Remembering David Arditti

David qualified in 1976 and went on to build up a practice in London that spanned 40 years. He was also a founder of the Traditional Acupuncture Centre in Waterloo, one of the earliest and largest dedicated acupuncture clinics.

Giuliano Sacchi writes:

Born in London in 1934, David moved to Tangiers two years later when his parents followed his grandfather. At the time Tangiers was a colonial era international zone – a cultural melting pot housing multiple religions, nationalities and ethnicities. David, raised in North Africa by a Turkish-Jewish father who called himself a Cockney and a mother who longed to recapture her childhood in Macedonia, reflected the city’s diversity. He became a polyglot, speaking no fewer than five languages: French, English, Spanish, Italian and Ladino – the historic language of the Sephardic Jews.

In 1956, inspired by the perhaps unlikely combination of his art teacher and his judo teacher, David moved to Paris to study architecture. It was in Paris that he met his first wife Susan who was studying at the Sorbonne.

Together, David and Susan returned to live in London at the beginning of the 1960s, with their daughter Sophie. Here David embarked on a successful architecture practice which he continued for more than a decade. However, when he moved to a larger more corporate firm, he began to grow disillusioned with architecture, which increasingly felt to him like an exercise in compromise.

Around this time David visited an acupuncturist and realised that he wanted to work in a discipline that centred on the needs of people. In his own words:

I went to consult an acupuncturist because I had hay fever. And he was Chinese. I remember having treatment with him, I think three treatments. The first treatment was spectacularly good. I think it was symptomatic work, but you know, I did stop sneezing for a day or two. And the second time I asked him about acupuncture, where could I learn? … I started talking to other people, going to introductory lectures of this and that. And when I went to a lecture on acupuncture, it resonated. It felt right there, this notion of energy that controls the body, the mind, the spirit. It felt that was the answer to my inquiring.

His choice to retrain may have been a difficult one, but he didn’t believe the difference between architecture and acupuncture was so great. ‘Architecture’, David said, ‘is about structure and function – and about creating external conditions for harmony, while acupuncture is about internal structure and function – and also about creating harmony’.

David was amongst the first graduates of the College of Traditional Chinese Acupuncture and was largely taught by JR Worsley himself. Students came from every part of Europe and the United States to be taught at the Regent Hotel in Leamington Spa. He recalled: ‘The College at the very first was in a hotel where he had hired rooms, and he taught us in those rooms. And I remember when we did clinical practice, we had patients, but in the hotel bedrooms!’

Following his initial training, David’s practice immediately took off – initially from his home in Primrose Hill – and he would soon practise acupuncture full time. He continued further training with JR Worsley and remembered his master’s teaching with great admiration:

He was very stimulating and, you know, you sort of drank his words in very much. And he also mixed practical things and humour. He was a spontaneous teacher of a very deep kind… Well, Worsley had, I think, a gift of making things very simple, and relating things to nature. His theory was very much look at nature, understand the movement of seasons in nature, look at a tree, understand that the tree is rooted in the ground but develops upwards. So, this notion of the contact between earth and heaven was very much part of the first principles. And he emphasized that again and again, you know, and it wasn’t repetition, but it was a kind of altering of your thinking.

David became one of a core of early graduates who went on to teach at the newly opened permanent site of the College of Traditional Acupuncture. His own time as a teacher was brief but he, along with five other Leamington graduates, went on to set up the Traditional Acupuncture Centre in Waterloo which opened in 1983.

Not long removed from his architecture practice, David was instrumental in the design of the space itself – a spare but elegant building that he was deeply proud of. He remained a central figure at this centre of excellence for almost 30 years – a place which a long line of practitioners cherished for its egalitarian principles and inclusivity. David was foremost in promoting this generous culture which supported many newly qualified graduates of the Leamington and, later, the Reading colleges.

David with colleagues Tim Gordon and Lizzie Bingley in 1983, soon after the opening of the Traditional Acupuncture Centre.

In 1980 he met Nina Kidron who was to be his second wife. It was she who found the empty building in Waterloo that would become the Traditional Acupuncture Centre. Nina and David spent the next 45 years together. And with Nina came her children from her first marriage – Adam, Cassia and Beeban, and later their seven grandchildren.

After 40 years as a practitioner, ill health obliged David to retire at the age of 82 – something he did with great reluctance. His retirement was to the great regret of his patients to whom David was devoted – they were equally appreciative of his warmth, kindness and culture but above all, his attentiveness and capacity to listen. Many of David’s patients have spoken of feeling truly seen and heard by him.

David continued to be, as he had always been, a perfect host and exquisite cook – together with Nina always welcoming friends and family to their table. Given his otherwise gentle nature, it was perhaps surprising that David was a very competitive and passionate player of backgammon – frequently playing with his daughter Sophie or with his grandchildren. He remained an unbeatable opponent even in his final days.

At David’s funeral, Nina’s grandson Noah, spoke movingly of David’s many qualities and ended thus: ‘Another David, the Scottish philosopher David Hume, wrote about the melancholy of contemplating death. For him the answer of what to do in the face of death was simple – “I dine, I play a game of backgammon, I converse, and I am merry with friends”. And this, I think, is how David would want to be remembered.’

David’s humorous 2007 New Year greeting for family and friends, portraying him and Nina.

Helen Fielding recalls:

Well, David was an utterly luminous human being with a delightful aesthetic and also very funny indeed. We worked together for over 25 years until he relocated to Marylebone.

David was always available to us newly qualified practitioners for support and advice – and as years went by he was then humble enough to seek opinions from those fresh from acupuncture college. This kept a vibrant and inclusive atmosphere around a busy practice.

David was always discreetly and impeccably attired in a most understated way for clinical work. Impressive as he wove his way through central London traffic daily on his bicycle, his helmet looking like something from Star Trek.

However, on the occasions David came into the Centre to do some manual work, his whole demeanour and dress changed. For these occasions he would don his flat cap and call me ‘mate’. We would meet to put up exhibitions and thus naturally became known as the ‘hanging committee’.

Karen Cohen tells how David helped her confidence:

I remember I was newly qualified and had just begun working at the Traditional Acupuncture Centre in Waterloo, when a very sick and elderly man, with complex problems, asked if I could treat him. I panicked as I felt I wasn’t experienced enough and went to find David to see if I could pass the patient on to him.

I’ll never forget David’s response. He told me two things.

The first was that the man had obviously felt a connection with me and this connection was as important and valuable as the actual treatment. And secondly, as a new practitioner, I had the energy, enthusiasm and curiosity that practitioners who had been practising for many years, can sometimes lack.

David’s response felt both generous and heartfelt and I went from feeling inadequate as a new practitioner to feeling empowered and that I had something perhaps unique to offer. I have carried the importance of David’s words with me throughout my years of practice.

At the end of David’s funeral, Cato Sandford, another of Nina’s grandsons, introduced and recited the following poem by Robert Frost. Here, too, it seems a fitting way to end this tribute to David Arditti.

I include some of Cato’ s introductory words:

‘I’ll say a couple more things about the poem in advance,
Because it is a shifting blend of dreams and waking.
It begins with the closing of the day.
Some things are left undone, apples left unpicked;
But still, many barrels are filled;
And now it is time to rest from the fatigue of harvest work.
While the poet drifts off, the apples are ever present in his mind;
Each with its vivid colours and organic detail.
But now, it is time to rest; and only the omniscient woodchuck could know what will be the nature of the poet’s sleep.

After Apple-Picking
My long two-pointed ladder’s sticking through a tree
Toward heaven still,
And there’s a barrel that I didn’t fill
Beside it, and there may be two or three
Apples I didn’t pick upon some bough.
But I am done with apple-picking now.
Essence of winter sleep is on the night,
The scent of apples: I am drowsing off.
I cannot rub the strangeness from my sight
I got from looking through a pane of glass
I skimmed this morning from the drinking trough
And held against the world of hoary grass.
It melted, and I let it fall and break.
But I was well
Upon my way to sleep before it fell,
And I could tell
What form my dreaming was about to take.
Magnified apples appear and disappear,
Stem end and blossom end,
And every fleck of russet showing clear.
My instep arch not only keeps the ache,
It keeps the pressure of a ladder-round.
I feel the ladder sway as the boughs bend.
And I keep hearing from the cellar bin
The rumbling sound
Of load on load of apples coming in.
For I have had too much
Of apple-picking: I am overtired
Of the great harvest I myself desired.
There were ten thousand thousand fruit to touch,
Cherish in hand, lift down, and not let fall.
For all
That struck the earth,
No matter if not bruised or spiked with stubble,
Went surely to the cider-apple heap
As of no worth.
One can see what will trouble
This sleep of mine, whatever sleep it is.
Were he not gone,
The woodchuck could say whether it’s like his
Long sleep, as I describe its coming on,
Or just some human sleep.

Robert Frost