George Soulié de Morant

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George Soulié de Morant (born December 2, 1878 in Paris as George Soulié , † May 10, 1955 ) was a French diplomat, sinologist and writer. He is best known for his articles on acupuncture , published around 1929 , with which he paved the way for acupuncture in Europe in the 20th century.

life and work

George Soulie de Morant was born in Paris on December 2, 1878, his father was an engineer in the army and his mother came from a French family in Louisiana . As a child he met the sinologist Judith Gautier , daughter of the writer Théophile Gautier . She brought him closer to East Asian culture and taught him Mandarin from the age of eight, together with the Chinese scholar Tin-Tun-Ling, who lived in her household . De Morant received his formal education at a Jesuit school ( College des Jesuites de Saint-Ignace, rue de Madrid ) and a high school ( lycée Condorcet ) in Paris.

De Morant originally planned to study medicine, but the untimely death of his father forced him to change his plans and to make a living himself after finishing school. After his military service, he got a job as a secretary in China in 1899 because of his good knowledge of Chinese . In the next few years he worked for various companies and companies and finally for the French diplomatic service. He lived and worked in Shanghai , Hankou , Beijing and Kunming until he returned to France in 1911 after suffering severe malaria . In 1917 he traveled to China again on behalf of the French government to set up a French research center for archeology and the arts.

During his time in China, de Morant began to write articles on the language and culture of East Asia. For his book on the Mongolian language ( Éléments de grammaire mongole ) he was nominated for the Prix ​​Volney in 1903 . In the same year he was also accepted into the Société Asiatique . After returning from his second stay in China, he began to concentrate fully on a career as a writer after the First World War. In addition to numerous works on the culture and history of East Asia, he also wrote novels and translated classic stories from the East Asian culture.

On the occasion of a doctor's visit by his daughter in 1927, de Morant met Paul Ferreyrolles , a doctor who was interested in alternative medicine . With this he began a long-term collaboration on topics of traditional Chinese medicine , but above all acupuncture . De Morant had already got to know acupuncture during his time in China and, according to his own account, had been taught there by several Chinese acupuncturists. In collaboration with French doctors, he began to experiment with acupuncture and to write numerous papers. In 1929 his first publication on acupuncture appeared in a homeopathic journal L'homéopathie Française and in 1931 another followed in the renowned medical journal Science Médicale Pratique . He wrote both articles in collaboration with Ferreyrolles. De Morant wrote over 20 publications on acupuncture, the most important of which was his three-volume work L'acuponcture chinoise . The individual volumes were published in 1939, 1941 and 1955 and his long-time colleague, the doctor Therese Martiny , put together two more volumes from his notes and notes after his death. L'acuponcture chinoise was one of the most important standard works of western acupuncture in the first decades after its publication.

De Morant tried to reduce Chinese acupuncture to a core that could be reconciled with the western scientific worldview, or at least not in direct contradiction with it. He summarized individual knowledge scattered across different sources and systematized it. He also compiled extensive lists for the first time that linked the acupuncture points with the effects they were promised and the organs that were influenced. In addition to his own experiences, he used Chinese, Korean and Japanese literature, including the two classic texts from the Ming period, Zhen Jiu Da Cheng (a compendium of acupuncture and moxibustion written by the doctor Yang Jizhou in 1601) and Yi Xue Ru Men (1575). The terms and concepts of meridians (chin. Jīngluò ), energy (chin. Qì ) and the organ clock , which were at times widespread in western acupuncture , were shaped by him. Because of his influence, he is sometimes referred to as the father of French or Western acupuncture.

Works (selection)

  • Éléments de grammaire mongole . E. Leroux 1903
  • Les Mongols, leur organization administrative d'après des documents chinois (1905)
  • Les Musulmans du Yun-nan (1909)
  • La musique en Chine . E. Leroux 1911
  • Lotus d'or . E. Fasquelle 1912
  • Essai sur la literature chinoise . Mercure de France 1912 ( online copy (pdf; 1.6 MB) )
  • Les contes galants de la Chine . Charpentier et Fasquelle 1921
  • Le Palais des cent fleurs . E. Fasquelle 1922
  • La Passion de Yang Kwe-Fei . L'Edition d'art, Paris, 1924 ( online copy (rtf; 1.3 MB) )
  • La brise au clair de lune . Grasset, Paris, 1925 ( online copy (word; 5.2 MB) )
  • The problem of bronze antiques de la Chine (1925)
  • Exterritorialité et intérêts étrangers en Chine. Paris: Paul Geuthner, 1925
  • Théâtre et musique modern en Chine, avec une étude technique de la musique chinoise et transcriptions pour piano, by André Gaillard (1926)
  • L'Amoureuse Oriole, jeune fille, roman d'amour chinois du XIIIe siècle. Avec dix illustrations chinoises . E. Flammarion 1928
  • Histoire de l'art chinois . Payot 1928
  • L'Épopée des jésuites français en Chine (1534-1928) . Grasset 1928
  • Histoire de la Chine de l'antiquité jusqu'en 1929. Paris: Payot, 1929
  • Divorce anglais . E. Flammarion 1930
  • Anthologie de l'amour chinois . Mercure de France 1932
  • Sciences occultes en Chine: la main . Nilson 1932
  • Précis de la vraie acuponcture chinoise . Mercure de France 1934 ( online copy ; PDF; 2.1 MB)
  • L'acuponcture chinoise . Mercure de France 1939, 1941, 1955
  • La Vie de Confucius . H. Piazza 1939
  • Les 47 rônins : Le trésor des loyaux samouraïs
  • Bijou de ceinture .

literature

Web links

  • George Soulié de Morant - Biography at True Accupuncture , a website devoted to the teachings of de Morant.
  • Soulié de Morant on the Groupe d'Etudes et de Recherches Accupuncture (GERA) website, contains digital copies of several publications and other documents.

Individual evidence

  1. ↑ a b c Hanjo Lehmann: Acupuncture in the West - In the beginning there was a charlatan . Deutsches Ärzteblatt , vol. 107, issue 30, July 30, 2010 ( online copy )
  2. ↑ In some books, the year of birth is also given (probably incorrectly) as 1879.
  3. ^ A b c François Pouillon: Dictionnaire des orientalistes de langue française . KARTHALA Editions 2008, ISBN 978-2-84586-802-1 , p. 907 ( excerpt (Google) )
  4. ^ A b c Joan Leopold: The Prix Volney . Volume 1, Springer 1999, ISBN 978-0-7923-5645-5 , p. 387 ( excerpt (Google) )
  5. ↑ a b c Michael McCarthy (Ed.): Thieme Almanac 2007: Acupuncture and Chinese Medicine . Thieme 2007, ISBN 978-1-58890-425-6 , pp. 18-20 ( excerpt (Google) )
  6. ↑ Soulié de Morant on the website of the Groupe d'Etudes et de Recherches Accupuncture (GERA)
  7. ^ A b Paul U. Innocence : Chinese Medicine . CH Beck 1997, ISBN 978-3-406-41056-7 , p. 110ff ( excerpt (Google) )
  8. ↑ Paul U. Innocence : Yang Jizhou. In: Werner E. Gerabek , Bernhard D. Haage, Gundolf Keil , Wolfgang Wegner (eds.): Enzyklopädie Medizingeschichte. De Gruyter, Berlin / New York 2005, ISBN 3-11-015714-4 , p. 1511.
  9. ↑ Mark D. Seem: Acupuncture Imaging: Perceiving the Energy Pathways of the Body . Healings Arts Press 2004, ISBN 978-0-89281-187-8 , p. 17 ( excerpt (Google) )
personal data
SURNAME Morant, George Soulié de
ALTERNATIVE NAMES Soulié, George (maiden name)
BRIEF DESCRIPTION French diplomat, sinologist and writer
DATE OF BIRTH December 2, 1878
PLACE OF BIRTH Paris
DATE OF DEATH May 10, 1955