Quick, Nagayama, The Needle

No one, even in China, has come up—with an accepted scientific explanation for acupunctured methodology, but it might not be too outlandish to consider the Yin-Yang explanation as partly valid: that needle-twirling restores a balanced state of tension in the body's energies. Modern theorists suggest that "the ills of civilization" are caused by, in one specialist's phrase, "maladaptation of the body to stress," a kind of psychic overkill. If bodily distress is caused or characterized by ill-organized (perhaps bunched-up) tension within the tissues, and if tension is transmitted by the nervous system or some other bodily conduit, then it seems conceivable that acupuncture can have at least some therapeutic and anesthetic value.

No one has ever done chest surgery with any sort of rubdown as anesthesia, but massage has long been an integral part of medicine in China. When Marilyn Monroe came down with severe stomach cramps during her Tokyo honeymoon with Joe DiMaggio, DiMaggio called onetime acupuncture patient Lefty O'Doul. O'Doul sent over a Japanese doctor who gave Miss Monroe's abdomen almost immediate ease by pressing with his thumbs at the right spot between her shoulder blades. The doctor himself left somewhat agitated, having been "profoundly moved by her loveliness." Science cannot explain how massage works.

Nor—points out Dr. Frank Z. Warren of New York's Postgraduate Center for Mental Health—can science explain how aspirin works. All that American doctors know is that aspirin does relieve such things as headache and peripheral pains of arthritis, so they prescribe it. And it sometimes has harmful side effects. "Acupuncture is Chinese aspirin," says Dr. Warren. "Of the two, I would choose acupuncture."

Dr. Warren, a former anesthesiologist now in psychiatric practice, is chairman of a committee appointed by New York Health Commissioner Joseph Cimino to study acupuncture. One purpose of the committee is to end the type of acupuncture practice that flourishes in New York's Chinatown—often in the hands of people who do not sterilize their needles and who turn out to have been laundresses or investment bankers back in Hong Kong. When one acupuncturist is asked about another, Dr. Warren says, he is likely to reply, "Oh, he fine man, but he no acupuncturist."

No one, says Dr. Warren, should go around sticking needles in people without long training in the art, and he can advise no one to submit to acupuncture without first trying everything orthodox medicine has to offer and then consulting a doctor. But new research seems to indicate that acupuncture will prove more than a fad, Warren says, and he has himself had an old knee injury relieved by a Chinatown needle man. A piece of cartilage popped out of place when he was playing high school foot-ball, and from time to time it pops back out, causing considerable pain, swelling and immobility. Always before, he had to go easy on the knee for two weeks, as the swelling first enabled the cartilage to slip back into place and then slowly went back down. With acupuncture the same natural healing process took only a couple of days.

"When the body is injured," Dr. Warren explains, "histamines are discharged, starting a chain reaction that makes the pain worse." In other words, the body—even without the aid of hypochondria—overreacts or maladapts to stress. It has been found that acupuncture somehow interrupts the reflex-are of the pain, dispels the histamines and keeps the inflammation to a minimum. Cortisone has a similar effect. But cortisone also has side effects—last year when Tony Conigliaro was having "emotional problems" as a California Angel, it was observed that he had just undergone cortisone treatment, which sometimes produces emotional confusion.

"This country is too drug-oriented," says Dr. Warren. "Any procedure that will reduce the introduction of toxic foreign agents into the body is to the good. Acupuncture could knock out 90% of the inappropriate drug usage in the Western world. I'm for that."

A good deal of what is believed in the East about acupuncture. Dr. Warren feels, "has its roots in mythology." But he has seen the effects of acupuncture on his knee—and on people who could not be helped with Western methods. "What will develop here," he says, "is American acupuncture. It won't be limited by notions about gold and silver needles. It will use sanitary, disposable needles. The acupuncture developed here will be as Chinese as chop suey. Which is not Chinese, but it works."

So acupuncture might eventually make its way into the mainstream of U.S. sports medicine without trainers having to translate the Yellow Emperor's book or fool around with little silver balls or get into embarrassing conversations with an athlete about his Yin and Yang. They might want to remember that term the acupuncturist pulled on Chi Cheng, though: "Your arm don't hurt, that's just a little suan tung."