A student stands over a patient, needle poised. They have a “perfect” prescription: a textbook combination of points harvested from a lecture slide on chronic lower back pain. But as the needle meets the skin, the student hesitates - the symptom of a quiet habit that has taken hold of our profession. We routinely say we “prescribe” points. It sounds efficient. It echoes the authority of biomedical culture and fits neatly into the insurance field. But vocabulary is never neutral; repeated long enough, it dictates behavior.
Peter Deadman
Peter Deadman has worked with Chinese medicine and health promotion for more than 45 years. He is the founder of the Journal of Chinese Medicine, co-author of A Manual of Acupuncture and author of Live Well Live Long: Teachings From the Chinese Nourishment of Life Tradition. He is also an international qigong lecturer and teacher. He can be contacted at: peter@jcm.co.uk.