In the Footsteps of the Yellow Emperor

by Peter Eckman, MD

  Figure 139: SUGIYAMA WAICHI

  (1610-1695), initiator of the tradition of training the blind as acupuncturists in Japan, he introduced many innovations into acupuncture practice.

  The final school of Japanese medicine that I should mention was called Rangaku, meaning Dutch studies. This was really a generic term for Western medicine, since the Dutch were the most privileged of the Western powers in Japan during the Edo period. It was in reaction to the Westernization of acupuncture (which the Rangaku school inspired) that the Meridian Therapy movement developed, and its forerunner was a traditionalist who was greatly influenced by the Sugiyama style, Sawada Ken (Fig.141) (1877-1938). Sawada was from a samurai family, and learned acupuncture as a teenager in Kyoto, after first studying jujitsu and bone setting from a master practitioner. He spent many years developing his skills as a practitioner while living in Korea, before returning to practice and teach in Tokyo. His style of treatment emphasized the Command Points: Five Element, Source, Alarm and Back Shu Points. Sawada was sufficiently famous to have been selected to treat the Emperor, although he was forbidden to talk or u’se needles–all he could do was palpate and apply moxibustion! (303) In spite of these restrictions his treatments were successful and his fame spread, galvanized by the sensa-tionalization of his results by the journalist Nakayama Tadanao in the 1920’s.(304) Nakayama was an associate of both Sawada and George Ohsawa, and his book glorifying Sawada was a forerunner of the one which Ohsawa and Soulie de Morant translated into French just as acupuncture was beginning its development in Europe. Although Sawada did not emphasize Five Element theory, he was adamant that acupuncture must be based on the classics, and it was this aspect of his teachings that was taken up by Yanagiya.

  Figure 140 A and B: THE GUIDE TUBE FOR INSERTING NEEDLES,

  introduced by Sugiyama to facilitate painless needling. The needle handle which projects slightly past the tube is gently tapped a few times to accomplish insertion.

  Figure 141: SAWADA KEN

  (1877-1938), a traditional acupuncturist of great popularity following his successful treatment of the Emperor, and one of Yanagiya’s inspirations.

  Yanagiya was the son of an acupuncturist who graduated from the first acupuncture school in Japan that was not devoted to blind practitioners. He received his acupuncturist’s license at seventeen years of age, and by twenty-one he had started his own school, based on the rallying cry, “back to the classics.” Yanagiya was a visionary, whose goal was “to revive the classical style of acupuncture that had been lost in antiquity.”(305)

  Unfortunately, although books such as the Nei Jing and Nan Jing were preserved, the practical methodology of classical acupuncture had been lost, so it had to be rediscovered–by study, meditation, self-development and experiment. Thus although the methods of Yanagiya and his school are called “classical acupuncture” there was no direct lineage of teacher to disciple from some distant “golden age.” Yanagiya’s personal Five Element treatment style used the four-needle technique which he learned from the Korean writings of Sa Am(306) in the 1600’s, but Yanagiya encouraged his disciples, who were many (Fig.142), to find their own most effective methods, and so there are numerous variations of Five Element Japanese acupuncture. The common thread, which Yanagiya taught in the school he founded in 1927, was pulse diagnosis (myakushin) based on the Nan Jing. Yanagiya’s approach came to be known as keiraku chiryo or Meridian Therapy (MT) which basically refers to Five Element methodology.

  Figure 142: YANAGIYA’S DISCIPLES IN 1955.

  From left to right, top row: Takeyama, Tobe, Maruyama, Ishino; bottom row: Nishizawa, Honma, Inoue, Okabe. They all contributed editorial assitance to the periodical Ido No Nippon and of this group only Nishizawa and Tobe were still alive in 1993.

  A particularly interesting individual, from the perspective of LA was Inoue Keiri, (Fig.143) (1903-1967), one of Yanagiya’s first students. He was a Buddhist monk who initially became famous for treating all his patients with a single needle in a single Point, claiming that that was the only way to know precisely what effect each Point had.(307) There are numerous similarities between Japanese MT and LA as I indicated in discussing Ohsawa’s text, which can now be seen as clearly derivative of this school. Additional points of similarity with LA are the following:1) All human beings are individuals, born with characteristics that distinguish each one from the other. For every one hundred patients, therefore, there will be one hundred different symptoms requiring one hundred different types of treatment. (308)

  2) People are constitutionally of 10 types, i.e., Excess or Deficient in one of the Five Elements.(309)

  3) Diagnosis and treatment are aimed at the deepest level of imbalance in the Five Elements, to bring the most out of balance phase back in–essentially parallel to the causative factor (CF) of LA.

  4) Diagnosis is by the five colors (on the same parts of the face as in LA), five sounds, five odors, five emotions plus the other elemental attributes–tastes, climates, fluids, exhaustions, etc... plus palpation of the pulse, abdomen and Meridians.(310)

  5) Meridian palpation of the abdomen must be conducted very gently; one should hardly be able to discern whether or not one’s hand is actually touching the skin.(311)

  6) The Five Element diagnosis and treatment is asymptomatic. That is, the symptoms which the patient presents are not directly addressed by the treatment.(312)

  7) The strengthening of Vital Energy through Fundamental Healing (root treatment) will eventually result in the removal of all the symptoms and discomforts of the patient, but certain complicated cases involving severe physical disturbances may require a long period of time to cure. Targeted Healing (i.e. symptomatic treatment) speeds up the process.(313)

  8) If there is no internal weakness or injury, external causes of illness cannot affect the body... Therefore, rather than focussing on the Wind, Cold, Hotness, Dampness and so forth that attack from the outside, or any of the other external agents of disease (outside conditions), the Doctrine of the Causes of Illness makes the internal factors (inside conditions) of the patient the issue of central concern. Internal factors include the protective ability of the Meridians, the constitutional make-up of the individual, and abnormalities among the Seven Emotions.(314)

  Figure 143: INOUE KEIRI (1903-1967) GIVING TREATMENT

  while Yanagiya looked on at Tokushoku College in 1939. Inoue together with Takeyama and Okabe coined the term Meridian Therapy (MT) to describe their common approach to treatments.

  One final point I’d like to make about MT, and its similarity to LA, is that it is a consciously created style of treatment that is based on both classical doctrine and empirical testing. As Shudo Denmei (Fig.144) puts it, “It is a unique system of classical acupuncture born of the modern era.”(315) The term Meridian Therapy was coined by three of Yanagiya’s disciples, Takeyama Shinichiro (1900-1969), Okabe Sodo (1907-1984) and Inoue Keiri (1903-1967) who tried many methods in search of an effective treatment style consonant with the Nan Jing. According to Fukushima Kodo, (Fig.145) (b. 1910), these three “overcame a gap in history of more than a thousand years when they reinstated the teachings of Meridian Therapy. It was the first time in recent history that the question of akashi (conformational pattern) was revived, and acupuncture as akashi-based therapy was conducted in its true, original form.”(316)

  I think I’ve outlined enough of Japanese MT and its history to demonstrate that it was an important contributing basis for LA, and I’ve proposed one way in which this style was probably transmitted to Worsley. Before elaborating on that connection, we should first go back to Europe where we left Soulié de Morant and discuss the career of Dr. Roger De la Fuye, who learned Soulié de Morant’s style of acupuncture and greatly expanded the homeopathic connection into a system he called homeosinatrie.

  Roger De la Fuye is an intriguing figure in the history of Western acupuncture (Fig.146). Depending on your point of view, he can be seen as embodying either the best or the worst of that tradit
ion. He was a physician whose father was the Commanding General of the French army during the time when Indochina was a French territory.(317) The custom at the time was for territorial subjects to be granted French citizenship, and thus there was a lot of interchange between the Indochinese—especially the Vietnamese—medical establishment and the French doctors—particularly through the Supreme Military Medical Academy in Paris called the Hôtel Val de Grace. De la Fuye had become acquainted with Soulié de Morant in 1933, and basically incorporated all of Soulié de Morant’s teachings as his own, with an emphasis on the concordance between acupuncture and homeopathy. He began teaching in 1943 and published two main works; Traité D’Acupuncture (1947) and L’Acupuncture Moderne Pratique (latest edition posthumously 1972), In a 1989 article on the history of acupuncture in France, Dr. Monnier describes the first period of acupuncture in France as that of “De la Fuye and Soulie de Morant, one a physician and not a sinologist utilizing the material brought from the Far East by the other—a sinologist, but not a physician.”(318) This tension between the roles of physician and sinologist was the first instance of much of the subsequent difficulties in the establishment of acupuncture in the West under two guises: 1) Who should be allowed to practice? Physicians, lay practitioners, both? and 2) What style of acupuncture is best? Traditional (whatever that is–but at least it means studying the classical teachings), or modern scientific, i.e., medical?

  In 1945 De la Fuye founded the French Acupuncture Society (SFA) and in 1946 the International Acupuncture Society (SIA). In particular, the sixth SIA conference, which took place in May of 1952 in Paris, was notable for the presentation by Vietnam’s Prince Buu-Loc, himself an eminant acupuncturist and educator.(319) Through his educational and organizational work, De la Fuye became recognized as the leading figure in French acupuncture (Fig.147), and was the main influence on the two most prominent contemporary physician-acupuncturists outside France; Johannes Bischko (Fig.148) in Austria and through him, Felix Mann (Fig.149) in England.

  The first sign that De la Fuÿe’s legacy was not going to be spotless was his behavior towards Soulié de Morant, his former mentor. For political reasons, in 1950, he instigated proceedings against Soulié de Morant for practicing medicine (i.e. acupuncture) without a license.(320) The charges were subsequently dropped for lack of evidence–no one would testify against Soulié de Morant–but I don’t think acupuncture in Europe has yet to recover from this dastardly behavior by De la Fuye. If my historical narrative leaves the reader with one idea, I hope it will be that all acupuncturists should cooperate and honor their more than 2,000 years of teachers, regardless of their social status. No one has all the answers, and those that have merit will survive only if we all learn to respect one another.

  Turning to the second issue–traditional versus “scientific” acupuncture, I’ve already indicated that De la Fuye was the main influence on the leaders of the “scientific” school–Drs. Bischko and Mann. Not being a student of the classics, De la Fuye failed to impress the traditionalists. In fact, in 1955 Yanagiya himself came to Paris for the International Acupuncture Congress as the delegated representative of the MT group in Japan (Fig.150), and an historic encounter between these two leaders occurred.(321) Yanagiya spent three months in Europe trying to understand the French (and derivative German) methods which were based more on Yin Yang thought than on the Five Elements–opposite to the approach common in Japan. He met many of the prominent European practitioners and got along with all of them except De la Fuye (seen in Fig.151 lecturing at the 1955 Congress, with the Japanese translator Dr. Sakaguchi interpreting for Yanagiya). Yanagiya demonstrated his style of treatment, which as shown involves a solid understanding of symptomatic treatment in addition to energetic balancing (Figs.152 A and B). The outcome was that De la Fuye criticized Yanagiya, among other things, for taking too much time in giving treatment, and Yanagiya responded that De la Fuye seemed incapable of comprehending traditional thought–not only the Five Elements, but the Dao itself which mandates that each patient be treated individually with full attention, not as materials to be treated mechanically. De la Fuye just got mad–actually he was aware of how unfavorably he impressed many people, but he said he just didn’t care, that his legacy of organizational and educational work would justify him in the course of time.

  Figure 144: SHUDO DENMEI,

  author of Introduction to Meridian Therapy, the clearest presentation of this style of acupuncture in English.

  Figure 145: FUKUSHIMA KODO,

  leading proponent of MT among the blind Japanese acupuncturists, and author of Meridian Therapy which is the most advanced clinical text on this subject available in English.

  Figure 146: ROGER DE LA FUYE (d. 1961),

  the political and organizational spearhead of the physidan-acupuncturists in France who came after Soulié de Morant, he strove to integrate acupuncture and homeopathy into “homeo-sinatrie.”

  Figure 147: DE LA FUŸE

  surrounded by his colleagues in the International Acupuncture Society (S.I.A.), date unknown. De la Fuÿe is in the center of the photograph, just to the left is Bischko and just above De la Fuye is Schatz. The photograph captures many of the luminaries of the S.I.A., but I have only identified the individuals whose work is mentioned in this text.

  FIGURE 148: JOHANNES BISCHKO,

  Austrian disciple of De la Fuye and head of the Ludwig Boltzmann Acupuncture Institute in Vienna. Bischko has published numerous books and articles on acupuncture.

  Indeed, it is through De la Fuye that the European acupuncture community received the teachings of Soulie de Morant, but one example might illuminate how his teachings also initiated confusion amongst European acupuncturists. In L’Acuponcture Chinoise, Soulié de Morant had presented the 12 Meridians in alphabetical order, which in French begins with the Heart, le Coeur, (which presentation Soulié de Morant used for didactic purposes only). He clearly indicated that the traditional ordering of the Meridian circulation starts with the Lung, and follows the Horary cycle of flow. In Traité d’Acupuncture, De la Fuye adopted Soulié de Morant’s presentation of the Meridians starting with the Heart, but incorporated this teaching into a code of Roman numerals from I through XII in the Horary sequence starting with the Heart as I! This nomenclature., and its divorce from traditional thought, but rather based on a faulty understanding of Soulié de Morant’s writings, is a good example of how divisions occur amongst different groups of practitioners. I will elucidate the link which explains the transmission of this revisionist nomenclature from De la Fuye to Leamington shortly, but for now I simply want to explain the origin of this system of terminology which sets practitioners of LA apart from those of other styles of acupuncture.(322)

  Figure 149: FELIX MANN,

  foremost British physician-acupuncturist and founder of the British Medical Acupuncture Society, his early books championed traditional acupuncture while his later works pointedly rejected traditional theories.

  As I indicated, De la Fuye was the central figure in French acupuncture until his death in 1961. Outside of France, his initial influence was in Germany and Austria where his students included Doctors Bischko, Bachmann, Stiefvater and Schmidt. This linkage began in 1950 when Bachmann (Fig.153), a former military officer and the first President of the German Acupuncture Association, and Schmidt (Fig.154), the first editor of the German Acupuncture Journal, attended the S.I.A. Conference in Paris organized by De la Fuye. They both were physicians who had naturopathic backgrounds and were eager to learn the traditional acupuncture being taught in France. Stiefvater was more a writer than a practitioner, but is important because his 1953 German work, Acupuncture As Neural Therapy, along with De la Fuÿe’s Traité was the basis for Denis Lawson-Wood’s initial book in English about acupuncture, Chinese System of Healing written in 1959, and Stiefvater’s 1955 work, What Is Acupuncture? was one of the first books on acupuncture to be translated into English–by Leslie Korth in 1962.

  Figure 150: MT STRATEGY
SESSION.

  Left to right: Honma, Nishizawa, Inoue, Ishino and Yanagiya discuss their goals in sending Yanagiya to the S.I.A. Congress in France in 1955.

  Heribert Schmidt, originally from Stuttgardt, died in 1995 just as this manuscript was being completed. He was a very busy and influential figure. (323) In addition to editing the German Acupuncture Journal starting in 1952, he also co-authored with De la Fuÿe the German version of Modern Acupuncture in 1952. Then he jumped ship, so to speak, and went off to Japan where he studied with everyone, including Yanagiya and his many associates, and brought all of the Japanese Five Element tradition back to Europe. His presentation of Soulié de Morant’s tradition in Japan (Fig.155) was the basis for Yanagiya’s 1955 study trip to Europe, and he was also present at Ohsawa and Hashimoto’s classes in Europe in 1958. He was quite a busy fellow. Figures 156 and 157 illustrate some of his activities. He studied with Akabane Kobe (Fig. 158), who was close to Yanagiya, travelling with Akabane around Japan on a lecture tour, and translating his writings into German. Throughout the 1950’s and 1960’s, he held many workshops which introduced Japanese acupuncture in France and Germany,(324) and for a while produced a monthly newsletter with a circulation of over 100 copies. From 1951 to 1967 he was the Vice-President of the German Acupuncture Association, under Bachmann, and took over the Presidency from 1967-1971. He managed to also visit and study in Hong Kong in 1953, and received an honorary professorship from Tokushoku College in Tokyo in 1954 (Fig.159). His contributions to European acupuncture include the introduction of the Five Element methodology, with its unique style of pulse and abdominal diagnosis, the Akabane test, and some of the approaches to symptomatic treatment of the Sawada school. He translated Honma’s Five Element Chart into German (Fig.160), the one I’ve already shown to be the basis for Worsley’s version. In his later years (1978) he turned away from Five Element theory and developed what he called Constitutional Acupuncture, based on the teachings of the Nei Jing and Shang Han Lun as transmitted by the herbal kampo tradition which he studied under Otsuka Kaisetsu (Fig.161) (1900-1980), the acknowledged master of this tradition in Japan.