We begin this volume with a modern historical perspective in order to show that the ethnographic complexities of encounters between disparate rational traditions of healing are far from new in the world of Tibetan medicine. We noted in the introduction, as have others before us, that the history of Tibetan medicine is itself a history of syncretism, borrowing, merging and translations across empirical and cultural geographies that probably began with the very formulation of theGyüshi. In this volume, we have selected essays that convey the nuanced and layered ways in which this type of amalgamation occurred in the modern