Volker Scheid

essay ‘We should be stable and firm and confident about who we are. Then, if we find there is no niche for us in this modern world, then that is just too bad.’ An interview with Volker Scheid Sarah Price asks a leading scholar, practitioner and research there in my school holidays. So you can say that I grew I up with herbs and herbal director about issues such as education, integration and medicine. the place of Chinese medicine and its practitioners in the modern world. How did you get into Chinese medicine? This was the 70s, hippies and left-wing Can I ask you first a bit about your politics. Becoming a herbalist like my background. Where did you grow up? father’s boss appealed to me and I guess I come from Gebhardshain, a little village it also resonated with the spirit of the in Germany. It’s in a very rural area called time. In Germany you can only register as Westerwald that seems to be a terra a Heilpraktiker when you are 26. So after incognita even for most Germans. My father I finished school I couldn’t immediately was a gardener. He grew Western herbs for go for that. Instead, I did various other a very successful Heilpraktiker (practitioner things instead including a two-year of natural medicine), who used only herbs. apprentice ship as a gardener. The way This person was the closest I have seen to most Heilpraktiker in Germany work is what in Chinese medicine we would call influenced by naturopathy. That means a laozhongyi. He worked with about 150 that most of them tend to do a bit of different herbal combinations, all of which everything: some homeopathy, some herbs, he had composed himself, and at the best diet and water therapy, ozone therapy and of times he had about 70 people working so on. Some were also then starting to use for him. He lived in the middle of nowhere acupuncture. I wanted to become a pure but was phenomenally successful and had herbalist, however, and that is how I came people coming to him from all over the to England when I discovered that one world for treatment. From very early on, my could do a training specialising in herbal father would take me there with him. Later, medicine over here. n Reprinted from the RCHM my mother became the managing director In those days, CAM courses ran only Journal, May 2010, Vol 7 No 1. of this little company, and I used to work part-time and being German, I guess, I 34 feature felt I had to do something more! I looked I was 25, not in my 50s, and I could easily around and stumbled across acupuncture have done my medical training by then. influenced by an existing interest in Eastern philosophies. So, in the end, I studied So if you were starting out now you Western herbs in Tunbridge Wells at the would do medicine first? Western doctors see very College of Phytotherapy, and acupuncture in I would probably do Western medicine and acute diseases, they see the Leamington Spa. Chinese medical thinking sinology at the same time, because when was much more fascinating than I had you are 18 that’s easy to do. You don’t have inside of the body, they see imagined, and acupuncture quite naturally financial commitments at that age, and you people dying, all of which I think‘ are important for led to Chinese herbal medicine. I quickly can really concentrate on studying. So it ’ found out, at least in my own practice, that would be Western medicine and sinology anyone practising medicine. Chinese herbs were much more effective. and then Chinese medicine afterwards, if I So I gave up the Western herbs and just had to do it again. concentrated on Chinese medicine. The problem with Western herbal medicine Can we go on to your research? What for me was that the thinking is based are you involved in? almost entirely on Western physiology and I am the director of the EASTmedicine pharmacology. It gave me a good training in Research Centre at the University of Western biomedical sciences but it also left Westminster, which stands for East Asian me with the feeling that I might as well have Sciences and Traditions in Medicine. studied Western medicine in the first place. The centre is still more of a vision than a finished product but it’s quite an achieve- What did your parents think? ment, I think, having even got this far. That My parents were supportive, but also a bit vision is a multidisciplinary centre that disappointed that I wasn’t training in a will draw on the humanities, the social more recognised profession. They would and natural sciences, as well as on clinical have preferred me to become a doctor. In practice, and that will foster both teaching retrospect, I think I should have listened to and research. We want to use all the many their advice because being a medical doctor different resources we have available in the gives you important advantages in our development of East Asian medicines, with society without any real disadvantages. You research feeding into teaching, teaching can practise almost anywhere you like. You into practice, and practice feeding back can use more or less what you want in the again into teaching and research. I think it way of herbs, which as we all know is one of is a unique vision with enormous potential the main points that limits our effectiveness because I don’t know of anything similar at present. And I also think because during anywhere else. But turning a vision into their training doctors see very different reality is a difficult undertaking. At the things than we do it gives them a deeper moment, we are looking for more funding understanding, at least potentially, of to develop this potential and that is not easy. disease. They see very acute diseases, they see the inside of the body, they see people So that is going to be for people dying, all of which I think are important for starting out to learn Chinese medicine, anyone practising medicine. I have taught a or research scientists doing PhDs? lot of medical doctors and there is no doubt Ideally everything. We have three postdocs in my mind that this training provides them and one PhD student at the moment, n Sarah Price teaches Chinese with many advantages. That’s why I think and we certainly hope to recruit more. Medicine at the School of it wouldn’t have been a bad thing to study West minster has Master’s and Bachelor’s Chinese Herbal Medicine Western medicine. degrees in acupuncture and Chinese herbal (London), the London medicine, and this is a good foundation for School of Acupuncture and Wouldn’t it, though, have forged your realising our vision. at the Northern College mind in a certain way? of Acupuncture as Module I actually don’t think so. I think you are What grants do you have at present? Leader on the MSc course in what you are. It would maybe have delayed I was fortunate to get one of the Department Chinese Medicine, as well as certain things, but I started practising when of Health’s research capacity development lecturing abroad. The Lantern 35 feature grants in Complementary and Alternative invited delegates from all of the UK Chinese Medicine, which is really the basis of the medicine colleges. We would like to expose work I do at Westminster. That grant funded the colleges to cutting edge scholarship my own work on menopause and Chinese in the field and explore what kind of medicine, as well as a PhD student, Trina bridges might be built between these two Ward, who is carrying out an interesting sets of people. Is medical history totally study on the interface of Chinese and bio- detached from the concerns of teachers medicine. The menopause study is a long- and educators, or can we find a way of Academics, on the other term project involving historical, social integrating history into clinically oriented hand, are often suspicious scientific and clinical research, and I think teaching? Then, next year in August we will of practitioners precisely it has already delivered some interesting organise a symposium that will explore because of their use of findings. the interface of East Asian medicine and history‘ as mythology. Last year I got a three-year project grant systems thinking in the West. ’ from the Wellcome Trust for a transnational history of East Asian medicine about which Do you think, then, that not enough I am very excited. It’s an attempt to look at history is taught when people are the history of medicine in East Asia in a learning Chinese medicine? way that emphasises networks and flows I think there is not enough history taught across boundaries in order to go beyond and that the history that does get taught the narrow nationalisms that define the and that I read in the introductory sections identity of these medicines at present. of Chinese medicine books on the whole It’s a collaborative effort with researchers is mythological in nature. By that I mean based in China, Korea and Japan and that it is about creating and legitimising will hopefully produce some interesting identities and institutions. I am not publications. interested in this kind of history. What I One of the goals, for instance, is to mean by history is history employed as a show just how influential Japanese critical resource, as a tool that allows us to interpretations of Chinese medicine were reflect on what we do, and that helps us to on the development in modern China of become more competent practitioners and what we now call “traditional” Chinese more critical researchers.

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