Nguyễn Tài Thu

Nguyễn Tài Thu (1931 to 2021) was a Vietnamese physician known for his specialty in traditional Chinese medicine, above all acupuncture, which earned him the nickname King of Acupuncture. Born in a Confucian family in a village of Hoài Đức District near Hanoi, he decided to become a doctor after seeing the wounded and dead of wartime Hanoi. He began studying acupuncture in 1952, was sent to China in 1953 to study traditional Chinese medicine for six years, and graduated in 1958 before serving in military hospitals in Vietnam. In the late 1950s he devised a new technique called tân châm, meaning renewed acupuncture. At his proposal the first Vietnam Acupuncture Association was founded in 1968, and he helped it grow into a body of nearly ten thousand members. He held ties with scientists in thirty-eight countries and was a professor and honorary doctor of sixteen overseas universities. This entry records what he held and did, and is not medical advice.