My View of Chinese Medicine: (Part II) Ear-acupuncture

Illustration Showing All the Acupuncture Points on the Ear

In the previous article, I mentioned that acupuncture is able to treat acute diseases. In fact, most patients come to see doctors because of acute diseases, such as acute sprains, convulsive twitches, heat-stroke stupor, trifacial neuralgia, migraine, tooth pain, facial paralysis, and the like. These are serious diseases, which require immediate treatment and will not get better on their own. Patients are in so much pain that they need to see the doctor. I will list a large number of similar cases in articles to follow.

I gave an example last time, which talked about the treatment of bloodletting at the tip of the ear. To the surprise of the family it returned a patient’s high fever back to normal in just five minutes. How come this method of acupuncture achieved such a quick result? It is because bloodletting at the tip of the ear is just like opening a window; it shifts the fresh air and releases the hot and humid poisonous gasses from the body. The ear does not look very remarkable, but its relationship to the body’s internal organs is quite important. Due to my occupation, I always pay extra attention to my patients ears. Sometimes because I am so concentrated on looking at someone’s ears I forget to listen to them. The human ear is just like an exhibition hall, which shows everything, such as the true condition of a human’s heart, liver, internal organs, life, and history. I get a panoramic view with just one glance. I don’t need to ask the patient questions anymore. To me, that just tells me if the patient is actually telling me everything.

The distribution of acupuncture points on the ear auricle is like an inverse embryo with the head facing downwards and the hip facing upwards. The various positions on the body have corresponding points on the ear. So it is not surprising to see the pathological changes of any position in the body from the ear. For example, a slanting wrinkle on the earlobe can be seen on a person with coronary disease, a ring-like hollow around the ear auricle, called a plum pattern, can be found on a lung cancer patient’s ear, a person with schizophrenia has indentation on the pinna of the ear. Without a doubt, even losing a tooth will be shown on the ear.

The auricle of the ear is a unique microcosm that can display complete information about the whole body. The human body’s twelve yin and yang channels on the hands and feet all reach the ear either directly or indirectly. In “The Chapter of Verbal Enquiries” in Ling Shu (Spiritual Junctures), it says, “In the ear, all of the energy channels are put together.” In “The Chapter of Essays on Words of Gold and Truth” in Su Wen (Questions of Simplicity), it says, “Red from the south goes to the heart, opens on the ear, hides spirit in the heart.” So, we can tell one’s congenital physique from one’s ear colour, high or low position, thickness, flat or round shape, and firmness. We may even be able to tell the pathologies of many generations from the ear’s shape and appearance.

So, how do we judge the actual situation of the internal organs by observing the ear’s colour, shape, or thickness? In “The Chapter of Organs” in Ling Shu it says, “If the ear is black and small, the kidney is small. If the ear is thick, the kidney is big. If the ear is high, the kidney is high. If the back of the ear falls then the kidney is low. If the ear is firm, the kidney is firm. If the ear is thin the kidney is weak. If the kidney is small then it is safe and difficult to be injured. If it is firm, it does not get sick. If the kidney is big, big means empty and an empty kidney causes deafness or tinnitus.”

Most of us may not know that one of the major characteristics of ear acupuncture treatment is stopping pain with obvious curative effectiveness.

One day, a patient with tooth pain came to see me. He said, “Doctor, the money I spent on dentists over these past years could have brought me a house….” After one ear of acupuncture treatment, the pain stopped and he no longer suffered from the tooth-pain.

Translated from:
http://zhengjian.org/zj/articles/2002/12/13/19612.html