Health center pinpoints an alternative treatment

The woman lounging tranquilly on the padded chair with needles bristling from her hands, feet, and ears is getting the kind of treatment that for years has been a staple of the rich and hip and of devotees of Eastern medicine.

But this is no Newbury Street spa. It is the basement of a health clinic in Roxbury.

Here, the mostly minority, mostly poor medical clients who were assumed to mistrust alternative treatments or to not have the means to afford them have packed the closet-size waiting room day after day to receive the services of an acupuncturist. They have come looking for treatments for problems from migraines to meningitis, AIDS to alcoholism.

''"I've had surgery, I've taken pills, nothing worked. This works," said the woman with the needles in her hands and ears, Carolynn Jones, who says the once-a-week treatments have eliminated her chronic arthritis and sinus pain.

In just a few years, the free clinic in the Dimock Community Health Center has grown from an empty office into a thriving practice. It has defied the conventional wisdom of clinic administrators, who had initially resisted and has won praise for its director, Richard Mandell, who supervises students from the New England School of Acupuncture in Watertown.

The clinic has also raised questions about the use of alternative treatments on a vulnerable clientelle. Though acupuncture is being embraced by more and more hospitals, it is usually used in conjunction with more conventional and scientifically tested treatments.

''The general feeling is that acupuncture has shown to be effective for certain conditions," such as postoperative dental pain, and arthritis, said Dr. Brian Berman, director of the Center for Integrative Medicine at the University of Maryland School of Medicine, which has conducted and funded scores of national research on the practice. ''There's promise, but some of the research is difficult to interpret. People say we need better-quality studies. It's not a panacea for everything, either. I think we've got a long way to go in really seeing what its role is, as far as mainstream care. The fact is many people are using acupuncture, so we in the medical community have got to catch up."

There is no advertising for Mandell's services, no posters hanging inside corner-store windows, no fliers detailing hours of operation at sub shops and community centers. But over the past two years, word about the treatment, more typically found inside spas and incense-filled private practices in the city's more affluent neighborhoods, has been buzzing in Roxbury, Dorchester, and beyond by word of mouth.

''People said to me, 'Who's going to get acupuncture in Roxbury?'" said Mandell, who uses a portion of student tuition and donations to keep the clinic running. ''This community is no different than an other community in Boston. People here feel pain, and they want it to stop."

Obtaining the space to run the center took some persuasion, said Mandell, who has practiced acupuncture for 15 years. Financial pressures at Dimock have forced Mandell and his five-student rotations to move the center from a larger location on the sprawling campus to one with four small rooms and six beds.

But the modest atmosphere hasn't put off clients.

''He saved my life," said Winnie Yuen, who has also brought her teenage son in for asthma treatment while she gets treated for anxiety and joint pain. ''The wonderful thing is that there are no side effects. My son is cured, and I feel good."

Mandell's appointment book is full. The phone rings off the hook, as many residents walk in armed with magazines, hoping, as at a hair salon or barber shop, that they can get a canceled spot.

''I want to make an appointment," said Boston resident Bacz Shagracia in broken English. The native Spanish speaker suffers from back pain that keeps her up most nights. Mandell skims over his appointment book, besmirched with pencil markings and erasures.

''I won't pretend that we cure everybody who walks through the door, but we try," he said, ushering in Shagracia. ''The nice thing about acupuncture is that the worst thing that can happen to you is nothing."