History of Tibetan Medicine / Medicine in Culture

THDL is interested in projects investigating the history of Tibetan medicine and the formation of scientific or medical concepts as inextricably embedded in cultural, social, religious and ideological contexts. This page offers resources for the study of these topics, intending to appeal to those with historical and/or anthropological interests in Tibetan medicine.

Tibetan medical systems are practiced widely today in the countries of Nepal, Bhutan and Mongolia; in many areas of the People's Republic of China, including the provinces of the Tibetan Autonomous Region, Sichuan, Gansu, Yunnan, and Qinghai; in p arts of Russia; and throughout India, most widely in the states of Arunachal Pradesh, Himachal Pradesh, Ladakh and Sikkim. The use of Tibetan medicine is growing in Europe, North America and the Pacific Rim as well.

Over the last 1300 years Tibetan medical traditions have produced a vast corpus of literature analogous in complexity to the medical scholasticism of India, China or Greece. Indeed, these three great medical traditions directly influenced the historic al development of Tibetan medicine. Medical practice is guided by an understanding of the body in healthy and pathological states that is intricately related to the subtleties of philosophy, astrology, religion and other aspects of scholasticism in Tibet. In Tibetan medicine, as in Indian Ayurveda, health is about maintaining "appropriate" relationships: internally, with respect to a complex of psycho-physical elements, and externally, with respect to one's relation with the environment. In the interpreta tion of disease states, consideration of the condition of the constituents of the body is balanced with consideration of the patient's diet and behavior, and the potential effects of medicines and other interventionary treatments.

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