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Tibetan medical diagnostics provide a powerful lens for understanding embodied expertise among Tibetan physicians. This investigation probes the transmission and practice of Tibetan medical diagnosis as a gateway to understanding the epistemic grounds for Tibetan conceptions of illness and healing. Participatory research as a student at two major sites for Tibetan medical training, Men-Tsee-Khang in north India and at Sorig Loling in Amdo, focused on the role of embodied knowledge in diagnosis along two analytic dimensions, namely physician as embodied diagnostic instrument, and patient as embodying disease processes. Training of physicians as diagnostic instrument is elucidated using biocultural methods, Mauss’s notion of habitus, and understandings of enacted cognition, memory, metaphor, and visualization from cognitive neuroscience. Disease processes embodied in the patient are tracked through a bioecocultural model of development and logics of biomarkers. Grounded theory from seventh century Buddhist logician Dharmakīrti’s approach to valid cognition—pramāna theory–acts as interlocutor with Western scholarship on these dimensions.This work challenges common assumptions about “rote memorization” and pedagogical values in Western education. It suggests that memorization, recitation, metaphor, and learning through praxis generate a conceptual-perceptual dialectic that drives processes cultivating embodied knowledge transmission. For the Tibetan physician, “methods of becoming” are “methods of diagnosis” by developing the senses, training the mind, and sculpting the physician’s skilled body as vessel and instrument for diagnosis and healing. Rigorous practice and associated self cultivation form the grounds for acquisition of expertise. This project documents a distinctive approach to medical education that simultaneously fosters rigorous medical knowledge and humanistic skills with distinctive diagnostic and therapeutic value.
INTRODUCTION: Tibetan medicine (TM) is a whole systems medical approach that has had growing interest in the West. However, minimal research, particularly with cancer, has been conducted. The purpose of this article is to provide an overview of TM and describe a clinical case review study to obtain preliminary evidence of TM's safety and effect on patients treated for cancer or hematologic disorders.METHODS: A retrospective case review was conducted in India and cases met the following inclusion criteria: (a) confirmed diagnosis of cancer or hematologic disorder by standard Western biomedical diagnostic tests, (b) either treated exclusively with TM or received insufficient Western treatment followed by TM and (c) were in remission or had stable disease at least 2 years after start of TM.
RESULTS: Three cases were identified, 1 solid tumor and 2 hematologic diseases: Case 1--poorly to moderately differentiated adenocarcinoma of the stomach, positive lymph nodes and mucosal infiltration, with clear scans and excellent quality of life 29 months later ; Case 2--chronic myelogenous leukemia with normalization of hematologic labs within 3 months of starting TM and stable 4 years later; and Case 3--red cell aplasia improved significantly and reversed dependence on blood transfusions with TM. None of the cases experienced demonstrable adverse effects from TM.
CONCLUSIONS: This limited case review found TM to be safe and have positive effects on quality of life and disease regression and remission in patients with cancer and blood disorders. Further exploration and investigation using rigorous methods is warranted.
This article advances the hypothesis that “traditional” Asian pharmaceutical industries are rapidly growing in size and prominence in contemporary Asia, and identifies a lack of empirical data on the phenomenon. Addressing this gap, the article provides a quantitative outline and analysis of the Sowa Rigpa (Tibetan, Mongolian and Himalayan medicine) pharmaceutical industry in China, India, Mongolia and Bhutan. Using original data gathered through multi-sited ethnographic and textual research between 2014 and 2019, involving 232 industry representatives, policy makers, researchers, pharmacists and physicians, it assembles a bigger picture on this industry's structure, size and dynamics. Revealing a tenfold growth of the Sowa Rigpa pharmaceutical industry in Asia between 2000 and 2017, the study supports its initial hypothesis. In 2017, the industry had a total sales value of 677.5 million USD, and constituted an important economic and public health resource in Tibetan, Mongolian and Himalayan regions of Asia. China generates almost 98 percent of the total sales value, which is explained by significant state intervention on the one hand, and historical and sociocultural reasons on the other. India has the second largest Sowa Rigpa pharmaceutical industry with an annual sales value of about 11 million USD, while sales values in Mongolia and Bhutan are very low, despite Sowa Rigpa's domestic importance for the two nations. The article concludes with a number of broader observations emerging from the presented data, arguing that the Sowa Rigpa pharmaceutical industry has become big enough to exert complex transformative effects on Tibetan, Mongolian and Himalayan medicine more generally. The quantitative and qualitative data presented here provide crucial foundations for further scholarly, regulatory, and professional engagement with contemporary Sowa Rigpa.