HISTOIRE, DOCTRINE ET PRATIQUE DE L’ACUPUNCTURE
CHINOISE
JACQUES LAVIER
(1966)
FOREWORD
Despite the many articles which are dedicated to acupuncture in the specialist press
and even in the press at large, it remains largely unknown in France, and, in a
general way, in the West as a whole, where there are few practitioners compared TO
the number of conventional doctors. And yet, forming part, as it does, of Chinese
culture for thousands of years, and represented at the present time by about a million
practitioners in the Far East, it produces therapeutic results which can be verified as
closely as those of modern medical techniques, and ones which in certain cases are
even more spectacular.
If acupuncture is not as well known as it should be in the West, it is first of all
because the theoretical foundation which underlies it and explains it, and which is in
itself difficult to grasp, has only been made available to the public as an object of
curiosity, with all the scope for distortion and imprecision which popularisation of this
kind brings about.
There have been numerous exchanges of information between East and West in the
course of history, but it is odd to note that when Europeans went to China (and the
same phenomenon is still to be found nowadays), it was rarely with the intention of
learning something there, but rather of taking with them the Western way of thinking,
as missionary or merchant, utterly convinced of their great intellectual superiority. If
white men have never understood the yellow race, it is certainly not because of the
obstacle of language or the dissimilarities in culture, but because at heart they have
never really wanted to, convinced as they were that all knowledge had its source in
the West.
We do not want to start an argument here, with people taking up positions on either
side, nor do we want to say that knowledge comes from the East. There are
perfectly coherent traditions in the West from which many aspects of Far Eastern
traditions sprung. Indeed, according to some indications it would not be wrong to
think that there are sources which both have in common. It is merely that we are
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dealing here in the case of acupuncture with a traditional discipline which is typically
oriental and very particularly Chinese in its routes of transmission and in its
development. Sinologists, particularly the French, under the influence of Granet,
Maspero and Demieville, have done much to help us understand Chinese thought.
But unfortunately ignorance about their work in this country, apart from amongst a
very small circle of the learned and a few amateurs, is to be deplored. Indeed, China
is an immense collection of the picturesque and the anecdotal. Our approach has to
be somewhat ingenious, in the true sense of the word; we must keep an open mind
in good faith, with the firm intention of not becoming confused by things whose
meaning cannot at first be fathomed, and thereby hope to make it possible to look at
this ancient form of Chinese medicine. We do not claim to offer an understanding of
China in speaking of acupuncture. We will ask our readers to look at ways of
thinking which differ widely from those familiar to them, but which we hope will enable
them to grasp the importance of the value of this centuries-old form of medicine.
We know that most of what we learn is looked at through scientific eyes, and this is
because purely rational and positive science is based on a kind of “scientific form of
instrumentation”. The most enlightened physicians and biologists are the first to
recognize this. The dogma of pure analysis now takes up the more modest position
of method, and methods which can no longer be considered exclusive of all others.
In contrast to us, the Chinese have always based their reasoning on synthesis. In the
field of medicine, we will use the example of colitis to illustrate this.
In the West, the physician who has made the diagnosis sends his patient to a
specialist, the gastroenterologist, for more extensive investigation of this intestinal
infection. By reason of his speciality, the specialist will remove the organ in question
from its organic context as a whole and study it as though through a microscope
whose limited field makes it impossible to see what surrounds the object observed.
The medical case is identified, pinpointed and receives a clinical label. A third
specialist now comes into the picture, the laboratory technician. He establishes the
microbe which is responsible, and will specify the agent which is most effective
against this pathogenic agent. The patient then takes this specific substance and will
be considered cured if his symptoms disappear.
The Chinese physician will look at the case from the opposite direction. “Here is an
infected intestine, “ he will think. “This indicates that the barriers which ensured its
defences have gone.” This implies that the profound cause of the illness is not to be
found in an infectious attack, because we basically don’t know why or how an
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infection could have suddenly become aggressive, but in an imbalance in the organ
itself.
The physician will therefore seek to find out why the intestine has become weakened
and deficient, and to do this, instead of removing it from its organic context, he will
replace it within its context, and carefully study its relationships with the other organs.
Even better, he will consider the organism as a whole and in its relations with its
environment, and will find a dietary deficiency or climatic cause underlying the illness.
The treatment given will consist essentially of re-establishing the balance between
the body and its environment, on the one hand, and the intestine and the other
organs, on the other. It will be the body itself which will then be responsible for
getting rid of the infection.
Here we can see the difference between the two procedures. It is surely not enough
to talk of getting rid of the infection if we wish really to speak of a cure. The Chinese
say in their picturesque language that “to kill the question does not shut the door.”
In the above example, the attitude of Western physicians was justified and
methodical. That of acupuncture is both of these, but also places it in a wider
context. Each has its merits. The first asks us to proceed by questioning,
exploration, tests and choices; the second is based on a general theory about the
living body in its entirely, considered both in its internal relations and in its relations
with the exterior, in the widest meaning of the word. This theory forms an integral
part of a traditional doctrine which is thousands of years old and still valid. The
reader will be able to assess its main points in this work. Whatever the reader’s
opinion, we must insist that it is impossible to dissociate acupuncture from this
doctrine of which it is one of its expressions. We deny the principles upon which
acupuncture is based if we practise it merely because the successful treatments it
offer convince us that it works, whilst refusing to accept the theories on which they
are based.
Merely to insert a needle in some points accepted as being effective, and being
content just to do this and no more, as one would do in administering a drug, does
not form part of acupuncture as the Chinese intended it. It is merely applying a
specific therapeutic action, and nothing more. The Chinese acupuncturist does not
finish there, and the way in which he concludes his treatment extends beyond the
limits of medicine, as we shall see, at least in its Western concept.
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If we move beyond discussions about fundamental principles, what is important for
the patient, is obviously whether treatment is effective. This has been proved, since
the percentage of successful treatments for many pathological conditions is the same
as, if not often more than, those using modern techniques.
Acupuncture is not a panacea, and does not claim to be. Once again, it is the
doctrine underlying it which enables us to recognize its potential and define its limits.
We will come back to this later.
We can only see acupuncture through a blurred and distorting lens, that of the few
books which describe it in our language, and present it as an empirical method we
have to accept as such on the basis of its results.
The translations available to us are incomplete and all too often inaccurate. One of
the reasons for this is that the terminology of Chinese doctors is as occult a language
for the non-initiate as our own medical jargon can be. And since the Chinese, unlike
us, do not have available an arsenal of Greek and Latin words to construct medical
neologisms, but use the usual characters by giving them unusual meanings, the
word-for-word translations available to us present acupuncture as a kind of poeticomystical form of medicine, which it never was in China. Whilst some people, quite
rightly unhappy about the literature, are talking at the moment about demystifying
acupuncture, it is useful to point out that it is the West, which through its own
deficiencies, has clothed it in a layer of unjustifiable, sometimes grotesque,
terminology, such as mysterious golden and silver needles, marvellous acupuncture
points. This is another kind of “chinoiserie”.
Some people say, “you either believe or don’t believe in acupuncture” In actual fact,
there is absolutely no question of belief, because acupuncture has no relationship,
either direct or indirect, with the activities of people such as healers, those who use
procedures like magnetism or radiesthesia, dispensers of healing water and
mysterious radiation treatments. It is not part of my remit here to discus the value
and methods of complementary practitioners, but simply to state that acupuncture
has no similarities with these. Acupuncture can be used in well-determined
conditions to treat anybody by practitioners who have learned its techniques and
understand its theories. The same conditions lead to the same effects, and even the
most supercilious scientists cannot ask for more.
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The lack of understanding of authentic sources, aggravated by errors in
interpretation, is detrimental to both patients and practitioners, all the more so since
errors have continued to accumulate over the past thirty years, as each author adds
his own comments and interpretations to his predecessor, without any reference to
the Chinese. This is why a regrettable succession of perfectly gratuitous views has
created a kind of Western neo-acupuncture, called “modern”, which is in truth very far
indeed from the original doctrine and techniques of the Chinese.
In view of this, it would be quite understandable if orthodox medicine refused to admit
acupuncture into its therapeutic arsenal, for it is not charged with being incapable of
offering a valid explanation for what it does and what its effects are. To those who
take exception to it because of an argument like this, it is easy to reply that the West
is still very far from being able to explain its own medicine. Would they deny, for
example, that we are only just beginning to understand the neuro-vegetative system
upon which our whole physiological balance depends? It is as though we are turning
a blind eye if we reproach acupuncture for its “empiricism”, when we know that
aspirin, which is medically the most common drug there is, with undisputed effects on
most kinds of pain, is a real puzzle as to its mode of action. This does not stop
many tens of tons of it being consumed in the world each year.
In its desire to see itself promoted to the ranks of science, when it is and will always
be an art, medicine in the West seeks to forget its own empiricism. To get a patient
to take a chemical compound on the basis of experiments most often carried out on
animals, or to insert a needle in certain points on the body after thousands of years of
human observation, are two different procedures from the point of view of technique,
but they are similar from the point of view of method, except that acupuncture, apart
from its strictly human experiments, is based upon solid theory, and its empiricism is
only secondary, i.e., historical, in the sense that it has never stopped confirming its
theoretical foundations over the centuries. From the patient’s point of view, the drug
may perhaps reduce suffering over a more or less long time, because it is,
unfortunately, most often only a palliative, whilst Chinese needling will put a final end
to the illness in a great number of cases. And is it not paradoxical that the Chinese
attack the cause directly by using a reasoning based on synthesis, whilst the West,
which thinks of itself as logical, usually only recognizes the effect and treats only
this?
We should not concern ourselves with comparing the respective merits of the two
forms of medicine in order to draw up battle lines . We have said that acupuncture
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cannot cure everything, as will be shown when we study it. It is happy to admit that it
cannot deal with some pathological conditions. On the other hand, it is reasonable
for it to demand the right to be acknowledged as belonging amongst other medical
disciplines.
Few Western doctors practise acupuncture, as we have said, and of these even
fewer understand it as it is taught in China. The Far East, which always welcomes
and is kind to foreigners, accepted our Western medicine, as it did everything else,
from the start of this century. This did not stop it from continuing to favour its
traditional medicine, which is growing in popularity in the modern East. Acupuncture
is taught in specialised institutes in Chins and Japan, which form part of the
university framework in most cases, and Far Eastern acupuncturists are highly
qualified doctors. In some areas, their knowledge is far superior to ours, for where
the West has brought them its anatomy, a form of science, by the way, which is
considered secondary as we will see later on, they have preferred to keep their own
versions of physiology and pathology, which are by far richer.
The aim of this work is to show what acupuncture really is in terms of its history, its
theory, its methods and its own special language. This book does not wish to be
didactic, but simply aims to inform by presenting this art, which is as old as China, in
its true light, by placing it in its proper context, giving it its proper place amongst a
people endowed with the most ancient civilization, a place which it must sooner or
later take up here in the West.
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