It started with a charlatan

The Frenchman George Soulie Morant is considered the father of Western acupuncture. It seems however that he never had a needle put in China and probably never even witnessed an acupuncture session.

In the Europe of 1820 was temporarily in fashion as acupuncture therapy in the form of “locus-dolendi” prick, treating local pain by local pricking needles.Then she fell into oblivion. Modern acupuncture after 1929 went off with the writings of George Soulie the Morant (1878-1955), this time with the claim that they are consistent with the Chinese doctrine. When Gerhard Bachmann, Erich Stiefvater and Heribert Schmidt acupuncture introduced in Germany after 1945, based largely on the principles of the Soulie Morant. The key intermediary was his pupil Roger de la Fuye. None of the early German acupuncturists mastered the Chinese language. Their lack of critical sense is all the more astonishing. Like the entire Western world acupuncture today, they believed the Soulie Morant, who in 1932 wrote: 

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“When I arrived in 1901 in China, fluent Chinese speaking and writing, took the fate in the form of Monsignor Bermyn – the now deceased bishop of Mongolia Mongolian learned to talk to me – that I could visit the missionary hospital where Chinese doctors took care of the victims of the terrible cholera which was then in Beijing woedde.1 

Thanks to fate I could with my own eyes behold the almost instantaneous healing brought about by the needles. Very enthusiastic, but still on the lookout for all kinds of magic tricks, the acupuncturist gave me a needle and some sick people to borrow. After I had carefully examined the places had to be pierced, healed my patiënten.2 

Two years later, I was vice-consul and judge at the court of Shanghai, and I found a great acupuncturist and doctor of the tribunal. He was willing to teach me and let me treat patients under his supervision … later I was still consul in Yunnan Fou … gave me a Chinese doctor titles of books and he gave me advice about the patients of our hospitaal.3

So I was under Chinese law acupuncturist. “4 

Amazing. How could this 22-year-old in 1901, speak and read Chinese fluently, without having lived in Chinese? Without sound recordings? Three thousand glyphs without studies in Sinology, no usable manuals? Nowhere we find an explanation. Or later: Vice consul and judge. Really?Barely 24 years old, no studies, no Diplomacy, and yet already the head of veteran attachés and embassy guess? Even then consul in Yunnan Fou (Kunming today)? Hard to believe.

Or the hospital of the missionaries. Later that the “hospital that I visited” .5 In his main workl’Acuponcture Chinoise is still unclear “when visiting the French institutions” .6 There was no French in Beijing “hospital missionaries” just a Saint Vincent’s Hospital. Was that it? Nowhere does he. Or the Chinese doctors. They worked there secretly? Or commissioned? But why did the French doctors did not know what the Chinese? And how much was it? Why does Soulie in April 1932 across multiple physicians (“des Médecins chinois”), but always after a doctor? Strangely.And that description of the cholera. “Typhoid is eaten, drank cholera,” they said earlier. It meant that a cholera epidemic is usually a network of waterways implies. In the dry Beijing was mostly drinking water from deep water. How is it that cholera prevailed here?

Then behold Soulie apparently the cure of cholera. In contrast was the medical establishment was still powerless. Yet he is not the idea to the French doctors to inform, so that other patients can be saved? Another remarkable. Or take his so-called teachers. It is known that Chinese medical knowledge only to their sons or pupils of proven abilities. Suddenly, someone with a stranger just betray any secrets? Moreover, a foreigner? And then patients in acute life-threatening medical treatment? Hard to believe. Or take the acupuncture points. Which the Chinese used? Soulie what? Why does he, according to Chinese law apparently acupuncturist was not once skewered the body parts? And under what law he was an acupuncturist? Everyone had to notice: Something is wrong here.

Actually there is nothing wrong. Even his name was invented. He was born on December 2, 1878 as George Soulie. Later, he called himself “George Soulie the Morant” – a noble name. Apparently his brother Maurice himself to pull off, though Thomas Mann Mann von Hohenstein Tomaso would call to be distinguished from his brother Heinrich. Apparently suffering Soulie, without significant training or university education to his credit, including his low status. That way he could name at least in terms of uplift.

According to information from 2007 to his daughter Evelyne (born 1914) was the Soulie Morant in China never consul or vice consul. Only after he was discharged from foreign service, he obtained this title as a title. Only from 1925 boasts on its books (as always on the history and culture of China, not about medicine) the reference to “Consul de France”. And what’s his occupation as a judge? Among the many books that the Soulie Morant wrote, was one from 1925 about “Exterritorialite Intérêt étrangers et en Chine”. It stands for France who sat in court: ‘un français, le 1er apartment … General Consulate Interprète du “.7 That was his true profession: the first translator. And was the Soulie Morant “in the eyes of Chinese law recognizes acupuncture”?Certainly not. Such a law did not exist. In his book on Sun Yat-Sen (who was a doctor) he wrote himself in 1932: “The Chinese law grants no monopoly on medical qualifications” .8

Finally, in 1901 there was a cholera epidemic in Beijing? No. This is evident from the entries in theHistory of Chinese Medicine by Wong and Wu in 1901, plague and typhus in Hong Kong and Fuzhou in Jiangxi. But no cholera in Beijing in 1901.9 And Soulies “Mongolian grammar” from the year 1903 we read that Bishop Bermyn in 1901 not in Beijing was about compensation for destruction during the Boxer Rebellion to negotiate (and Soulie between Mongolian to teach). That happened in 1902.10 

Everything was made. It is clear from the first, along with Ferreyrolles written article. It was, it said in June 1929, “a treatment method and application in China, one of us had seen” 11 - having not practiced! If this was a mistake, it could Soulie two years and have the opportunity to rectify. Only the second paper, published in 1931, again with Ferreyrolles. Again, however, to read: “Still a bit timid Europeans from what we tried one of us had seen used in Chinese”. Again, only “seen” 12, not “self practiced.” He did not mention this to his friend might Ferreyrolles? Hard to believe. 

That is not the only one. Already in the first two articles he wrote only (April and June 1932) he re-offend. In April, he describes the needle (singular!) who apparently changed his life, saying: “The means used were simple …. Some points on the Chinese stick to 3 or 4 mm deep, with a finecopper needle ’.13 Apparently he had to write the second article, a copy of the first at hand, but it was the sound of them remain reverberate. In this article, which appears in June, is as follows: “A few shots from 3 or 4 mm deep, with a sewing needle. ”14 In French, it sounds about the same:” une Aiguille de Cuivre “and” à une Aiguille Coudre “. But can that really confused, and then on an apparently life-changing observation? And why would the Chinese doctor him at all in a row on loan to give?

To use this obscure Soulie now says: “Every [acupuncturist in China] can be needles to create your own idea … the simple tailors sewing needles, and fine in hard alloy with copper, are commonly used” 15 to Nothing. In China, one never sewing needles with a copper alloy known.Since Neijing Huangdi , one of the oldest Chinese medical works from the standard canon includes “nine needles” way to the heart of the acupuncture. Moreover, he contradicts himself, “After much research we came [ie SDM and French physicians] to the conclusion that the best results obtained with two different models of needles with the following metal composition: for tonification: 60% to 70% pure gold and 40% to 30% copper. For dispersion: 66.6% 33.4% pure silver and pure zinc “.16 Silver to” calm down “, gold for” Toni “approach. If he has learned from his teachers, why does He give them the few times that he did not mention several needles?

Soulie returns from China back in 1910. Until 1932, he published over 30 books, and none of them emerges the word “acupuncture” even on.

Incomprehensible is his statement: “This treatment method, called in Chinese” needles and moxa ‘hot, zhenjiufa, the most important branch of Chinese medicine “.17 That’s right no way, because this was always the pharmacology. Acupuncture (banned since 1822 at the Imperial Academy of Medicine) led a life in the shade. Already in 1757, Xu Dachun regrets her as “a lost tradition” .18 

In June 1929 Soulie writes: “… The Chinese were the first homeopaths’ .19 also incorrect. On the contrary, traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) was and is explicitly allopathic: removing redundant cases, complement defects, heating cooling, heating cold.

Nowhere mentions Soulie something concrete that he would have learned his Chinese teacher, let alone differences between them. Never anything about his suspected patients in China.

The theory of Yin and Yang Soulie know only superficially. Thus he shares with such right and left with Yang Yin. The five phase theory, he is wrong again, the pathology of internal and external causes only in fragments. The spleen in TCM as the central organ of digestion is, he knows (and he extends this out to spleen-pancreas), but he does not know that organs like the liver, gallbladder and kidneys have a different function ascribed. For example, the kidneys are a function of sexuality. Because he does not know, he refers initially to the pericardium and the “circulation-sex meridian”. 

An important criterion of Chinese acupuncture, the needle sensation “deqi” (“the achievement of qi or chi”), and a crucial part of the diagnostic is the tongue diagnosis. Soulie has neither. It is inconceivable that none of its three Chinese teachers then it would have made.

These are all shortcomings and mistakes which allow only one explanation: the Morant Soulie had no teachers and patients in China. His acupuncture was a fantasy product, which was based on books that he bought after 1929. Yet he came away with it, mainly because although he had some errors but was comprehensible explanatory models. To express that today their mark on the learning content, to the standard manual acupuncture for physicians to German. The word “meridian” made ​​by the Chinese jingluo intangible lines. “Energy” made ​​of chi , which in Chinese has many meanings, but in medicine always refers to something nice nice thing, also something immaterial. For the Chinese refer jingluo however “channels through which blood flows and chi” – though by no means anywhere as much. At times it gets to Soulie, such as the lung meridian, “The Meridian has a lot of energy and little blood.” 20 Furthermore, he ignores this, and he has only about “energy management”.

Only by such vagueness could swallow constructions trained doctors as the “triple heater meridian” ( dreifacher Meridian Kreislauf ). In the standard textbook called the “meridian circle” (Leitbahnumlauf ), equally absurd. The same goes for the “large intestine meridian” ( Dick Colon Leit-Bahn ). When one considers that this so-called “blood and something” from hand to head results, it degenerates into superstition: such a structure simply does not exist. And if true meridians flow in one direction, for example, how can one pierce in Maag36-Zusanli (the “three miles Point”) at this current feeding or “tonic” act on the stomach?

The exaggerated importance attached to the classification of contact goes back to the Morant Soulie, especially the “tonic and sedative points”. But the Cardinal, Yuan, Luo, alarm, master, fissile or antique items are not only clinically largely irrelevant, 21 but also theoretically substantiated miserably. And yet students pay big money to get these things taught. The “body clock” We also owe to Soulie. It would be great presidents of the associations acupuncture once to ask where they come from Soulie the Morant got that “energy maxima and minima” in theNeijing not be found. The answer I wonder.

As with nearly all teaching questions present themselves. Whence is this? How does the Chinese equivalent? What does this word originally? These fundamental questions have acupuncture associations in their nearly 60-year existence has not been addressed. That they nevertheless recognized as a 2003 German continuing training in the specialty managed to win, with a rational medical policy is inconsistent.

Since the fall of the Qing dynasty was China’s ancient medicine a plaything of politics. Its revival in 1955 was politically enforced. She was listed as “traditional”, but that was not actually. It took place in hospitals, door to door with modern medicine. Emergency treatment was not used.Electrocardiograms, X-rays and blood tests were also for TCM patients. The disease process was recorded based on medical-scientific concepts. The training at colleges was first taught biology first, then – as a foreign language – jargon TCM was transferred.

Among young Chinese TCM increasingly lost on supporters. But then came the westerners. The export of medicinal herbs and TCM courses poled. Westerners believed everything, thanks to the preparatory work of the Soulie Morant and his successors. Thus silenced voices in China, the traditional and modern empirical knowledge match would bring. In its place were outdated concepts as “meridian sigh” go back in the manuals.

Today’s self-image based TCM in China, especially on their appearance in the West. Any criticism, any fundamental debate was from the standpoint of the Chinese regard this compromise. In this way the West partly responsible for the fact that TCM in China was growing reactionary. This appears from an incident in the West almost unnoticed. In January 2006, the Chinese TCM Administration an application to traditional medicine to be included in the UNESCO list of “intangible world heritage.” If this application is accepted, this allows a further development virtually impossible, as the elimination of all outdated and speculative that to this day haunts the TCM textbooks.

The Frenchman George Soulie Morant is considered the father of Western acupuncture. He claimed to have learned acupuncture in China. It seems however that he put a needle in China has never and probably never even attended a session. His acupuncture was essentially a fantasy product. The TCM still bears the consequences of this deception. Rational learning content is just as before no. The introduction of acupuncture as a recognized specialty training in Germany was premature. They cemented speculative learning content, which often have more to do with superstition than science.