When Yee Campbell was a kid, she was “skittish” about letting her dad put needles in her when she had the flu.
But after battling the bug for several days, she gave in, allowing her father, acupuncturist Eric Tao, to do the deed.
“Within an hour, I was up and eating and feeling good,” said Campbell, who lives in Fort Collins.
Tao, who practiced acupuncture in the Denver area for 28 years, died of congestive heart failure at a Wheat Ridge care facility Sept. 2. He was 81.
He tried to talk his nurse-midwife daughter, Kai, of Chicago, into going into acupuncture and wanted her to train in Beijing.
Although she declined, she says she is a firm believer in the ancient practice.
When she was in elementary school, she had an eye problem.
Her father put a needle in an area just outside the eye, “and it was better in 25 minutes,” she said.
“I never missed a day of school for sickness, from kindergarten through the 12th grade,” she said.
At the smallest sign of a cold or other malady, her father would insert some needles and ward off the illness, she said.
Tao was an acupuncturist long before the practice was widely accepted in the U.S., and sometimes he felt the wrath of the medical community and the public.
Tao gave lectures at his home and traveled to other states to visit patients and give lectures on acupuncture.
In the 1970s, during one of those out-of-state trips, he was arrested by a Nebraska sheriff for practicing medicine without a license. He was jailed for the weekend in a small town. His patients and students bailed him out of jail, said Kai Tao.
Eric Tao was generous and flexible, willing to take a loaf of zucchini bread as payment, or nothing at all, Campbell said.
He would see patients at whatever time was convenient for them, she said.
Often after a treatment, his wife, Helen, would mix an herbal drink for the patient.
“One woman told my mother it tasted awful but made her feel better,” said Campbell.
Eric Hsi-Yu Tao was born Nov. 2, 1925, in Beijing, attended a Catholic school and at 14 began acupuncture training with his uncle.
He served in the British Royal Navy as a torpedo man and then returned to China.
He fled to Taiwan to escape the Communist regime and practiced acupuncture at the Naval General Hospital in Zuoying.
Tao later served as translator for Dr. Wu Wei-Ping, who was considered a master acupuncturist.
Tao met Helen Shoo-Chen in Taiwan, and they married April 6, 1965.
In addition to his wife and daughters, he is survived by his son, Shen, of Dallas, and six grandchildren.
Staff writer Virginia Culver can be reached at 303-954-1223 or vculver@denverpost.com.
