Edith Davis, 87, acupuncture pioneer

When Edith Davis of Minneapolis was in her 50s, she opened Minnesota's first school of acupuncture.

Davis, who began studying Chinese medicine in the 1970s, died of cardiac complications May 19 in St. Paul. She was 87.

Davis and a few other "hearty souls" brought the practice of acupuncture to the Twin Cities, said former student Mark McKenzie of Eden Prairie, dean of the Minnesota College of Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine at Northwestern Health Sciences University in Bloomington.

When Davis started her school, the Minnesota Institute of Acupuncture and Herbal Studies, now the college that McKenzie runs, she brought acupuncturists from China to teach Midwesterners.

"She was just a powerhouse," McKenzie said. And while some flagged as they worked to gain acceptance and state approval for the practice, she would not give up.

In 1983, she co-founded of one of the first clinics in the state, said her daughter, Barbara Davis of Minneapolis. "She was the kind of person who could identify a problem and figure out a method to solve it," her daughter said. "She had a keen intellect and worked hard."

Bonnie Bolash of Crystal is another former student and a leader of Minneapolis' Acupuncture and Oriental Medicine Association of Minnesota, a group that Davis cofounded. She said she was amazed at Davis' accomplishments.

In the mid-1990s, Davis led a successful drive to pass legislation that licenses practitioners. In recent months, she helped Bolash in an unsuccessful effort at the Capitol centered on how practitioners are reimbursed while dealing with health insurance companies.

She was active in national acupuncture groups and had recently written a book on the subject.

For several years around 1970, she was a writer for the University of Minnesota's College of Education and Human Development. Later she worked for the state helping establish nursing standards.

A New York City native, she came to the Twin Cities in 1948 to work on a graduate degree in English at the University of Minnesota.

Her daughter said she was an early feminist and supported liberal politics.

In addition to her daughter Barbara, she is survived by her husband, Lionel; another daughter, Peggy of Colrain, Mass.; two sons, Julian of Minneapolis and Saul of Philadelphia; a sister, Naomi Replansky of New York, and two grandchildren.