I continue to honor their memory by maintaining a methodical teaching which consists in transposing the major Chinese texts into French or other Western languages, and in the organized presentation of the great classics of medicine together with their specific terminology, seen from the Chinese perspective.įor the last thirty seven years, the EEA has presented its teaching exclusively from the Chinese texts. After a year, we decided to give a formal frame to our work and we founded the European School of Acupuncture. When I came back in 1975, the 3 of us decided to start teaching what we found in our reading of the texts. I left in 1974 to spend one year in Taiwan to improve my spoken language (it was still the time of the Cultural Revolution on Mainland China). Several friends, mainly acupuncturists, participated in these weekly workshops.Īfter 2 or 3 years, we started to be more secure in our interpretation of the text. We used to meet one evening a week, in the house of Alice Fano, a sinologist who had spent some years in Shanghai before 1949 and was fond of the Yijing (Book of Changes) and ancient Chinese thought. Fr Larre was our guide his knowledge of classical Chinese and of ancient Chinese thought was extraordinary, constructive and informative but still we had to learn how to swim in a classical medical text: to understand the specific use of certain characters, the precise meaning of technical terms, the references to actual symptoms and clinical situations, etc. We had no idea as to the direction to take, just a vague knowledge of the movements necessary not to sink. It was like to jumping into the water without a lifejacket. We started to read the text of the Suwen, one of the 2 books composing the Neijing. Schatz met Fr Larre, he grabbed onto him and refused to let him go until he agreed to take a look at the Huangdi Neijing, Inner Classic of the Yellow Emperor, one of the most basic texts of Chinese medicine. Most importantly, he felt that was what lacking could be found in the classical texts which were the theoretical foundation of this medicine.Īt that time, in the late 1960’s, there were very few medical texts that had been translated into any Werstern language and even fewer well translated. WU Weiping.īack in Paris, he was convinced that he still did not know Chinese medicine well enough, and that something critical was lacking. Jean Schatz was immediately attracted to Chinese medicine and after studying in France, he went to Taiwan in the early 1960’s, where he stayed with Dr. Schatz was trained as a Western medical doctor, but was introduced early to Chinese medicine, which was already well known in France among doctors thanks to the work of Soulié de Morant and the French homeopaths-doctors who began working with him in the 1930’s. It was called the Jade Circle, and was the forerunner of the Paris Ricci Institute.ĭr. I was lucky enough to be introduced to this small group very early on. Isabelle Robinet and Sister Ina Bergeron were among them. But at the same time, he started to gather people together who were interested in sharing their knowledge of it and in diffusing a more accurate grasp of Chinese culture and civilization in Europe. He saw how far people in the West were to having a correct understanding of ancient or modern China.īack in Paris (1966), he completed his PhD at La Sorbonne in Chinese philosophy with his translation and interpretation of ch.7 of the Huainanzi, on the vital spirit of a human. He was familiar with the classical texts and philosophy as well as with the actual people and their daily life. He then lived in Vietnam (1956-1966), after short stays in Japan and the Philippines. First in China (1947-1952) where he studied the Chinese language while finishing his theological studies to become a jesuit, and where he was ordained in 1952.
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