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Miriam Lee, a Chinese acupuncturist, is arrested for practicing out of her home in California.

1974

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ICM
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Acupuncture is illegal, so Lee works in a factory during the day and provides treatments at night and on weekends.

At her trial, her patients fill the courtroom in protest: "claiming their right to the only medicine that had truly helped them" (Abacus Chinese Medicine).

Within a few days of the trial and the publicity it attracts, acupuncture is authorized as an "experimental procedure" in California.

In 1976, it will finally be made fully legal.