The operation of acupuncturation has been seen by so few Europeans, that our books have made us acquainted with little more than its name. It is of Asiatic origin, and China and Japan peculiarly claim it as their own. A writer in the year 1802, mentions a discovery of its having been practised by the natives of America, and refers to Dampier’s voyages for an account of it; but I have in vain followed Capt. Dampier’s relation of his adventures, in crossing from the South to the North Sea, over the Isthmus of Darien, for any account of the operation, for he does not so much as name it. He speaks of a work intended to be published by his surgeon, Mr. Lionel Wafer, who accompanied the expedition, and to which he refers his readers for an account of the manners and customs of the interior of the country. Mr. Wafer was detained, from an accident, a considerable time amongst the Darien Indians, and did, on his return to England, publish this book, which I have therefore been at the trouble of perusing, but do not learn from it, that the operation of acupuncturation was practised in that part of America: it is true, Mr. Wafer describes a method of blood-letting employed by the natives, which is somewhat correspondent to acupuncturation, but both the intention and the effect are widely different. This operation is effected in the following manner: the patient is taken to a river, and seated upon a stone in the middle of it. A native, dexterous in the use of the bow, now shoots a number of small arrows into various parts of the body. These arrows are prepared purposely for this operation, and are so constructed, that they cannot penetrate beyond the skin, the veins of which, opened by the puncturation, furnish numerous streams of blood, which flow down the body of the patient. If this be the operation which has given rise to the idea, that acupuncturation is practised by the American natives, the conclusion is evidently erroneous, as it is simply a method of blood-letting, and is generally resorted to for the cure of fever. Now, acupuncturation has no reference whatever to bleeding, and it is rare, that even a drop of blood follows either the introduction or withdrawing of the needle; nor does it appear, that the Chinese and Japanese, with whom it originated, intended it as a method of abstracting blood, which is proved, not only by the consequences of the operation, but by the manner in which it is performed, and the nature of the diseases to which it is applied. If it could have been established, that the natives of the American Isthmus were acquainted with it, it would have been a curious, as well as an interesting enquiry, to ascertain whence they derived it.