Having now reviewed the essential teachings of LA, let me return to the quest for its roots. Since I’ve already established that it is a syncretic approach, the first task in trying to reconstruct its development would obviously be to identify Worsley’s sources of information–his own teachers and other influences.
Partly with the goal of verifying the historical validity of the material I studied under him, and partly just to satisfy my own curiosity, I have, from the time I began studying with Worsley in 1973, attempted to find out these sources for his teachings. Although the following narrative is written somewhat in the form of a detective story of how I pried into my “master’s” somewhat shadowy past, it is at the same time a continuation of the previous chapter, and although it focuses on one branch of Oriental medicine, LA, which is, I think possibly, the least well-known and the most poorly documented branch, my goal is a larger one: to describe the outlines at least of the whole living tree, to which it is organically attached.
On several occasions, I was able to talk briefly with Worsley about his own training, and I can summarize the salient features as follows: He had two main teachers, Masters Ono from Japan and Hsu(245) from China, both of whom he met and studied with at International Acupuncture Conferences, mainly in Germany, intermittently over a period of time. Both of them purportedly practiced essentially the same style of acupuncture as that which Worsley teaches, and he transmits to his students what his mentors told him–that this style is the classical method of acupuncture handed down by oral tradition from antiquity. I have in my research, discovered three other interviews in which Worsley has spoken about his training which essentially corroborate the history I obtained, with the additional mention of an unnamed German doctor who was credited with being a formative influence in one of the interviews. (246) This is clearly, however, the barest of skeletons as far as professional biographies go, and accounts for my description of his past as “shadowy.” The fact that no one else I interviewed for the first fifteen years of my research had ever heard of Ono or Hsu only added to the mystery, and explains the “detective story” format of this presentation. Of course, it is well-known that Professor Worsley visited the Orient, and photographs have been published showing him spending time with many prominent practitioners such as C.Y. Chen (Fig.93), and Lok Yee-Kung (Fig.94) in Hong Kong, and Wu Wei-p’ing (Figs.95A and B–we see him in figure 95 being confounded with his travelling companion, Malcolm Stemp) in Taiwan, but Professor Worsley has not publicly described these people as his “teachers” and so the presumption has been that he met them after having already been trained. Be that as it may, Worsley and Stemp did formally request training and patronage from Wu Wei-p’ing in 1966 as can be seen in Figures 96 through 102.(247) I have also mentioned in Chapter Four Worsley’s visit to James Tin Yau So (Fig.103), and could add other Chinese teachers, such as Leung Kok-yuen whom Worsley visited, but never described as his teacher. Which brings me back to the mystery of Ono, Hsu, and the German doctor, none of whom appear in photographs with Worsley, nor were even identifiable by any of his colleagues, but all of whom can be expected to re-enter the story as it unfolds.
Figure 93: WORSLEY AND CHEN CHAN-YUEN IN HONG KONG, 1966.
Professor Chen’s writings on Chinese medical history are cited in the bibliography.
For the moment, let me reiterate that all of my early attempts to make sense of Worsley’s story, and to follow-up on it, came to naught. I interviewed Wu Wei-p’ing in Taiwan and many of the pioneers of acupuncture in England, including the late Harry Cadman (Fig.104), the first President of the Traditional Acupuncture Society (TAS) who had been practicing acupuncture in England since the 1930’s, and the late Denis Lawson-Wood (Fig.105), author of the first coherent book about acupuncture in English, and an early colleague of Worsley’s, without hearing a hint of the sources cited. I also essentially struck out in this regard, in a brief correspondence before he died in 1987, with Jacques Lavier (Fig.106), the French acupuncturist who translated and popularized Wu Wei-p’ing’s work, and introduced the study of the Five Elements and energy transfers via the Creative and Control cycles into England in his 1963 seminars, which were attended by Worsley and many of the other pioneers of British acupuncture, including Royston Low (Fig.107) of the British Acupuncture Association (BAA) and Dick Van Buren (Fig.108) of the International College of Oriental Medicine (ICOM).
Figure 94: THE KOWLOON COLLEGE OF ACUPUNCTURE IN HONG KONG, 1966.
The head of the College, Lok Yee-Kung (see Figure 89), is flanked by Worsley on the right and Malcolm Stemp on the left.
Actually, I had gotten to the point where I felt I had reached a dead-end, and had stopped actively pursuing these loose ends, when I came upon a most interesting piece of writing which got me started once again. The following are some quotations of passages from a French text that I happened upon in the library of the University of California, San Francisco:(248)
Figure 95: WORSLEY IN CLINIC WITH WU WEI P’ING
in Taipei, 1966. (A) Chen’s caption misidentifies Worsley as Stemp. (B) Hsu’s republication comected this error.
(“Man is nourished by) . . . three sorts of food: solids and liquids, air, sensations and their associated thoughts.”(249)
“Observation, one of the 4 methods of diagnosis, allows the possibility of completely knowing the patient from a single glance! His present state as well as his past and future.”(250)
Figure 96:
From left to right (for the following series, all from Worsley’s 1966 visit to Taiwan) MALCOLM STEMP, WU WEI-P’ING, WORSLEY, MRS. WU.
Figure 97: WORSLEY AND STEMP
bow to Professor and Mrs. Wu.
Figure 98: WORSLEY AND STEMP
bow to a portrait of Wu’s parents, part of the ritual of discipleship. Eric Tao (the translator) smiles in the background as Wu acknowledges the bow.
Figure 99: WU DEMONSTRATES FACIAL NEEDLING
technique as Worsley observes. (The Point being stimulated appears to be Bladder-1, which Worlsey later personally needled on all of his students as part of their training. Moxa on the handle of a needle is seen on the patient’s forearm.)
Figure 100:
Wu’s assistant lights the moxa needles at Small Intestine-3 as Wu needles another facial Point and Worsley observes.
Figure 101:
Worsley inserts moxa needles along the Stomach Meridian under Wu’s guidance.
Figure 102:
Worsley applies moxa to the needles along the Large Intestine Meridian as Wu and his assistant Wang observe.
(“By training your powers of observation and intuition)... you will discover all sorts of abnormalities in people who believe themselves to be physically and morally healthy. You can determine the stage or depth of the illness, evaluate the degree of physical, physiological, mental or spiritual disease. This latter category of illness is the hardest to cure, but unfortunately it’s very widespread. Spiritual blindness is a much worse affliction than mere physical blindness.”(251)
“The greater circulation (as opposed to the GV/CV small circulation) of defensive energy (Wei Qi) is the superficial one of the 12 meridians, from Lung . . . to Liver.”(252)
“One feels the superficial pulse by lightly touching the tip of the finger to the pulse position and then gently increasing the pressure. For the deep pulse, one starts by completely compressing the artery, then slightly relaxing the pressure.”(253)
“Certain of the pulses can be more or less big or more or less small. Some may even be missing. You should note these as follows: “O” is an equilibrated pulse, “-” is a small, shrunken pulse, “+” is a big, full, overflowing pulse. “+ and -” indicate the size of the pulse and not its force. A “+” pulse can be weak or strong, hard or soft–the same for a “-” pulse. “-” pulses indicate lack of energy, (Yin state), therefore one tonifies. “+” pulses indicate excess of of energy, (Yang state), therefore one disperses.(254)
Figure 103: DR. JAMES TIN YAU SO,
> founder of the New England School of Acupuncture, was trained in the lineage of Cheng Dan-an –see Footnote 231.
Figure 104: HARRY CADMAN,
one of the earliest practitioners to use acupuncture in the U.K., was on the faculty of the College of Chinese Acupuncture in Oxford while the author was in attendance. He learned acupuncture in 1932 from a colonial doctor (Pakes) who had worked in the Far East.
“If there is deficiency in an organic system (Official) that’s a Yin state. One must tonify or call to make the energy come there.”(255)
“Theoretically, if your diagnosis has been done correctly, 1 or 2 needles are sufficient for each treatment. One should always use the least number of needles possible. Hua Tuo was famous 19 centuries ago for only using one needle per treatment, which is the ideal. The “Zhen Jiu I Xue” of 1798 said, ”a single needle can cure hundreds of maladies. Use at most 4 needles. Those who fill the body with needles are detestable.“(256)
“If you can’t remember these 12 points, which are so precious, you only need to learn the following 6 points which you tonify or disperse according to the disequilibrium. (H8, Liv. 1, K10, L8, Sp3, Cx 8)”(257)
“Don’t treat pregnant women... Don’t treat during periods of bad weather–tempest, storms, very hot weather, or at full moon.”(258)
“To tonify, turn the needle to restore skin tone and quickly remove the needle and close the hole. This only takes a few seconds. To tonify it is best to use points on the left side of the body.”(259)
“To disperse, turn the needle to get it in to the desired depth, and leave it there till the skin relaxes. Then withdraw it gently and slowly, and leave the hole open. This may take 10 to 30 minutes. It is best to disperse points on the right side of the body.”(260)
“After (needling) one must verify that the corresponding pulses have returned to normal.”(261)
“Tonification reinforces the energy of a single organic function (Official) while dispersion, by the diffusion of energy it provokes, produces a tonification of the whole organism... In treatment, tonification should always come first, and one should never tonify and disperse at the same time in the first several sessions. Dispersion should be reserved for the end of the treatment sequence. For each session, one or two points should be used, and treat from once to three times a week according to the gravity of the illness.”(262)
One should never try to simply eliminate (the patient’s) suffering, pain or other symptoms... Symptomatic treatment is actually complicity in the original violation of natural law which was responsible for the problem in the first place.“(263)
I’ve reproduced these passages at length especially for the benefit of those trained at Leamington who will most likely hear in them the echoes of Professor Worsley himself. When I first read these quotes to a group of Leamington graduates, the majority opinion was that he must have been the author. In fact, the original manuscript from which these quotations were derived was written by Sakurazawa Nyoitchi in the late 1950’s and the actual source text quoted was a contorted version of this manuscript which was published posthumously in 1969.(264) Sakurazawa was more popularly known by his Westernized name, George Ohsawa (1893-1966), and he was the originator of Macrobiotics, a shoot off the trunk of Oriental medicine using mainly dietary therapy guided by a highly idiosyncratic version of Yin-Yang theory (Fig.109). The book I’ve quoted from translates into English as “Acupuncture and the Medicine of the Far East.”
The story of macrobiotics itself provides an interesting diversion into the cross connections between various Eastern and Western approaches to natural healing which I would like to mention briefly, as this topic will be a recurrent one.(265) Ohsawa had been interested in Oriental medicine ever since as a young man he cured himself of tuberculosis–an illness which had already killed others in his family–by experimenting with dietary practices recommended by a Japanese physician, Ishizuka Sagen (1850-1910) (Fig.110). Ishizuka had developed his own dietary theories after years of self-experimentation in grappling with chronic kidney disease. Though he was influenced by the classics of Oriental medicine, he believed equally strongly in Western science, and his system boiled down to an attempt to explain all illness as resulting from a dietarily derived deviation in the normal potassium/sodium balance in the body. He called his approach “shoku-yo,” which means “nutritional” or “food-cure” and he was colloquially known as Dr. Miso Soup and Dr. Daikon. In spite of these epithets, Ishizuka was immensely popular, and had to limit his consultations to only one hundred per day! Ohsawa popularized and developed Ishizuka’s ideas, and re-injected an Oriental as opposed to Western medical credo by choosing Yin/Yang rather than potassium/sodium balance as the foundation, but as I mentioned, his interpretation of Yin/Yang was idiosyncratic and differs, for example, from the use of Yin and Yang in TCM. Ohsawa was continually shuttling back and forth between Eastern and Western modes of thought and terminology. In 1947, at the same time that he Westernized his own name, George Ohsawa chose the word “macrobiotics” to describe his version of Oriental medicine, but he borrowed the term from a Western medical treatise, Macrobiotics or the Art of Prolonging Human Life by the German Christoph Wilhelm Hufeland (1762-1836) (Fig.111). Macrobiotics was in turn coined by Hufeland from the Greek roots for “great-all-embracing” and “life.” Hufeland, as a physician, was searching for a sounder basis for medical practice, and believed it was to be found in the cultivation of the “life-force” (die Lebenskraft). This life-force is clearly parallel to the Chinese concept of Qi as it was traditionally envisioned, complete with both material and spiritual aspects. It was a concept which Hufeland shared with his friend and colleague, Dr. Samuel Hahnemann (1775-1843), the founder of homeopathy (Fig.112). As an aside, I might note that the disciple of Hahnemann who brought homeopathy to America, Constantine Hering(266) (Fig.113) (1800-1880) (who was also the first physician to use nitro-glycerine for angina), was the originator of the “Law of Cure” taught as part of LA, but once again we must wait to discover how this medical dogma found its way from a German physician practicing in the United States to an English practitioner of an Asian style of medicine. Returning to Hufeland, his many works were translated into Japanese in the 1800’s and “his name became familiar to many who had never learned a foreign language. His reputation was widespread and he was regarded as the most important authority on the treatment of cholera, which in 1858 spread for the first time over the entire Japanese kingdom,” (267) thus it is not strange that Ohsawa would have been familiar with Hufeland’s work. Hufeland was also the personal physician of the romantic poet Goethe, who, in his most famous work Faust sounded the rallying cry of the vitalists against those holding to the materialist philosophy typical of Western medicine even in the eighteenth century:“He who would study organic existence,
First drives out the soul with rigid persistence
Then the parts in his hand he may hold and class
But the spiritual link is lost alas.”(268)
Figure 105:
Denis Lawson-Wood, co-author with his wife Joyce of a dozen books about acupuncture including the seminal Chinese System of Healing in 1959, and President of the British Acupuncture Association from 1969 to 1970.
Figure 106: Jacques Lavier,
surrounded by the graduates of his historic 1963 London seminar. From left to right they are, rear row: Bill Wright, Keith Lamont, Paul Gill, Shyam Singha, Dick Van Buren and Bob Butterworth; middle row: Eli Cohen, Royston Low, George Pandellis, Gerald Lancaster, Val Winsor, Jack Worsley and John Sugarman; front row: Jean Gill, Ken Underhill, Jacques Lavier, Bob Challis and one unidentified graduate.
Figure 107: Royston Low,
former President of the British Acupuncture Association and Dean of the British College of Acupuncture.
Figure 108: J.D. (Dick) van Buren, Founder and former
Principal of the International College of Oriental Medicine and Director of the International Register of Oriental Medicine.
Figure 109:
George
Ohsawa (1893-1966), also known as Sakurazawa Nyoitchi or Sakurazawa Yukikazu, was the originator of Macrobiotics. He also wrote numerous books and articles which introduced many aspects of Japanese culture to Europe for the first time.
Figure 110: ISHIZUKA SAGEN (1850- 1910),
the Japanese physician whose nutritional approach to disease, called “Shoku-yo,” was the forerunner of Macrobiotics.
In the Footsteps of the Yellow Emperor Page 12