Acupuncture in the Management of Head and Neck Pain: An Introduction

Abstract

The treatment of medical disorders with the insertion of needles into various parts of the body originated thousands of years ago. The earliest acupuncture needles, small shards of stone, date to Neolithic times (8000–3500 BC). An ice age mummy discovered in Southern Tyrol in 1988, and estimated to have lived around 3200 BC, was found to bear numerous tattoo scars, many corresponding to known acupuncture points (Samadelli et al., J Cultural Heritage 16(5):753–758, 2015). By contrast, the earliest Western medical document, the Edwin Smith Papyrus from Egypt, dates to 1600 BC, and the works attributed to Hippocrates were written even more recently, around 470–360 BC.