GETTYIMAGES, BARBARA BELLINGHAM
While traveling in China in 1971, two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist James Reston underwent an emergency appendectomy, after which Chinese medical personnel treated his pain with acupuncture. His description of the experience in the pages of the New York Times brought the practice of traditional Chinese medicine front and center.
Two years later, Lewis Thomas, then president of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center, delivered an address in which he said, “These are bad times for reason, all around. Suddenly, all of the major ills are being coped with by acupuncture. If not acupuncture, it is apricot pits.” Thomas was referring to laetrile, a compound extracted from the pits of apricots and bitter almonds, one of the most sought-after alternative treatments for cancer at the time, but one ...
