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ACUPUNCTURE
Growing up in Glasgow just after the second World War I suppose I was what Victorian novelist call a ”sickly child”. Subsisting on a diet of pigs feet, cabbage and potatoes, supplemented by National dried milk and orange juice, with liberal doses of castor oil, I was inclined to contract whatever diseases and other conditions that were prevalent at the time: measles, whooping cough, mumps, chickenpox, bronchitis, impetigo, fungal infections and of course earache and toothache. My recollection is that there were few treatments available mostly consisting of iodine, dettol, castor oil; whisky and a foul smelling cure for everything called the poultice. Whisky was administered for a toothache, and iodine was applied to every sore, scratch, graze and rupture anywhere on the skin. Iodine certainly killed the pain and did so in much the same way as plunging your hand into a bath of acid would make you instantly forget you had just stubbed your toe. Hot castor oil was poured into the ear to ‘relieve’ the pain of earache and a poultice was used for just about everything else. This was an off-yellow coloured gooey mess that smelled utterly repulsive. It was heated to a temperature a few degrees lower that the sun’s core and applied with a flannel cloth to the offending part of the body. It was used regularly for chest complaints and was said to be very effective for bronchitis. I’ve no doubt if it was applied to a child nowadays a visit from PC Plod and some stroppy social workers would ensue followed by a civil claim for compensation from the kid’s lawyer. There was of course other forms of treatment available and when I developed bronchitis, almost certainly due to living in one of those damp tenements, so naively beloved and revered by contemporary social historians and photographers, from the comfort of their centrally heated villas in Bearsden, my dad used to take me for a walk and encourage me to inhale the fumes from the tar layer’s buckets as they mended the roads and pavements. I suppose that was my first introduction to what we now call complementary medicine. Just recently, some fifty years later I had my second.
A few weeks ago I began to feel a pins and needles sensation down my left arm and a stabbing pain just to the right of my left shoulder blade. Since most of my so-called friends have been predicting for years that my love of beer; fags and fish suppers will be the death of me, my first rational thought was “it’s a coronary”. But, since there was no shortness of breath, pains in the chest or nausea, I re-assessed my initial diagnosis and concluded I had no idea what it was and I should perhaps visit my doctor. It is not often that I visit a doctor nowadays, consequently I still have most of my bits intact: appendix, tonsils, teeth; hip and knee joints (they may not be in perfect working order but they’re all mine) so I reluctantly made an appointment and about a week and a half later I arrived at the local medical centre. The first GP I spoke with suggested it was a trapped nerve whilst writing out a prescription for painkillers, which cost around six quid if you use the prescription and about thirty bob if you buy them over the counter. The whole process took about three minutes and most of that time was spent taking my shirt off and putting it back on again. In the end I settled for a heat spray from the local pharmacy that burnt my shoulder and led my colleagues at work to complain about the smell. Having no success I returned to the surgery two weeks later where another GP diagnosed cervical spondilytis and wrote out yet another prescription for a different type of painkiller advising me not to take both of them at once. It was at this point that I thought my colleagues at work, who by this time were suffocating for the smell of the heat spray, were correct and I should visit a complementary therapist at a private clinic somewhere on the west coast.
The clinic was situated in the countryside about 8 miles from my home an as I was traveling by public transport I gave myself plenty of time to get there. In the event I alighted from the bus just outside the clinic gate fifty minutes early. So I lit up a cigarette and leaned on the gate watching a hare frolic about in the undergrowth. Every now and then it would stop and give me a look but it seemed to have concluded that as I wasn’t carrying a Kalashnikov or accompanied by a couple of greyhounds I was relatively harmless. In any case I’m sure he new he could outrun me without any problem. After finishing my cigarette and saying goodbye to my new friend I walked up the tree-lined driveway to the clinic. I was pleasantly surprised to find there was a small tearoom facing the main building and still having some time on my hands I went in and ordered a pot of tea- wondering what I would get. Would it be dandelion, mint, or perhaps some concotion made from the stewed bark of a rare South American tree that is extremely toxic unless heated to the right temperature? In the end it was an ordinary tea bag and the milk didn’t come from a
threatened species of goat from the Himalayas but from Tesco. Well, I thought, “perhaps these complementary people aren’t really that strange after all” and finished the whole pot.
About ten minutes later I entered the clinic which was an old mansion house with wood panelled walls, coal fires and leather armchairs and sofas. The place was busy with people some in their late teens and others clearly much older. The receptionist, a pleasant, matronly type, sat at a highly polished old wooden table and asked me for some very brief details, name, address and telephone number. After I’d completed the form I was invited to sit down and did so on a very comfortable armchair next to a coal fire and watched all the bad backs, dodgy hip joints and arthritic knees go for treatment. Most of them I noticed, returned looking none the worse for wear. Almost exactly on the appointed time a small man in his late forties early fifties appeared and invited me into a consulting room that looked something like a Victorian study with bookshelves, display cases, two large leather sofas and a large desk. He asked what my problem was and I gave brief details of what my doctor had said, to which he replied with one word: “treatment”. I then followed him into another large room which was split into a number of small cubicles. Inside one of the cubicles I removed my shirt and was invited to sit on a small stool. The treatment began by the man feeling my neck and shoulders after which he said one word|: “tension”. At this point I felt a series of small pricks around my shoulder area and concluded that he was testing my reflexes. When the sensation stopped he indicated I should remain seated and left the cubicle to be replaced almost immediately by his female assistant. “Have you had acupuncture before?” she asked. The smart answer would have been “No and I’m not having it now either” but it came out as a simple “No”. She then attached the needles to a machine not unlike a car battery charge with four wires two yellow, one red and one blue. When she turned it on a series of small impulses ran down my neck along my shoulders and down my left arm. The sensation was neither painful or pleasurable and for the next twenty minutes or so I sat on the stool with my shoulders looking like a pin cushion and read a newspaper that I had spread out on the bed facing me. Every now and then I would have a look at the machine and wonder: “what wire should I cut?” I could of course just have flicked the switch to the off position. But before I had the machine figured out the small man and his assistant came back into the cubicle. She removed the needles and wiped my shoulders with some liquid that stung a bit like a cheap aftershave and I went to get up from the stool. Forcibly but gently, the man moved me back into the seated position and took my head in both hands turning it quickly to the left and then to the right. He took hold of my arm twisted it around for a bit and then prodded between my shoulder blades. “Two weeks” he said and left the cubicle. His assistant helped me on with my shirt and jacket. “He wants you to come back in two weeks” she said. I paid for my treatment at the matron’s desk, made the appointment and left. When I got to the bottom of the driveway I leaned on the gate; lit a cigarette and looked for my March hare but he had gone, so had the pain.
Growing up in Glasgow just after the second World War I suppose I was what Victorian novelist call a ”sickly child”. Subsisting on a diet of pigs feet, cabbage and potatoes, supplemented by National dried milk and orange juice, with liberal doses of castor oil, I was inclined to contract whatever diseases and other conditions that were prevalent at the time: measles, whooping cough, mumps, chickenpox, bronchitis, impetigo, fungal infections and of course earache and toothache. My recollection is that there were few treatments available mostly consisting of iodine, dettol, castor oil; whisky and a foul smelling cure for everything called the poultice. Whisky was administered for a toothache, and iodine was applied to every sore, scratch, graze and rupture anywhere on the skin. Iodine certainly killed the pain and did so in much the same way as plunging your hand into a bath of acid would make you instantly forget you had just stubbed your toe. Hot castor oil was poured into the ear to ‘relieve’ the pain of earache and a poultice was used for just about everything else. This was an off-yellow coloured gooey mess that smelled utterly repulsive. It was heated to a temperature a few degrees lower that the sun’s core and applied with a flannel cloth to the offending part of the body. It was used regularly for chest complaints and was said to be very effective for bronchitis. I’ve no doubt if it was applied to a child nowadays a visit from PC Plod and some stroppy social workers would ensue followed by a civil claim for compensation from the kid’s lawyer. There was of course other forms of treatment available and when I developed bronchitis, almost certainly due to living in one of those damp tenements, so naively beloved and revered by contemporary social historians and photographers, from the comfort of their centrally heated villas in Bearsden, my dad used to take me for a walk and encourage me to inhale the fumes from the tar layer’s buckets as they mended the roads and pavements. I suppose that was my first introduction to what we now call complementary medicine. Just recently, some fifty years later I had my second.
A few weeks ago I began to feel a pins and needles sensation down my left arm and a stabbing pain just to the right of my left shoulder blade. Since most of my so-called friends have been predicting for years that my love of beer; fags and fish suppers will be the death of me, my first rational thought was “it’s a coronary”. But, since there was no shortness of breath, pains in the chest or nausea, I re-assessed my initial diagnosis and concluded I had no idea what it was and I should perhaps visit my doctor. It is not often that I visit a doctor nowadays, consequently I still have most of my bits intact: appendix, tonsils, teeth; hip and knee joints (they may not be in perfect working order but they’re all mine) so I reluctantly made an appointment and about a week and a half later I arrived at the local medical centre. The first GP I spoke with suggested it was a trapped nerve whilst writing out a prescription for painkillers, which cost around six quid if you use the prescription and about thirty bob if you buy them over the counter. The whole process took about three minutes and most of that time was spent taking my shirt off and putting it back on again. In the end I settled for a heat spray from the local pharmacy that burnt my shoulder and led my colleagues at work to complain about the smell. Having no success I returned to the surgery two weeks later where another GP diagnosed cervical spondilytis and wrote out yet another prescription for a different type of painkiller advising me not to take both of them at once. It was at this point that I thought my colleagues at work, who by this time were suffocating for the smell of the heat spray, were correct and I should visit a complementary therapist at a private clinic somewhere on the west coast.
The clinic was situated in the countryside about 8 miles from my home an as I was traveling by public transport I gave myself plenty of time to get there. In the event I alighted from the bus just outside the clinic gate fifty minutes early. So I lit up a cigarette and leaned on the gate watching a hare frolic about in the undergrowth. Every now and then it would stop and give me a look but it seemed to have concluded that as I wasn’t carrying a Kalashnikov or accompanied by a couple of greyhounds I was relatively harmless. In any case I’m sure he new he could outrun me without any problem. After finishing my cigarette and saying goodbye to my new friend I walked up the tree-lined driveway to the clinic. I was pleasantly surprised to find there was a small tearoom facing the main building and still having some time on my hands I went in and ordered a pot of tea- wondering what I would get. Would it be dandelion, mint, or perhaps some concotion made from the stewed bark of a rare South American tree that is extremely toxic unless heated to the right temperature? In the end it was an ordinary tea bag and the milk didn’t come from a
threatened species of goat from the Himalayas but from Tesco. Well, I thought, “perhaps these complementary people aren’t really that strange after all” and finished the whole pot.
About ten minutes later I entered the clinic which was an old mansion house with wood panelled walls, coal fires and leather armchairs and sofas. The place was busy with people some in their late teens and others clearly much older. The receptionist, a pleasant, matronly type, sat at a highly polished old wooden table and asked me for some very brief details, name, address and telephone number. After I’d completed the form I was invited to sit down and did so on a very comfortable armchair next to a coal fire and watched all the bad backs, dodgy hip joints and arthritic knees go for treatment. Most of them I noticed, returned looking none the worse for wear. Almost exactly on the appointed time a small man in his late forties early fifties appeared and invited me into a consulting room that looked something like a Victorian study with bookshelves, display cases, two large leather sofas and a large desk. He asked what my problem was and I gave brief details of what my doctor had said, to which he replied with one word: “treatment”. I then followed him into another large room which was split into a number of small cubicles. Inside one of the cubicles I removed my shirt and was invited to sit on a small stool. The treatment began by the man feeling my neck and shoulders after which he said one word|: “tension”. At this point I felt a series of small pricks around my shoulder area and concluded that he was testing my reflexes. When the sensation stopped he indicated I should remain seated and left the cubicle to be replaced almost immediately by his female assistant. “Have you had acupuncture before?” she asked. The smart answer would have been “No and I’m not having it now either” but it came out as a simple “No”. She then attached the needles to a machine not unlike a car battery charge with four wires two yellow, one red and one blue. When she turned it on a series of small impulses ran down my neck along my shoulders and down my left arm. The sensation was neither painful or pleasurable and for the next twenty minutes or so I sat on the stool with my shoulders looking like a pin cushion and read a newspaper that I had spread out on the bed facing me. Every now and then I would have a look at the machine and wonder: “what wire should I cut?” I could of course just have flicked the switch to the off position. But before I had the machine figured out the small man and his assistant came back into the cubicle. She removed the needles and wiped my shoulders with some liquid that stung a bit like a cheap aftershave and I went to get up from the stool. Forcibly but gently, the man moved me back into the seated position and took my head in both hands turning it quickly to the left and then to the right. He took hold of my arm twisted it around for a bit and then prodded between my shoulder blades. “Two weeks” he said and left the cubicle. His assistant helped me on with my shirt and jacket. “He wants you to come back in two weeks” she said. I paid for my treatment at the matron’s desk, made the appointment and left. When I got to the bottom of the driveway I leaned on the gate; lit a cigarette and looked for my March hare but he had gone, so had the pain.