeline — CDC — NCHHSTP. (2020, March 02). Retrieved November 27, 2020, from https://www.cdc.gov/tuskegee/timeline.htm
Wang — OM Clinical / Faculty Supervisor, C. (n.d.). Early History of Acupuncture in America. Retrieved November 26, 2020, from https://www.amcollege.edu/blog/history-acupuncture-early-america
Zesch, S. (2012). The Chinatown war Chinese Los Angeles and the massacre of 1871. New York: Oxford University Press.
