Peter Huston examines the bizarre life of "Count Dante," a self-styled martial arts master whose outlandish claims helped popularize Dim Mak, the mythical "kung fu death touch." Tracing Dim Mak's roots in traditional Chinese medicine and its pseudoscientific evolution, Huston separates legend from fact to reveal how prescientific ideas were sensationalized into modern martial arts folklore. Read this article and find accompanying references at: https://skepticalinquirer.org/2025/10/count-dante-dim-mak-and-the-kung-fu-death-touch/ About the Author:Peter Huston is a longtime contributor to Skeptical Inquirer. He earned an MA in East Asian studies with a focus in Chinese history and language from Cornell University and has a strong interest in the history of Chinese science, proto-scientific thinking, and intellectual thought. He also has an MS in TESOL (Teaching English to Speakers of Other Languages) Education from the University at Albany and is an experienced teacher of English as a Second or Additional language to adults with experience living and teaching in Taiwan and two years as a member of the faculty at the highly ranked Fudan University in Shanghai, as well as working with refugees in the United States. He is a National Registry and New York State Certified Advanced EMT and a regular contributor to www.jems.com. His hobbies include studying martial arts, cooking (including Chinese cooking), and visiting historical sites. He is the author Scams from the Great Beyond, its sequel More Scams from the Great Beyond, and several other books, including a book on Trump called Scams from the Great Beyond—The Presidential Edition. He has been publishing and writing the email substack newsletter Mostly Asian History, which can be found at peterhuston.substack.com; it occasionally features skeptical examinations of topics in that field. Subscribe to Skeptical Inquirer: https://skepticalinquirer.org/subscribe/ Skeptical Inquirer Audio Edition is a production of the Committee for Skeptical Inquiry and the Center for Inquiry.

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