Background: Assisted reproductive technology (ART) is the routine treatment for infertility. The success rate for individual sessions is generally not high, and many patients need to undergo several cycles. To increase their chances of success, many patients turn to acupuncture to complement ART. Many clinical trials of acupuncture helping in vitro fertilization (IVF) have focused only on IVF-embryo transfer (ET). In some difficult cases, when even IVF cannot be offered, acupuncture and Chinese herbs can improve the patients' conditions to reach a level at which ART can be successful. Cases: Six cases showed how acupuncture and Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM), using Chinese herbs, can make IVF possible in difficult cases and how they can also help prevent miscarriage afterward. The cases included patients with amenorrhea, sperm disorders, polycystic ovary syndrome, diminished ovarian reserve (DOR), tubal blockage, premenopause, and premature ovarian insufficiency. Results: Acupuncture and Chinese herbs worked together to help make ART possible or easier. The ART used for these patients included intrauterine insemination, IVF, IVF with a donor egg, and introcytoplasmic sperm injection. In 3 cases, IVF was not initially successful but was successful after TCM treatment. Conclusions: These 6 cases demonstrated the positive effect of a combined approach, using acupuncture and herbs to reduce DOR and regulate hormonal disorders, creating sustainable environments for conceiving and maintaining pregnancy, thus, translating into clinical success. Clinical observation of these cases sheds new light on designing future clinical trials and practice of TCM for practitioners who provide infertility treatments.

What is puzzling about ghosts in biblical literature is why there are so few of them. Like all ancient religious texts, the Bible is of course suffused with what moderns call the paranormal, the preternatural, the supernatural, the magical, or what some would call the numinous. Its pages are populated with goblins and gods, sprites and spirits, demons and deities, beings that made up an irreducible part of every biblical writer's mental map of reality. As for the spirits of the dead, though, it says hardly anything substantial at all. The majority of references to ghosts in the Hebrew Bible are found in prohibitions and maledictions. None save one-that of Saul summoning Samuel's ghost for one last, postmortem prophecy (I Samuel 28)-describes any significant interaction with human beings. All ghosts, if they are mentioned at all-with again the exception of Samuel's-are seen as weak, powerless, otherwise confined and contained. There are no reports of malevolent ghosts terrorizing the living, no wandering spirits looking to avenge their bitter death, no hungry ghosts suing for offering and comfort. By the time of the New Testament, ghosts have all but vanished. One made it into the Gospels, but it turns out to be Jesus walking on water (Mark 6.49 and parallels). 1 Even conceding the final triumph of monotheistic Yahwism in biblical Israel that eliminated all competing religious and numinous expressions, and even taking into account of the apocalypticism of New Testament writers who habitually believed the dead would repose in God until the general resurrection, the disappearance of ghosts from the biblical records is more than a little disconcerting-unique, really, from a cross-cultural perspective. The silence of the Bible on ghostly matters is even more surprising if we compare it to its Umwelt. 2 The Egyptians had an optimistic view of