A pioneer in acupuncture in Norway

Norsk Forening for Klassisk Akupunktur (Norwegian Association for Classical Acupuncture) (NFKA) was formed in 1978 with Dr Georg Bentze as its chairman. It was the only association for practitioners of acupuncture up until 1994.

Acupuncture in Norway

When the Hungarian doctor Georg Bentze came to Norway as a refugee in the 1950s, he was the first practitioner of acupuncture in the country. He had been in conflict with Norwegian health authorities and Den Norske Lægeforening (The Norwegian Medical Association) because of his acupuncture practice.

In a quote from his book Gammalkinesisk Akupunktur one understands that he was very serious about his profession: “Today we experience a degradation of the original Chinese acupuncture. Instead of the traditional method of diagnosis and therapy, one wants to derive at easy methods of learning to practice acupuncture: it should be easy to acquire, during short courses or by a short self-study. What one then practices is called ‘symptomatic acupuncture’, or ‘new acupuncture’. It is also called ‘new Chinese acupuncture’ since people in China also want to take this shortcut. What is being used are books with recipes for different diagnoses, popularly called ‘cookbooks’, that enable you to arrive at a method of treatment. The difference between an acupuncturist and one of these needle-prickers, regardless of their education in other fields, is larger than that between a doctor and a nurse.”

(Quote translated by Guro Brand.)

Source

GEORG BENTZE.

"Gammalkinesisk akupunktur." PUBLICATION:Västerås, Ica, 1987, 219 s., ill., 21 cm. ISBN:91-534-1125-0