Midwest College of Oriental Medicine is an educational institution with locations in Racine, Wisconsin and on the north side of Chicago, Illinois, that offers education and clinical training in acupuncture, oriental medicine including Chinese herbs, tua na massage, and nutrition.
The school is one of the oldest colleges of acupuncture in the United States. It was established in Chicago in 1979, just a few years after the 1975 opening of the first U.S. acupuncture school. It later expanded to Racine.
Midwest College participated in the founding of the Council of Colleges of Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine, one of the parent organizations of the Accreditation Commission for Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine (ACAOM). Midwest College of Oriental Medicine has been accredited by ACAOM since 1993. Since 1996, the school has been formally affiliated with Guangzhou University of Chinese Medicine.
Master's degrees are awarded in oriental medicine and acupuncture. The oriental medicine program takes at least four years to complete; graduates receive a B.S. degree in nutrition concurrent with the master's degree. The acupuncture program requires a minimum of 2.5 years. Most students at Midwest College are mature adults with experience in other areas. In 2003, the school reported that its students had an average age of about 40 and that many had worked in other health-care fields, such as physical therapy or medicine.
Free acupuncture and other services are provided in the clinics in which Midwest College students practice their skills.
Famous quotes containing the words college, oriental and/or medicine:
“I do not think that a Physician should be admitted into the College till he could bring proofs of his having cured, in his own person, at least four incurable distempers.”
—Philip Dormer Stanhope, 4th Earl Chesterfield (1694–1773)
“The Oriental philosophy approaches easily loftier themes than the modern aspires to; and no wonder if it sometimes prattle about them. It only assigns their due rank respectively to Action and Contemplation, or rather does full justice to the latter. Western philosophers have not conceived of the significance of Contemplation in their sense.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“We have to ask ourselves whether medicine is to remain a humanitarian and respected profession or a new but depersonalized science in the service of prolonging life rather than diminishing human suffering.”
—Elisabeth Kübler-Ross (b. 1926)