Pure acupuncture as sufficient surgical anesthesia

Acupuncture stimulation alone was treated as sufficiently reliable anesthesia for a broad range of major operations, including chest and abdominal surgery, and as capable of replacing drug anesthesia in settings where anesthetic medicines or equipment were limited.

1 episode

Current understanding

Acupuncture can contribute analgesic effects and may reduce anesthetic-drug requirements in selected perioperative settings, but conscious "pure acupuncture anesthesia" does not reliably provide the complete analgesia, sedation, muscle relaxation, and physiological control required across major surgery. Modern Chinese acupuncture-anesthesia practice uses selected indications and commonly combines acupuncture with anesthetic or analgesic drugs rather than treating acupuncture alone as a universal substitute.

Consequences and human impact

China did not merely investigate acupuncture anesthesia in isolated experiments. National science and health authorities organized a research program and broad rollout, while hospitals and the People's Liberation Army used it clinically on a large scale. Later Chinese medical accounts describe the indiscriminate expansion of pure acupuncture anesthesia as an overreach and modern practice as a narrower acupuncture-drug combination.

How the consequences followed

The disputed overreach was pure or near-pure acupuncture as the principal anesthetic for a broad range of major surgery, not the claim that acupuncture has no analgesic effect. Modern Chinese teams continue to study and use acupuncture as an adjunct that can reduce anesthetic-drug doses.

Contemporary and retrospective Chinese sources also show that practice was heterogeneous: some teams used small amounts of local or auxiliary medication, and the technique itself acknowledged incomplete analgesia and visceral discomfort. The institutional overreach was the broad promotion of acupuncture as sufficient anesthesia across poorly selected operations and austere settings, not every individual acupuncture-assisted procedure.

1966

State Science Commission and Ministry of Health established a national research plan

400,000+

Patients reported by People's Daily as having undergone acupuncture-anesthesia operations by July 1971

1990s

Most hospitals had stopped the old pure-acupuncture operations as limitations became clearer

Quantitative figures are highlighted only when the cited evidence supports them. The scale of a related catastrophe is not automatically treated as a death toll caused solely by this belief.

Institutional episode

People's Republic of China

1966–1980sPolicy basis

Beginning with a national research plan in 1966, Chinese science and health authorities promoted acupuncture anesthesia across hospitals and military medicine. In 1971 People's Daily reported that more than 400,000 patients had undergone operations under acupuncture anesthesia, claimed a success rate around 90 percent, and highlighted its usefulness where anesthetic drugs or equipment were scarce. The technique was subsequently applied across a very wide range of operations. Chinese retrospective accounts now describe that period as one in which acupuncture anesthesia was promoted too indiscriminately: pure acupuncture could not provide complete analgesia, sedation, or muscle relaxation for many procedures, and most hospitals abandoned the old model during the 1990s. Modern Chinese practice instead emphasizes selected indications and acupuncture-drug combined anesthesia.

Institutions

State Science and Technology Commission (国家科学技术委员会)
Ministry of Health of the People's Republic of China (卫生部)
Military Control Commission of the Ministry of Health (卫生部军管会)
Chinese People's Liberation Army General Hospital (中国人民解放军总医院)

Documented consequences

National research planning and large-scale clinical rollout
Use of pure acupuncture anesthesia in major chest, abdominal, cranial, and other operations
Promotion for rural, mountain, and wartime settings as an alternative where drug anesthesia was constrained
Training and diffusion through hospitals, local health services, and People's Liberation Army medical units

Institutional machinery

In February 1966 the State Science Commission and Ministry of Health convened a national acupuncture-anesthesia research meeting in Shanghai and formulated a 1966–1968 research plan, after which the technique expanded nationally. In September 1969 the Ministry of Health's military control commission made acupuncture anesthesia an important national wartime-health task. Hospitals, local health systems, research institutes, and PLA medical units then carried out the practice at large scale. Doubts grew during the 1980s, and Chinese retrospective accounts say most hospitals stopped the old pure-acupuncture operations during the 1990s; 1989 therefore marks the close of the broad 1960s–1980s model rather than a single scientific reversal on that date.

Sources and what they establish

1971年7月26日《纽约时报》：现在，让我告诉你们我在北京的手术Shanghai Observer / Jiefang Daily
Domestic historical reconstruction records Ministry of Health funding in 1961, State Science Commission recognition in 1965, and the joint State Science Commission–Ministry of Health national research meeting of 28 February 1966 that established the 1966–1968 acupuncture-anesthesia research plan and drove nationwide expansion.
我国医务工作者和科学工作者创造成功针刺麻醉 — People's Daily, 19 July 1971People's Daily historical archive reproduction
Contemporary state press states that urban, rural, and PLA medical units were using acupuncture anesthesia, reports more than 400,000 operated patients and an approximately 90 percent success rate, and promotes the method for major surgery and for rural, mountain, and wartime settings where conventional anesthesia equipment was limited.
周恩来观看针灸麻醉频频点头连声说“好”Guangdong Provincial People's Hospital
Hospital history records that the Ministry of Health Military Control Commission made acupuncture anesthesia an important national wartime-health task at a September 1969 national meeting. It also documents a 1971 operation that still required a small amount of lidocaine because analgesia from acupuncture was incomplete.
曾轰动世界，为何走向沉默？Wenhui Daily
Interviews modern acupuncture-anesthesia leader Zhou Jia and describes the earlier indiscriminate expansion to more than 90 types of disease or operation and roughly two million procedures, notes that pure acupuncture was ineffective or inadequate for some surgery, and explains the later shift toward acupuncture-drug combined anesthesia.
我校系统5项成果荣获2022年度上海市科学技术奖Shanghai University of Traditional Chinese Medicine
Official university account says the modern team changed the old awake pure-acupuncture technique into shallow-sleep, spontaneous-breathing acupuncture-drug combined anesthesia, redefined advantageous indications, produced clinical guidelines, and thereby returned acupuncture anesthesia to a more appropriate developmental path.

Last reviewed: 24/08/2026