The first Chinese WRITTEN text on medicine dates to approximately 200 BCE but we know that the practice of acupuncture goes much farther back than that, potentially from 3-5, 000 BCE.

FORBES: Acupuncture Infiltrates the University of Maryland and NEJM

But Western medicine doctors in China often look down on colleagues who practice traditional Chinese medicine, scoffing that it lacks scientific grounding, even if its precepts have been accepted by billions of people for thousands of years.

FORBES: Ancient Secrets