Is Chinese Pulse Diagnosis the Key to Preventive Medicine? By Carol Greenhouse,

"Good news. We didn't find anything." The doctor delivered her verdict from the doorway of my room in the emergency ward of a hospital in Troy, New York, where I'd gone a few weeks ago for sharp abdominal pain. But after $700 in tests, I still didn't know what was wrong with me. Further examination by a gynecologist ($400) didn't turn up anything either. The next step would be to see a gastroenterologist ($200) for a CT scan ($500).

During a year-long search for the problem, I'd seen two family doctors, a naturopathic physician, a nurse practitioner and an acupuncturist, who in the absence of a diagnosis inserted needles into my hands, arms, feet, legs, forehead and solar plexus based on my description of the pain. Cost: some $1,000 and plenty of worry.

So, two weeks after the emergency room episode, I was relieved to find myself finally seated across from Leon Hammer, a master of the Chinese technique of pulse diagnosis, at his rustic cedar home down an unmarked driveway in New York's Adirondack Mountains. The 84-year-old Cornell University med school graduate enjoyed a long career as a psychiatrist, heading a child guidance clinic and studying with Gestalt founder Fritz Perls. But he was frustrated by the profession's inattention to the role of the body and physical touch in healing the mind. When he first met an acupuncturist in 1971, he recalls, "I'd always wanted to be a doctor, since I was a boy, and when I stepped into his consultation room, I knew this was what I'd had in mind."