Moxibustion

Moxibustion
Intervention
Moxibustion by Li Tang, Song dynasty
MeSH	D009071
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Moxibustion (Chinese: ; pinyin: jiǔ) is a traditional Chinese medicine therapy which consists of burning dried mugwort () on particular points on the body. It plays an important role in the traditional medical systems of China (including Tibet), Japan, Korea, Vietnam, and Mongolia. Suppliers usually age the mugwort and grind it up to a fluff; practitioners burn the fluff or process it further into a cigar-shaped stick. They can use it indirectly, with acupuncture needles, or burn it on the patient's skin.

The first Western remarks on moxibustion can be found in letters and reports written by Portuguese missionaries in 16th-century Japan. They called it “botão de fogo” (fire button), a term originally used for round-headed Western cautery irons. Hermann Buschoff, who published the first Western book on this matter in 1674 (English edition 1676), used the Japanese word mogusa. As the u is not very strongly enunciated, he spelled it “Moxa”. Later authors blended “Moxa” with the Latin word combustio (burning).

The name of the herb Artemisia (mugwort) species used to produce Moxa is yomogi (蓬) in Japan and ài or àicǎo (艾, 艾草) in Chinese.

The Chinese names for moxibustion are jiǔ ( 灸) or jiǔshù ( 灸術); Japanese use the same characters and pronounce them as kyū and kyūjutsu. In Korean the reading is tteum (뜸). Korean folklore attributes the development of moxibustion to the legendary emperor Dangun.

a Korean set of tteum

application of tteum on the back of a hand