How did you learn the medicine you practice? Likely it through the influence of a school, a book or perhaps in this modern moment, an on-demand course of online study. There is another way that medicine gets transmitted, through the connections of friendship.
I’d not thought about that until Volker Scheid mentioned it in this History Series conversation. Once I heard it, it rang true. and I could easily look back through the years and see so many moments of having my eyes opened to something about our healing trade that came to me through the connection of friendship.
Truth is, there is a web of connection that supports us in everything we do. We are awash streams and currents of influence most of which out of our awareness that arise in our clinical practices as ideas that arise as unique treatments in a moment of time. We are connected to history, but our work unfolds in the present moment.
Listen into this conversation on the role of the German enlightenment on holistic medicine, the paths a good question will take you down, and how a head cold can lead to an unexpected connection with Meng He doctors and their surprising influence on the medicine you learned in school.
In This Conversation We Discuss:
- A curious case from clinic that invites us to consider just how we gain our perspectives with practicing medicine
- History can be seen as riding the waves, or being carried away by the waves
- Volker’s circuitous path to Chinese medicine from rural backwoods Germany
- How Confucian values like ren (benevolence) influence healing
- The influence of the German Enlightenment on holistic alternative medicine
- Cultural differences in acupuncture’s acceptance and evolution
- Seeking tools for critical thinking
- Volker’s anthropological and historical studies to find “true” Chinese medicine
- Historical roots of holistic thinking and its undercurrents
- Chinese medicine is one body with 10,000 things
- Journey from Western herbalism to Chinese herbal medicine
- Disillusionment with early acupuncture “cults” and gurus
- Influence of the 1960s counterculture on alternative medicine
- The importance of flexibility and open-mindedness in clinical practice
- Observing shifts in Chinese medicine education over time
- The profound influence of friendship in the transmission of medicine
When someone presents with symptoms that look like they have blood stasis, but you cannot corroborate these symptoms via the pulse and tongue, always think of phlegm.
Volker Scheid, Ph.D
I grew up in rural Germany in a family engaged in the cultivation of medicinal herbs. Following an apprenticeship as a gardener I moved to England to study phytotherapy (Western herbal medicine) and Chinese medicine. Further studies led me to China, where I completed three years of postgraduate training at Beijing and Shanghai Universities of Chinese Medicine and also apprenticed with several nationally renowned physicians.
My clinical studies led to a deepening academic involvement with East Asian medicines, which I pursued at the University of Cambridge, the School of African and Oriental Studies (London), and the University of Westminster, where I was Professor of East Asian Medicines and Director of EASTmedicine (East Asian Sciences and Traditions in Medicine). I have published over thirty papers in peer-reviewed journals, as well as two influential monographs: Chinese Medicine in Contemporary China (Duke UP 2002) and Currents of Tradition in Chinese Medicine, 1624-2000 (Eastland Press 2007). I am the lead author of Formulas & Strategies, 2nd ed. (Eastland Press 2009)
Throughout my academic career I continued to practice, and by now have almost forty years of clinical experience. As a teacher, my aim is to guide students to become rounded practitioners by learning to work effectively with different tools and perspectives. I refer to this as meta-practice.
Links and Resources
Visit Volker's blog for some thoughtful reading.
You can study with Volker through his online course on Advanced Chinese Medicine: Developing Clinical Mastery Through Meta-Practice.
Or in person at his summer school in Tuscany, Italy (email for more information)
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