ROBERTA BIVINS is a Lecturer at the Centre for the History of Science, Technology and Medicine, University of Manchester where she continues to research cross-cultural medical practices in twentieth-century Britain. In 1997 she took up a fellowship at the Wellcome Foundation for the History of Medicine in London.

• Introduction: Cultural Specificity and the Cross-Cultural Transmission of Expert Knowledge Sources for the Study of 'Medical Orientalism' Overview Understanding the Needle: Tool, Technique and Techne PART 1: EXPECTATIONS AND EXPERTISE: EARLY BRITISH RESPONSES TO CHINESE MEDICINE AND TECHNOLOGY The Macartney Mission: Commerce and Discovery Encountering Illness: Lay Expectations of Chinese Medicine Cultural Specificity and Diagnostic Consensus The Professional Opinion: Prepared for Failure Chinese Stories: Narratives of Contention and Narratives of Change The Power of the Pulse: An Early Response to Chinese Diagnostics Through the Eye of the Needle: Medical Politics and the Gillan Report Anderson and Eades: Perceptions of China Below the Salt Medicine's Mirror PART 2: THE NEEDLE TRANSFIXED: TEN RHYNE, KAEMPFER AND THE EUROPEAN GAZE Trade Winds: Wilhelm Ten Rhyne and the Cartography of the Needle Engelbert Kaempfer: Observation and Acupuncture Strangely Familiar: Western Responses to Moxibustion Curiosity Pricked: Lay Responses in France and Britain Eyeing the Needle: Medical Interpretations of Acupuncture Galvanizing The Needle PART 3: SHARPENING THE NEEDLE: BRITISH INTERPRETATIONS OF ACUPUNCTURE, 1802-30 Chinese Whispers: Lay Accounts of Chinese Medicine, 1810-40 Acupuncture in the Medical Periodicals, 1810-22 'For Which it is Most Particularly Recommended': James Churchill and the Singular Needle Interpretive Responses to A Treatise On Acupuncturation 'Any Means, However Ridiculous...': Analysing Acupuncture, 1822-30 Acupuncture Established? PART 4 NETWORKS AND INNOVATIONS: THE PERSISTENCE OF BRITISH ACUPUNCTURE, 1828-90 Networks and Witnesses: Persuasion and Diffusion beyond the Printed Page The Declining Visibility of Acupuncture, 1828-70 Acupuncture, Empiricism and Scepticism 1829-40: Subsidence 1840-70: Submergence The Visible Needle: Sites of Persistence, 1840-70 Medical Periodicals and the Limits of Local Culture The End of the Beginning: British Acupuncture,1890-1901 CONCLUSIONS Continuities in Cross-Cultural Medicine 'Acupuncture' and Assimilation Acupuncture for the National Health Service Continuities in the Cross-Cultural Transmission of Medical Knowledge