Thangka Six.jpg [1/7] Title: Vessels and Points: Anterior View - Thangka Six Source: Thangkas 013.jpg Caption: This thangka pertains to important practice of bloodletting and illustrates the points along the front of the body where bloodletting can be performed. When these thangkas were first created, there was believed to be 77 bloodletting pulses on the body. This thangka is particularly interesting since it is omitted from many fundamental sources pertaining to Tibetan medical thangkas. This suggests strongly that much of the information on this practice has been lost. Although information concerning bloodletting is sparse, there is some suggestion that the knowledge of the 77 essential bloodletting points was lost to the tradition sometime during the 20th century. It is also possible that in 1994, a research team in China took on the task of re-identifying these points, and found an additional 24. However, the only data to this effect is from Chinese news source and for this reason, this may or may not be true. The words running along the tongue in the right hand corner read: "the position for blood-letting at the tongue." The rest of the descriptions show the bloodletting points along the front of the body. Sources and Further Reading: For a source which includes this thangka and the following thangka, see Jingfeng.