George Soulie de Morant went to China at the turn of the century, where he remained for almost two decades, gaining entrance to the highest circles of the Chinese society. Although his life’s work was acupuncture, his literary output was voluminous and covered every aspect of Chinese culture. He was a man of great talent, and became the only European recognized as a Chinese doctor by the Chinese themselves.

Returning to France in 1917, Soulie de Morant spent the next 40 years actively promoting acupuncture among medical professionals. Just before his death in 1955, he completed l’Acuponcture Chinoise, the work which led the first successful European acculturation of acupuncture. l’Acuponcture Chinoise he laid the foundation for the modern practice of acupuncture in Europe, introducing many of the ideas and expressions by which it is known today.

The text is massive, containing nearly 900 densely but readably organized oversize pages. Volume One describes the energetics of acupuncture; Volume Two, the application of those energetics; Volume Three, their relation to physiology. Volume Four summarizes the meridians and points, organizing information around the classical concepts of energy circulation, so that the reader perceives a clinical range much greater than that found in more recent English-language texts. Volume Five, a detailed treatment repertoire, is still the largest of its kind in a Western language. The information has been meticulously compiled from works that are universally recognized as the epitome of Chinese clinical experience: the Zhen Jiu Da Cheng, the Zhen Jiu Yi Xue, theYi Xue Ru Men, and the Zhen Jiu Yi Zi. Illnesses are presented as energetic categories, and as organ, function, and body area groups. Within each of these categories conditions are precisely defined and finely differentiated.

This level of practical detail has been achieved only in specialized sections of technical works, but never at this scale. The book is universally recognized not only as a unique and historic achievement but also as one of the best, most detailed, and most practical of clinical texts.

Soulie de Morant was the first and finest advocate of seeking and treating the root of illness in the disruption of an individual’s harmony with nature. He was the first to argue that there was no need to emphasize the incompatibilities between Chinese and Western medicines, and the first to propose hundreds of practical correlations with science. In many ways, he anticipated modern Western and Eastern needs by showing biomedicine how to expand its clinical gaze to include the qualities and relationships discovered by Chinese physicians. Chinese Acupuncture conveys the ideals of the Chinese medical arts to Western doctors and acupuncturists. It captured the imagination of an entire generation of physicians and continues to inspire those who write or practice today.