Tibetan medical science and medicine

The Zang nationality is a diligent and intelligent nationality. The formation and development of Tibetan medical science and medicine is one of their important contributions to the history and culture of the motherland.

Tibetan medical science rose during the Songzanganbu (one of the kings of Tibet) period to the Chisongdezan (one of the kings of Tibet) period, and it was formed on the basis of Tibetan traditional medical theories while absorbing and drawing on the theories of Chinese and Indian medical science.

The Tibetan medical theories contain the idea that there are three main factors in human body, and they are "Long" (breath), "Chiba" (internal heat), "Peigen" (soil and water). There are another seven basic substances: diet essence, flesh, blood, fat, bone, marrow and spirit, and three kinds of excreta: shit, urine and sweat. The three main factors control the operation and change of the seven basic substances and the three kinds of excreta. "Long" masters the function of vital energy, the state of the blood, the movement of limbs, the feeling of the five sense organs, transporting and decomposition of food, and reproducing function; "Chiba" can produce thermal energy, mediate body temperature and complexion, control hunger, thirst, digestion, courage, insight and wisdom; "Peigen" transports liquid, mediates the proportion of fat and clean, manages mainly sense of taste, sleep, disposition, etc. Tibetans think that human's diseases are caused by influence of environment, climate, diet and daily life, and maladjustment of the three factors in human body. They adopt four methods of diagnosis (observation, auscultation & olfaction, interrogation, and pulse feeling & palpation), and pay special attention to the change of coating on the tongue and the first urine in the morning. They divide diseases into two types: hot diseases and cold diseases, and they divide patients into three types: "Long", "Chiba", and "Peigen". Medicine treatment is divided into two kinds: oral medicine and medicine for external application. The principle of "cooling the hot" and "warming up the cold" is adopted when treating with oral medicine. Methods of treating externally are: acupuncture, bloodletting, cupping, stanching bleeding with hot butter, applying distiller's grains to affected parts of trauma. Commonly used medicines are mostly patent medicines compounded with many kinds of materia medica, and there are over 1400 kinds of materia medica altogether among which some are specialties of the Qinghai-Xizang Plateau.

Theories of Tibetan medical science are systematic and complete, and there are plenty of ancient medical books and records. The "Four Medical Records" written by Yutou o Yundangongbu in the eighth century is the most famous among them. The book is divided into four parts, and it contains basic theories and clinical practice of different departments, including dissecting human body, development of embryo, pathogeny and pathology, treating principles, different clinical departments, prescription and medicine, diagnosis and treating apparatus, etc. It is very rich in content. The popular edition at present has been revised and supplemented by generations of Tibetan doctors, and people from generation to generation. He is listed in the "nine famous doctors in Tibet" as the first one, and is called "the greatest doctor in the snowy area-king Yutuo".

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