Born January 2nd, 1909 in Hanoi, Vietnam, Nguyen Van Nghi was educated in Vietnam, China and France. Completing his medical degree from the University of Marseilles, he began a combined Eastern and Western medical practice in 1940.
In 1954 he devoted his practice entirely to acupuncture based on the classical texts: Huang Di Nei Jing (Suwen, Lingshu) and the Nan Jing. He died December 17th, 1999, in the town of his residence, Marseilles, France.
Some of his many titles and affiliations included: Technical Director of the National Institute of Acupuncture, France; Honorary President of the International Society of Biological Medicine; Director of Chinese Medicine, Lausanne and President of the World Association of Acupuncture.
His publications include: Traite de Médecine Chinoise; Pathogenie et Pathologie énergétique en Médecine Chinoise; Human Energetics (L'énergétique humaine); Théorie et practique de l'analgésie par acupuncteur; Complete translations of texts of Tang Dynasty origin: Huangdi Neijing (Suwen three volumes at 1500 pages, and Lingshu, three volumes at 1500 pages); Nan Jing, three volumes; Zhenjiu Da Jing, three volumes; the Shanghan Lun; the Mai Jing; Sémiologie et thérapeutique en médecine énergétique oriental and Pharmacologie en médecine oriental.
Some background from the perspective of Sean Christiaan Marshall, D. Ac
Nguyen Van Nghi was first invited to this country in 1972, during the acupuncture craze that followed Nixon's discovery of China. It would be 16 years before he returned...
It seems now in, 2002, that I knew Van Nghi long before we actually met. In early 1976, I had founded Jung Tao School, teaching primarily taijiquan and practicing and teaching what acupuncture I had learned through taiji studies. In order to gain more formal training, I enrolled at Occidental Institute of Chinese Studies of Toronto, Canada. In 1976, there were two schools in North America: NESA and OICS. At that time, OICS was a mixture of residential, seminar and correspondence training. Although no one may have known at the time, the president and director of OICS, Walter D. Sturm, is to be applauded. He is to be applauded for sparing me, and many others, from much erroneous and superfluous information about acupuncture. But he is to be applauded even more so because the French speaking Canadian members of the staff created an access to the works of Nguyen Van Nghi, that had been available (en française) since 1966, thus making it the core of the OICS curriculum. As a result, our exposure to Chinese medical theory, from the outset, was based on Van Nghi's synthesis of the classical texts. No one knew that then, but what a blessing. It was clear to me this material had impeccable authenticity. I consumed whatever I could find that traced its origins to Van Nghi.
By 1979, and having graduated from OICS, Dr. Sturm and I had become friends. Because of my previous experience, I was offered a position as vice president in charge of clinical development at the OICS resident training facilities and Alumi offices in Miami. It was a womderful opportunity and I also saw it as a means to get closer to Van Nghi's teachings, and it was. Importantly, was work on English language transcripts of lectures on the energetics of gynecology by Jean-claud Darras, a long time student of Van Nghi. I also learned more of Van Nghi, the man, his history; his struggles, his life-long devotion to the field of Chinese medicine and his immense skill as a physician and scientist.
But in any case, for the time being, I assumed that this mysterious; French speaking; Vietnamese doctor, Nguyen Van Nghi, was sort of like a Lao Zi figure: part myth, part legend (maybe all myth and legend) but clearly no one, the likes of me especially, would ever raise a glass with. It was clear though, by virture of his teachings, that he was someone to whom all should pay heed. So I paid heed. I paid heed, but I had no idea of the depth to which this man understood what he was saying, writing and teaching. The more of his stuff I found, the more I realized how vast this field was and how little I knew. I plodded onward.
In 1987 when I heard that he was going to be in this country, presenting a seminar, that I could actually attend....
As I sit here now in my office, writing this and working on the final draft of the English language translation of the Ling Shu, one of Van Nghi's final instructions to me, I look back at those years. What a legacy. I know, that what this man has done, will not be understood for some time to come. But it will be. It will be understood that he has saved true classical Chinese medicine from extinction. But this will not happen automatically. In San Francisco this spring, Tran cautioned me: he said this work will not be completed by our generation, it is too vast, too deep. We must count on the new young people coming into the field now, to carry this forward. And so we must.
Van Nghi was a genius, who had an understanding of the world and the cosmos far greater than the scope of Chinese medicine. He understood the world at the level Einstein understood it. He understood it at the level Lao Zi understood it. I hope that those who knew him will remember, and that those who didn't will find: Van Nghi was always a source of good will and good cheer, of freely sharing his knowledge, of insisting on cooperation and community, of unification of East and West and the creation of One Medicine that belongs to all.
And so it comes to this. It is our task now, and the task of the coming generations, to continue this work, to honor his travail, and to honor this man: Nguyen Van Nghi, MD.
Van Nghi, age 64, at the International Symposium on Acupuncture, St. Petersburg, Florida, USA, 1973
