Doctors are the persons helping people keep healthy. Some doctors use magic, some use needles and others use pills. Who are they? Among the Indians of North America the "medicine man" was a very important person. He could cure illnesses, and he could speak to the spirits--the supernatural forces that controlled the world. The Indians believed that bad spirits made people ill. So, when people were ill, the medicine man tried to help them by using magic--he spoke to the good spirits and asked for their help. Many people were cured because they thought that the spirits were helping them. But really these people cured themselves. Sometimes your own mind is the best doctor for you. The medicine men were often successful for another reason, too. They knew about plants that really can cure illnesses. A lot of modern medicines are made from plants that were used by medicine men hundreds of years ago. For more than five thousand years only Chinese doctors have used needles to fight illnesses. This method is called acupuncture  . The doctor studies the sick person carefully. Then he puts needles into that person's body at the right places for his illness. Chinese doctors believe that they can control the body's natural forces in this way. At first, doctors in the West thought that this was just another kind of magic. Recently, however, they have found out that it is possible to cure many illnesses like this because the needles help the body to produce its own "medicines". In this way the body cures itself. Using needles to fight illnesses  _  .
used to be popular over the world is used as another kind of magic is easy to learn by anyone was first used by the Chinese