Displaying 1 - 7 of 7
<p>AyurVijnana is a periodical published by International Trust for Traditional Medicine (ITTM). It carries articles, reports, book reviews, interviews, etc., that are related to the traditional medical cultures of India and Tibet. 'Ayur' means living and 'Vijnana' stands for the knowledge perceived through our sense organs, becoming itself realisation. AyurVijnana seeks to establish a forum which shall encourage the integration of our research endeavours into our personal lives. (ITTM 1996)</p>
<p>The processing of metallic mercury into the form of a mercury sulphide ash, called tsotel (btso thal), is considered the most refined pharmacological technique known in Tibetan medicine. This ash provides the base material for many of the popular “precious pills” (rin chen ril bu), which are considered essential by Tibetan physicians to treat severe diseases. Making tsotel and precious pills in Tibet’s past were rare and expensive events. The Chinese take-over of Tibet in the 1950s, followed by the successive reforms, including the Cultural Revolution (1966–1976), affected the opportunities to transmit the knowledge and practice of making tsotel. In this article, I discuss two Tibetan physicians, Tenzin Chödrak (1924–2001) and Troru Tsenam (1926–2004), both of whom spent many years in Chinese prisons and labour camps, and their role in the transmission of the tsotel practice in a labour camp in 1977, contextualising these events with tsotel practices in Central and South Tibet in preceding decades. Based on two contemporary biographies, their descriptions of making tsotel will be analysed as well as the ways in which the biographies depicted these events. I argue that the ways of writing about these tsotel events in the physicians’ biographies, while silencing certain lines of knowledge transmission, established an authoritative lineage of this practice. Both physicians had a decisive impact on the continuation of the lineage and the manufacturing of tsotel and precious pills from the 1980s onwards in both India and the People’s Republic of China (PRC).</p>
This chapter centers on Tibetan Buddhist patterns and themes of healing and addresses the inter-relationship of medicine and religion in the practice of Tibetan medicine, also called Sowa Rigpa (gso ba rig pa), the “science of healing,” and how Buddhist rituals are employed to enhance the potency of medicines and to protect the pharmacy and the people working in it from accidents and obstacles during difficult manufacturing processes. Examples focus on the refinement of mercury in mercury sulphide ash for use in “precious pills” (rin chen ril bu). The chapter establishes an argument for a parallel between Buddhist ideas of “taming” demons into becoming protectors of the religious teachings and the pharmacological transformation of poisonous substances, especially the pharmacological practices of “taming” mercury into a potent elixir, and what this tells us about Tibetan medical approaches to what is considered “beneficial” and “harmful.”
Transforming growth factor β1 (TGF-β1) is an important modulator of skin morphogenesis and cutaneous wound repair. To gain insight into the mechanisms of TGF-β1 action in the skin, we used the differential display RT-PCR technique to identify genes that are regulated by this factor in cultured human keratinocytes. We obtained several partial cDNA clones. One of them was identical to the 3'-end of p11, the small and regulatory subunit of the calpactin I complex [(annexin II)2(p11)2]. RNase protection and northern blot analysis revealed specific regulation of expression of both subunits of this heterotetrameric protein (p11 and annexin II) by TGF-β1 as well as by other growth factors, although the time course and degree of induction or suppression were different for each gene. Furthermore, we analyzed p11 and annexin II expression in normal and wounded skin. Both p11 and annexin II mRNAs were found in the dermal and epidermal compartments of normal human skin. Immunohistochemical studies demonstrated the presence of p11 at equally high levels in all layers of normal epidermis and in the hyper-proliferative epithelium at the wound edge. By contrast, annex, in II expression was high in the basal layer of normal epidermis but low in the suprabasal layers and in the hyper-proliferative epithelium at the wound edge, suggesting a differentiation-specific regulation of this calpaetin I subunit. The differential expression and regulation of p11 and annexin II subunits in keratinocytes suggest the existence of different ratios of monomeric versus p11-complexed annexin II that might be associated with different cellular functions.