Wang Dai Fu, Man About Town.
by Al Stone, L.Ac. |
Nobody is as cool as Wang Dai Fu. Dr. Wang wears black shirts with lightly colored floral ties. He's got this Mafia thing going on in his appearance.
Wang Dai Fu smokes and looks pretty damned good doing it. He uses his cigarette like an orchestra conductor's baton. With a trail of smoke he can direct his interns toward the greatest mysteries of acupuncture therapeutics. And he makes no excuses for it either. He doesn't have to. He's Wang Dai Fu. He's got the cool of Cleavon Little riding through the desert in the early scenes of Blazing Saddles, with the Duke Ellington orchestra swingin' in the background.
I began to put together a bit of a research project regarding lifestyles and environmental factors to try and come up with a common denominator, but our translator said that it was like not being able to see the mountain because you're inside of it. That is the Chinese equivalent of not being able to see the forest for the trees. There is so much Bell's Palsy in Kunming, its hard to get a sense of what the common denominator is to produce this, other than living in Kunming.
So, Dr. Wang's good at Bell's palsy, but what makes him special is his almost evil cool. He often works with a cigarette in his mouth. Rather than condemn it, we now say that he works with a moxibustion stick in his mouth.
The young man that he's working on in this picture came in to the clinic having suffered from Bell's Palsy for three months. He was unable to close his right eye, among other muscular pathologies on the side of his face. Two weeks later, at the time of the writing of this article, he can now close his eye. This, with an acupuncture treatment five days a week.
Of course, I want to emulate the genius of all my teachers at the Yunnan Hospital, and the cool of Wang Dai Fu, so here I am helping with the diagnosis of a patient, with a (tobacco) moxibustion stick in my mouth.
If you're interested in understanding his treatment protocols, please see the practitioner level article on Bell's Palsy.
Acupuncture.com |