ABSTRACT
The widely agreed upon measurement of length used in therapeutic acupuncture today continues to be the cun (寸) or ts’un (寸), pronounced “chun,” which is also known as a “unit.” The words “cun” and ts’un are the same Chinese word but in two different systems of romanization, pinyin and Wade-Giles, respectively. These two words are widely interchanged to describe the proportional measurements of human anatomy, especially to indicate the depth of needle insertion or the location of the acupuncture site on the surface of the body. According to the ancient Neijing publication of traditional China, the standard for measuring the length and width of the bones of a person was based upon a human body height of 75 cun.
