Having mentioned Sri Lanka, there is one more teacher to include in this survey, and that is Ms. Radha Thambirajah (Fig.185), the first practitioner to establish an acupuncture practice in that country.(360) Thambirajah did not learn her acupuncture in Sri Lanka, however, but in China during the Cultural Revolution. What’s interesting is that she claims to have learned there the concepts and methodologies of energy transfers via the Five Elements which she has since taught widely and still uses in her practice in England, where she currently resides. Although it would seem almost beyond belief that the only Oriental textual source for this mysterious methodology should be found in the China of the ultra-materialist Cultural Revolution, which was the epitome of anti-traditionalism, the explanation is that she studied from 1964 to 1970 at the Shanghai Military Medical College, and the military was the only part of Chinese society to have been relatively free from the political repression going on everywhere else. The transfer methodology, as well as the use of Entry and Exit Points, another important component of LA, were both taught by her teachers (one of whom was 73 at the time) and expounded in some old texts which she reputedly still has in her possession.(361)
Figure 184 A: ED WONG
(right) with Nakatani (middle) and Sakamura (left) of the Japanese Ryodoraku Society. The author’s research favors Wong as the most likely Oriental transmittor of the Five Element transfer technique to the West, where it became a central component of LA dogma.
Figure 184 B:
This photograph from a 1972 seminar in Kyoto, Japan organized by Ed Wong (bottom shot, right of center) for Western students shows Manaka Yoshio (top shot, third from left) as one of his teaching colleagues.
Figure 185: RADHA THAMBIRAJAH,
Sri Lankan practitioner who learned acupuncture in China during the Cultural Revolution, and who has since taught many doctrines that are not presently included in TCM.
4. Although I don’t believe it, I feel that I should at least mention the possibility that Lavier himself might have devised the transfer methodology in an attempt to reconcile the teachings from his various sources. The idea of transferring Qi from locations of Excess to those that are Deficient is implied in several places in the classics, in the French texts of Soulié de Morant, and more explicitly in those of Niboyet (1951 and 1955) who explained transfers from Yin to Yang and vice-versa on the basis of activating secondary vessels. It is not impossible that Lavier adapted this thinking to a Five Element model, but again there is no real evidence. All I can say is that I have as yet been unable to find definitive references to this method prior to Lavier in 1962 and nothing that so far conclusively proves its Oriental origin. It is, of course strange that Lavier never clearly identified his sources, but possibly they had requested anonymity. I was actually told (by an official of the BAA, originally from China) that much of Lavier’s translational work which purports Chinese authorship, was actually originally ghost-written by a mainland Chinese doctor who needed anonymity, so this speculation is quite plausible.(362)
Lavier was one of a a group of French acupuncturists, who not being physicians, were outside the orthodox organizations started by Drs. De la Fuye and Niboyet.(363) This small group, however, played an important role in bringing further acupuncture teachings from the Orient to Europe. The role of Worsley in this context is unclear. He was reported to have had extensive contact with Lavier in France(364) and two of Lavier’s students, both Faubert and Laville-Méry were said to be graduates of Leamington.(365) Faubert, along with his colleague Laville-Mery, studied extensively with Leung Kok-yuen in Hong Kong, bringing over the teachings which Leung later incorporated into the North American College of Acupuncture (e.g., the use of near, middle and far points) when he moved to Vancouver. Faubert, who is still alive, has written a number of books in French about his teachers’ methods, while Laville-Méry and his associate Dr. André Duron (Fig.186) (both deceased) both had contact with Yanagiya’s group in Japan, and in fact it was the intention of the Japanese MT group to assist them in starting a classical acupuncture school in France under Dr. Duron, but the main proponents, Yanagiya, Honma and Duron all died before this could be accomplished(366) (Fig.187). Meanwhile, another colleague of Worsley’s, Oscar Wexu (Fig.188), who was the last disciple to have been trained by Soulié de Morant,(367) was very active both in promoting acupuncture, and in insisting on the right of properly trained non-physicians to practice this ancient healing art. He established an acupuncture school in Montreal, where Mark Seem, a prominent American teacher and author received his training in acupuncture. Wexu was instrumental in working with teachers throughout the world to try to foster a cooperative spirit (Fig.189). For a brief time this endeavor seemed to be successful, as Wexu worked closely wih several physician-acupuncturists (Fig.190) including a president of the S.I.A., Dr. Jean Schatz (Fig.191) and one of the guiding lights of A.F.A., Dr. Nguyen Van Nghi (Fig.192). Unfortunately, coincident with Wexu’s failing health, the rift between physician and lay acupuncturists widened again over time. Dr. Schatz is now deceased, leaving the European School of Acupuncture in the hands of his gifted collaborator, Father Claude Larre (Fig.193), who almost single handedly has trained many of today’s teachers in an elementary understanding of classical Chinese–enough to begin to appreciate the classical medical texts.
Figure 186: ANDRÉ DURON,
French physician whose plan to open an MT oriented acupuncture school ended with the untimely demise of all the major participants.
Figure 187: HONMA, LAVILLE-MÉRY AND DURON
(fourth, fifth and sixth from the left) in 1962 while Honma was visiting Europe.
Figure 188: OSCAR WEXU, former President of the Quebec Acupuncture Association and Vice-President of the S.I.A., he was the last of Soulié de Morant’s many disciples.
Figure 189: WEXU
as first President of the International Organization of Acupuncture Associations in 1978. From left to right starting with the second individual: Rose-Neil, Mario Wexu (Oscar’s son), Oscar Wexu, Worsley and Lee Chang-Bin.
Figure 190:
FOUNDERS OF THE INTERNATIONAL ASSOCIATION OF TRADITIONAL CHINESE MEDICINE in 1980, left to right: Xue Chongcheng, Van Nghi, Wexu and Schatz.
Figure 191: JEAN SCHATZ, French physician-acupuncturist who was President of the S.IA. at the time of his demise in 1984. He counted among his teachers Soulié de Morant, Duron, Niboyet, Laville-Méry, Lavier, Nishizawa, Yanagiya, Okabe, Leung Kok-Yuen and Wu Wei-p’ ing, thus epitomizing the syncretic tendencies of many European acupuncturists.
The more well-known group of French acupuncturists were the physicians who carried on De la Fuÿe’s initial organizational efforts, especially after his death in 1961. Starting in 1954, one of De la Fuÿe’s students, a French naval doctor (continuing De la Fuÿe’s and Lavier’s military influence) who had recently spent several months in the Orient and became passionate about its traditional medicine, began to publish translations of Chinese medical works by a Vietnamese–this team was composed of Dr. Albert Chamfrault (Fig.194) and M. Ung Kan Sam. By 1966 Chamfrault had risen to become President of the French Acupuncture Association, and he succeeded in gathering all the physician-acupuncturists–followers of De la Fuye, Niboyet and others–under the same umbrella.(368) He had only just begun collaborating with Dr. Nguyen Van Nghi, a French physician of Vietnamese background, when he himself died in 1969. Dr. Van Nghi inherited the mantle, and continued to publish prolifically. His brother was the director of the Institute of Traditional Medicine in Hanoi,(369) and through him, Van Nghi had access to the North Vietnamese teaching text Trung Y Hoc (Studies of Chinese Medicine) and teaching materials from Beijing and Nanjing, which explain the strong TCM flavor of much of his (especially later) writing. On the one hand, he introduced the notion of the separate circulatory paths of Wei, Ying and Yuan Qi, emphasizing the secondary vessels, while on the other hand he also introduced the terminology of 8 Principles, 6 Stages, 4 Levels and 3 Heaters, which is the language of the “herbalized acupunctu
re” of TCM. Both of these contributions were incorporated, after translation from the French, into the syllabus of the British College of Acupuncture by Keith Lamont, Roy Low and colleagues, leading to a clearer divergence from LA which was untouched by this group of teachings. Van Buren reported that the material relating to the secondary vessels was a prominent teaching of Lok Yee-Kung in Hong Kong who originally came from Shanghai. As Van Nghi and Lok had definite contact,(370) Van Buren thought it more likely that this material came to Van Nghi from Shanghai via Lok, than from Vietnam. In any case, material on the Secondary Vessels can be found in the classical medical texts such as the Da Cheng, but its original description along with much LA-style material can actually be found in parts of the Dao Zang, the “Bible” of the Daoist church which includes many combined medical /spiritual texts such as The Yellow Court Classic, a text that expounds the “Spirit of the Points” tradition of an energetic iconography of the body, a teaching which is fundamental to LA.(371)
Figure 192: NGUYEN VAN NGHI,
French physician-acupuncturist of Vietnamese extraction who began to integrate both TCM and material on the Secondary Vessels into European acupuncture.
Figure 193: CLAUDE LARRE,
Jesuit sinologist who co-founded the European School of Acupuncture (E.E.A.) with Schatz. He is well-known for his insistance that traditional practitioners study the classics in their original Chinese, so as to absorb their spirit as well as their content.
I should back up for a moment and explain the origin of the different acupuncture schools in England. I already indicated that the first College of Acupuncture was an inclusive institution founded in Kenilworth in 1964. In 1969, the British College of Acupuncture under Sidney Rose-Neil and the BAA moved to London, while Professor Worsley started a separate College of Chinese Acupuncture (U.K.) in 1966 (Figs.195 and 196) which moved from Kenilworth to Oxford to Leamington Spa, where it is now located. Its graduates formed the TAS. A third school, the International College of Oriental Medicine (ICOM) was founded in 1972, when Professor Van Buren, who had previously been teaching with Worsley, started his own school in East Grinstead. This College emphasizes biorhythmic acupuncture based on Korean sources which influenced Van Buren.(372) Finally, a fourth group was started by Giovanni Maciocia (Fig.197) and other students of Van Buren, who had trained intensively in TCM in Nanjing, and founded the Register of TCM in 1979 to promote that style of acupuncture.(373) All four associations began to cooperate in 1987 under the auspices of the Council for Acupuncture, so as to present a more powerful voice for this approach to complementary medicine.
Figure 194: ALBERT CHAMFRAULT, French physician-acupuncturist who broadened De la Fuÿe’s organizational efforts to also include followers of Niboyet and other disparate groups of physicians. In addition he was instrumental in promoting translations of classical texts into French, and enlarging the scope of traditional theory in the West, especially in his collaborative work with Van Nghi.
Well, now that I’m coming to the end of my story, the reader has probably realized that I never did explain how LA came to have the unique Japanese Five Element dynamic that distinguishes it from what is taught at the other British colleges. I also haven’t accounted for Worsley’s mysterious teachers. We know a German doctor was involved, and in addition, a Chinese teacher named Hsu and a Japanese teacher named Ono. The astute reader will have identified two possibilities for the German doctor: either Elza Munster from Hamburg or Heribert Schmidt from Stuttgardt, both deceased. They both were personally known to Worsley and I would assume both contributed to his knowledge of acupuncture. Let me return the focus for the moment to the man who introduced the Akabane test to Europe,(374) who was with Hashimoto and Ohsawa at their classes in Europe (where my research began) and who was perhaps the earliest of Yanagiya’s European students: Dr. Heribert Schmidt. As indicated, he went to study in Japan and Hong Kong as early as 1953, and whom should he meet there, but a Chinese acupuncturist named Hsu (Fig.198)!
Figure 195: FACULTY OF THE COLLEGE OF CHINESE ACUPUNCTURE (U.K.)
in the early 1970’s, left to right: Les Skingly, Jimmy Morgan, Harry Cadman, Jack Worsley, Tony Powell, Paul Bird, Ron Wray and Geoff Foulkes. (In his early years of teaching, Worsley was known by his first name Jack; later he consistently referred to himself as J. R. Worsley).
FIGURE 196: COLLEGE OF CHINESE ACUPUNCTURE (U.K.) GRADUATION CEREMONY IN 1971.
Left to right, front row: Ron Wray, Dick Van Buren; middle row: Les Skingley followed by unidentified individuals except Jack Worsley in the center; rear row: unidentified individual, Paul Bird, Tony Powell, Geoff Foulkes, Jimmy Morgan, Tony Evans, and the rest unidentified.
Hsu Mifoo(375) was born in Hangchow, China in 1903, and became a successful banker in Shanghai prior to World War Two. After the war, he emigrated to Hong Kong and studied at the Acupuncture Institute there for two years, from 1948-1950, changing careers in midlife as had many of the people I’ve mentioned in this narrative. Not being satisfied with the training offered at the Institute, he went to Japan where he studied and taught at several schools associated with Yanagiya’s group in Tokyo (Fig.199). He had already formed a relationship with Yanagiya (1952) prior to Schmidt’s arrival in Japan (Fig.200), and undoubtedly introduced some Chinese acupuncture techniques to the Japanese (Fig.201). When Schmidt arrived, the two became good friends (Fig.202), and Hsu was invited to Germany where he became an Honorary Member of the German Oriental Medical Acupuncture Association in 1959. Remember, it was in Germany that Worsley situated his study with Masters Hsu and Ono. According to several anecdotes I have gathered from friends and family, Hsu was an extremely talented acupuncturist who typically employed only one or two needles per treatment, and who used facial color around the eyes, nose and lips as one of his most important diagnostic indicators. This description would certainly be consistent with identifying him as the teacher named by Worsley. The only concrete information Worsley ever mentioned about his “Master Hsu,” outside of the fact that he met him intermittently in Germany, was that Hsu was the source of the seven dragons for seven devils treatment for “possession,” which derived from the inclusion of demonology as one of the classical aspects of traditional acupuncture in China–this from a personal communication to me by Worsley. Although Worsley has claimed that his teachers uniformly practiced the identical style of treatment he teaches, I think this must be taken less than literally, as you can see in Figure 203 where Hsu is clearly taking pulses in a way that varies from that taught in Leamington. I might point out here that the late Dr. Manaka Yoshio (1911-1989) frequently appeared with this cast of characters, acting as a German translator for Schmidt (Fig.204). Dr. Manaka was a unique individual who had good relationships with many of the different Japanese schools of acupuncture, but never became identified with any one. He did have an important role in transmitting knowledge to the West, due to his fluency in German and English, his collaboration with Ian Urquhart on The Layman’s Guide to Acupuncture, and his numerous teaching trips to Europe and America. We see him in Figure 205 teaching blind English massage therapists in 1984.
Figure 197: GIOVANNI MACIOCIA,
one of the founders of the Register of TCM, and a leading author and teacher of TCM acupuncture and herbal medicine.
Figure 198: HSU MIFOO WELCOMES
HERIBERT SCHMIDT TO HONG KONG IN 1953. Hsu is third from the left, while Schmidt is second from the left. Hsu also is the mystery colleague with Schmidt in Figure 154, and is the figure on the far right in Figure 156.
Master Hsu emigrated to the U.S. in 1961 and became a member of the Oregon Acupuncture Board. He also collaborated on research projects, studying acupuncture at the Department of Anaesthesia of the University of Washington under the supervision of Dr. John Bonica, an international authority on pain. At the time of his death in 1978, he had in his possession the draft of an acupuncture Point teaching manual in English, and it is interesting that the Point names, locations and needle/moxa guidelines as well as one s
et of indications are copied verbatim from Wu Wei-ping’s book, while a second set of indications are copied verbatim from Felix Mann. This is identical to the teaching guides originally used in LA! The only difference is that in addition, Hsu also included Nakatani’s Ryodoraku Point information, betraying his interest in the Western “scientific” study of acupuncture. In his own clinical work in the U.S., he used electrical diagnosis in addition to the more traditional methods, and he felt that this helped him narrow down the choice of Point to be treated to the exact one, and to find its precise location. He was a very broad-minded individual, and was respected by all who knew him. It would be instructive to have access to more information about his methods, and he apparently did write at least one article in German which I haven’t been able to locate, but most likely it will turn up in the German Acupuncture Journal edited by Schmidt.
In the Footsteps of the Yellow Emperor Page 18