Appendix:
the consequent
theory
Despite our western medical knowledge, since our first studies of TCM we have strongly felt that Acupuncture Channels must be real and not abstract entities. For many years we have supposed that the ancient doctors and also the common people, not only in old China but everywhere, could see the acupuncture meridians. They perceived the Qi, the times and the shapes of its distribution and organization in all natural kingdoms. We mean that they actually saw the internal organs and the internal paths of the meridians. If not, could they have described how the meridian Governor Vessel Dumai ● "penetrates the heart", and the Kidney Meridian ● "terminates at the root of the tongue"é We know these are only two among many possible examples. We cannot date the time when ancient humans saw these things, which today are invisible, maybe it was in the time that some religions call "Eden", "Heaven" or "Paradise", when people could see the causes (among them the Qi) together with the effects (among them the bodies). At a certain point, when our more distant ancestors could see the pericardium and its connected finger, the liver and its connected toe, the yin-yang and the five elements in animals, herbs and metals, something happened: something which made everyone blind enough not to see the causes, but still able to see matter as an effect of the Qi. We have a hypothesis, far from being demonstrated, too raw and incomplete to be exposed and discussed in scientific rooms (anyway an article about the subject has already been written [2013] and a book is on working and nearly completed [2016-2017]). We imagine that what happened was a physical change related to light. An inexorable but neither drastic nor definitive blindness. We suspect it was a specific blindness which came from the continual use of fire, so important for survival and progress, and for these reasons held closer and closer to the eyes. Thus, the light of the fire illuminated the surface of the bodies and at the same time obscured the Qi composing them. However, I’m now cultivating the idea that it could still be possible to rescue that primordial vision, which is nevertheless an ocular, physiological vision (like a cat's infrared vision), and not a spiritual vision, as some TCM practitioners believe. That is all for the moment. My project's aim is to succeed in seeing again the acupuncture meridians in a scientific, technological and repeatable way. If anyone finds this idea interesting and wants to give his/her opinion, or call me to collaborate for a research or study (I've in mind two relatively simple and low cost experiments), he/she is invited to contact me. I am sincerely,
Dr Stefano Marcelli, MD,
author
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