Tibetan and Himalayan Library - THL

Description: Publisher’s Description: In this volume, for the first time Tibetan Medicine is approached from a combination of anthropology and history. These two disciplines appear to be vital to come to understand Tibetan medical knowledge and practice as being complex, diverse and dynamic phenomena which reflect changing social and historical conditions at the same time while also appealing to or preserving an older canon of traditions.
Part One examines the impacts of various modernities in Tibet, the Himalayan borderlands and the Tibetan exile, including standardisation and scientization of Tibetan medicine. Part Two investigates the transmission and professionalisation of medical knowledge and its role in identity construction. Part Three traces connections between various body images, practices, and cosmologies in Tibetan societies and how mental and physical illnesses are understood. Part Four critically presents new or little known histories, commentarial practices, textual narratives and oral sources for investigating the history of Tibetan medicine.

Table of Contents: Introduction: Refocusing on Tibetan Medicine / Mona Schrempff -- Himalayan Medical Encounters: the Establishment of Biomedicine in Tibet and in Indian Exile / Alex McKay -- Integrating Abstraction: Modernising Medicine at Lhasa’s Mentsikhang / Vincanne Adams -- Sa cha ’di ma ’phrod na... Displacement and Traditional Tibetan Medicine among Tibetan Refugees in India / Audrey Prost -- Sherpa Beliefs and Western Medicine: Providing Health Care at Khunde Hospital, Nepal / Susan Heydon -- Bon Lineage Doctors and the Local Transmission of Knowing Medical Practice at Nagchu / Mona Schrempf -- A Crisis of Confidence: a Comparison between Shifts in Tibetan Medical Education in Nepal and Tibet / Sienna Craig -- Making a Medical Living: on the Monetisation of Tibetan Medicine in Spiti / Florian Besch -- The Land of Milk and Barley: Medicinal Plants, Staple Foods, and Discourses of Subjectivity in Rgyal thang / Denise Glover -- Engaging the Subtle Body: Re-approaching bla Rituals in the Himalaya / Barbara Gerke -- Spirit Causation and Illness in Tibetan Medicine / Geoffrey Samuel -- ‘Life-wind Illness’ in Tibetan Medicine: Depression, Generalised Anxiety, and Panic Attack / Eric Jacobson -- Tibetan Medicine and the Classification and Treatment of Mental Illness / Colin Millard -- ‘Magical Movements’ (’phrul ’khor) in the Bon Tradition and Possible Applications as a CIM Therapy / M. Alejandro Chaoul -- An Early History of Indian Medicine / Dan Martin -- Tibetan and Chinese Pulse Diagnostics: a Comparison—with Special Reference to Locations for Pulse Taking / Yan Zhen and Cai Jingfeng -- The Making of the Blue Beryl — Some Remarks on the Textual Sources of the Famous Commentary of Sangye Gyatsho (1653-1705) / Olaf Czaja -- Preliminary Investigations into New Oral and Textual Sources on Byang lugs — the ‘Northern School’ of Tibetan Medicine / Theresia Hofer -- Embryology and Embodiment in Tibetan Literature: Narrative Epistemology and the Rhetoric of Identity / Frances Garrett -- Brief Outlook: Desiderata in the Study of the History of Tibetan Medicine / Henk Blezer et al. -- Index.