December 22, 2014.
Dear Dr. Stefano Marcelli, we noticed that your paper "Gross anatomy and acupuncture: A comparative approach to reappraise the meridian system" is very interesting. We respect you as a pioneer in this field.
Yours sincerely,
Kwang-Sup Soh, PhD, Editor-in-Chief of Journal of Acupuncture and Meridian Studies.

 

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Because of the Evolution did
horns transform into wider
heavier skull and brain?
Are acupuncture meridians
evo-devo structures?

© 2008-2017 Stefano Marcelli

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:: brown text means unrevised translation or incomplete work ::

NB: the author uses the words "channel", "meridian" and "vessel" as synonyms to define the system of lines, tubes or slices transporting the undemonstrated energy called Qi (pronounce "tchi") to all parts of the body. Anyway he considers "meridian" more suitable for scientific speech and literature, also because it is already employed in other fields of knowledge as in geography and morphogenesis.

 

"When comparing different species the ratio of brain weight to body weight does present a correlation with intelligence, though the actual brain weight has little or no effect. For example, the ratio of brain weight to body weight for fish is 1:5000; for reptiles it is about 1:1500; for birds, 1:220; for most mammals, 1:180, and for humans, 1:50." (see source)
The picture below liken the human skull, with the gallbladder acupuncture meridian superimposed (red-green lines) to a ram skull. The two shapes appear enough to coincide, though not all herbivores have twisted horns or twisted in the same way. According to Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM), the liver and its coupled organ gallbladder control brain functions and nail formation. Curiously TCM does report nothing about the relationship between meridians and horns, because in animals meridians were neither thought nor described. On the contrary, as a herbal drug horns are very important and prescribed on a regular basis.


The two pictures above, of a ram and an English bulldog skulls, could show the results of the evolutional passage from herbivorous mammals with empty great horns to carnivorous mammals with consistent wide brains. As shown below, in the picture of a sculpture found in the Villa of the Papyri's garden of Herculaneum ruins, that evolutionary passage caused our ancestors some psychological traumas and misidentifications, which were expressed as the myth of the god Pan and his fauns.

In modern literature (wikipedia: Villa of the Papyri):

Several scenes in Robert Harris' bestselling novel Pompeii are set in the Villa of the Papyri, just before the eruption engulfed it. The villa is mentioned as belonging to Roman aristocrat Pedius Cascus and his wife Rectina. (Pliny the Younger mentions Rectina, whom he calls the wife of Tascius, in Letter 16 of book VI of his Letters.) At the start of the eruption Rectina prepares to have the library evacuated and sends urgent word to her old friend, Pliny the Elder, who commands the Roman Navy at Misenum on the other side of the Bay of Naples. Pliny immediately sets out in a warship, and gets in sight of the villa, but the eruption prevents him from landing and taking off Rectina and her library — which is thus left for modern archaeologists to find.



The principal question posed in
the first page of these gross anatomy-acupuncture comparative studies continues to remain unanswered: - "How the old Chinese could "see" and describe all that?"

Ammon's horns carved on ancient Greece coins celebrating Alexander the Great (http://www.livius.org/aj-al/alexander/alexander08.html).

Now let's follow the strange case of Zhang Ruifang and her forehead left horn: in the video linked below you find her and its detailed story. Again we have a concrete clue in favour of the hypothesis that the acupuncture meridian system is a morphogenetic structure of an unknown type. The path of the Gallbladder meridian over the skull of the vertebrates (man is among exceptions) can represent and guide the morphogenesis of at least two types of horns: of a ram and goat. The tip of the first would correspond to GB-12 point, that of the second to GB-14 point.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mCMWRu_fL44&feature=player_embedded


 

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