Acupuncture in the U.S.

Widespread popularity of acupuncture in the U.S. can be traced to 1971 when James Reston, a reporter for the New York Times, published a front page article about the alleviation of post-operative pain after an emergency appendectomy in China with three acupuncture needles.
Prior to that time, only several brief passages existed in the historical medical literature dating from the early to mid-1800s.
Today, there are more than 12,000 practicing acupuncturists (2,000 physicians; 10,000 non-physicians) in the United States.