11/20/2025
We use Dr. Lee’s treatments every day in clinic.
Miriam Lee, originally named Lee Chuan Djin (李传真), is a well-known name among community acupuncturists. She was born in Shandong province in 1926, and trained as a nurse and a midwife in China before becoming an acupuncturist. She moved to California in 1966. At that time, acupuncture was illegal, so she worked on an assembly line at a Hewlett Packard plant. A young man from her church was unable to walk after surgery on his spine; Dr. Lee broke the law to give him acupuncture. Acupuncture restored his mobility and he returned to work. He was the first of hundreds of patients who came for acupuncture treatment at her house, as no one would rent her an office to practice illegally. According to lore, at one point, there were so many people waiting on the back stairs of her house that the staircase broke.
In 1973 an MD offered to share his office with Dr. Lee. She treated between 75 and 80 people per day, 14 to 17 patients per hour. During that time she developed her famous treatment “Miriam Lee’s Great 10 Points” a safe, effective treatment that she applied quickly and easily to many of her patients.
She was arrested and fined for practicing medicine without a license in 1974; she was released a few days later after over a hundred of her patients showed up at the courthouse in protest of her arrest. Within a few days acupuncture was legally made an “experimental procedure” and she was granted the right to treat patients at San Francisco University. The $500 fine was refunded and she was spared the six-month prison sentence. She worked with other practitioners to advocate for licensing acupuncturists. In 1976, Governor Jerry Brown signed the legislation that formally legalized the practice of acupuncture.
She died in 2009, but continues to be a formative influence on many practitioners -- we use "Miriam Lee's Great 10 Points" every day in clinic. Miriam Lee shared her clinical methods with hundreds of students and wrote books about her work. New community acupuncturists in training are often reassured by her story, reminded that if Miriam Lee could treat 17 patients an hour, they can definitely learn to treat six an hour!
