“Acupuncture, cure of many diseases” by Felix Mann
I really enjoyed reading this book by Felix Mann, one of the pioneers of Chinese Medicine in UK. This book was first published in 1971, at the time when Mann was apparently the only Chinese Medicine practitioner in UK. His book is an enthusiastic attempt of bridging the art and science of Chinese Medicine to the Western mind set, describing the way it works with the language and the knowledge background the Western public was accustomed to. Very simplistically, the model here described has the merit of being easily accessible by a culture that at that time was surely not used to comprehend the intangible aspects of the human body. To most people in fact, concepts such as ‘vital energy’, ‘life forces’ or ‘Qi flowing in the body’ must have sounded as inexplicable mambo jumbo! Nowadays I still encounter some degree of resistance from those minds solely educated in the Western scientific approach; I hope they find this post useful and somehow inspiring.
Later on, Felix Mann himself recognised some limits of his initial work, as he wrote in the preface to the Second Edition: “Today (..) my ideas are largely different. When reading through this, the Second Edition, I realised how great this change had been. Some of the things I read made me alternately blush, squirm in my seat or made my hair stand on end. In few sections, however, I think I was cleverer then than now.”
Chapter 1: General theory
(..) Acupuncture, an ancient Chinese system of medicine in which needles are used for the cure of disease. The prick of the needle at certain precisely points on the skin stimulates specific nerves, which transmit electrical impulses to the spinal cord and lower centres of the brain and thence to the diseased area. Nerves are supplied to every part of the body, no matter how small, and every inch of it is under the direct or indirect control of one or a group of nerves. When stimulated, some nerves will increase the movement of the intestines, others retard it; some will increase, other decrease, the flow of the digestive juices; and the same is true of the increase or decrease in the rate of the heart, the expansion-contraction of blood-vessels, the flow of tears, the tone of muscles, the secretion of hormone, the rate of growth and so on. The nervous system can be compared to the electronic control apparatus of some complex machine, like a telephone exchange or an automatic pilot. (..)
You might call it a ‘self-regulating’ system of medicine, for the nerve-passage stimulated by the needle are the very ones the body itself uses to regulate its several physiological processes. If, for example, there were not some increase in the movement of the stomach and intestines and the secretion of digestive juices at the same time as one has a meal, everything one ate would remain in the stomach undigested. The increased activity of stomach, intestines and digestive juices happens chiefly because the nerves supplying these organs are stimulated, first by the sight of food and then by its taste and presence within the body. In acupuncture these same nerves can be directly stimulated by way of a branch of the nerve network going to the skin. Some of these nerves go to the skin near the digestive organs, others run a more distant course to the various limbs.
(..) The ancient Chinese described the flow of nervous energy in the body as ‘Qi’ – the energy of life: what we would call a wave of electrical depolarisation spreading along the nerve. They called the principal nerve endings ‘acupuncture points’ and the main course of a similar group of nerve endings (possibly related to dermatomes) ‘meridians’.
To the Chinese a human being was a living unity, a field for the action and interaction of the invisible forces of life. The harmony of these vital powers within him was revealed by the health of the whole body, their disharmony by its disease, their disappearance by its death. So the aim of the Chinese doctor was to correct the imbalance of the vital forces in the body. Once the harmonious interplay of these forces had been restored, the patient himself was able to overcome his weakness.
In the Western world today we all too often tend to picture man as a kind of chemical factory or as a non too reliable machine constantly in need of repair. The invisible and imponderable powers within him, ‘spirit’, ‘life forces’, ‘soul’, we separate from the physical machine. If they are not mere creatures of our fantasy, they belong to the mysterious and ill-defined provinces of the theologian or psychiatrist. So when something goes wrong with any part of the machine, the doctor investigates it rather as a garage technician investigates a badly functioning car. When the fault is found, spare parts are supplied. So, if the patient is diabetic, the missing insulin is replaced; if he is anaemic, he needs more iron; if he suffers from some infection the bacteria which cause it are killed off, or he may be immunised against certain infections. The patient is ‘well’ again- until another nut or bolt in the machine needs renewing.
Modern medical researchers use all the resources of science in their efforts to discover the biochemical processes going on in the human body- as intricate and laborious a task as trying to find an unknown quantity of needles in innumerable haystacks. As soon as he discovers a broken link in the chain of chemical processes, the doctor replaces it with some synthetic drug, which his patient may well have to go on taking throughout his entire span of life. The drug is usually a temporary replacement. It is not a cure.
If a doctor thinks in this mechanistic way, he will see a patient as needing the equivalent of fuel, spare parts, lubricants or emulsifying agents. But in the East the doctor tends to think of his patient as an organic being with the power of life within him, who can become a harmonious whole in health and vitality without needing constant replacements for his body. Mind and body form a living unity and cannot be treated as if they were separate. A human being is more than an aggregate of physical substances and chemical processes. Life is something that exists in its own right.
Both Eastern and Western approaches have their value for the sick patient. One day, I hope, they can be combined and doctors will be able to think both mechanically and in terms of the life forces. We in the West have long taken it for granted that our methods are the best; but the ancient wisdom of the East can make a no less important contribution to medicine.
‘The root of acupuncture is in the spirit…’ – ‘The human spirit is endowed from heaven. The physical energy is endowed from the earth’ (Jia Yi Jing, Vol. 1, Ch. 1)
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Chapter 6: The energy of Life-Qi
The ancient Chinese made no precise distinction between arteries, veins, lymphatics, nerves, tendons or meridians. They were concerned rather with a system of forces in the body, those forces which enable a man to move, breathe, digest his food and think. As in other so-called primitive systems of medicine, like the Egyptian or the Aztec, the anatomical structures which make these physiological process possible were not described in detail. They concentrated instead on this elaborate system of forces, whose interplay regulated all the functions of the body. In Western medicine we have an intricate knowledge of anatomy, microscope anatomy, the chemistry and biochemistry of the body but little knowledge of what actually makes it ‘tick’. It was this energy at the roots of all life which was the primary interest of the ancient Chinese.
Qi (life energy) is one of the fundamental concepts of Chinese thought. The manifestation of any invisible force, whether it be the growth of a plant, the movement of an arm or the deafening thunder of a storm, is calle Qi:though, as we shall see, there are many varieties of it, each with its own specific function. In Hindu terminology the nearest equivalent to Qi is ‘Prana’; in Theosophy and Anthropology it is called ‘Ether’ or ‘Etheric body’.
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Qi in relation to Acupuncture
To the ancients the cornerstone of the theory of acupuncture, the concept whereby they explained its effects and action, was Qi, the energy of life. Nowadays Acupuncture can be explained by a wave of electrical depolarisation that travels along nerves, an idea which is really not so very different from that held by the ancient Chinese and relatively easy to be correlated with it.
The Chinese thought of Qi as flowing along the meridians, much as water flows along a river-bed or a nervous impulse along a nerve. The meridians and their smaller and smallest branches irrigated like a river the whole country (the human body). If a disease arose in the body it affected these rivers of life, so that either no water flowed at all (lack of Qi) or the river was blocked with excessive water and flooding above the block (swelling and congestion of Qi) and insufficient water below the block (atrophy, lack of Qi). It was thought that in some way the acupuncture needle removed the block, either directly or by increasing the force of stream. (..)