Presentation of Tibetan Medicine
Tibet and Tibetan medicine are more than a little attractive and mysterious to most of the world. Tibet, located at the summit of the Tibetan plateau, is remote and strange enough for most people to be familiar with; and Tibetan medicine, related to various kinds of herbs and principles of treatments, also makes lots of people long to get closer to her charm and mystery.
Tibetan medicine is characterized with distinctive national features in medical principles and prescriptions. Tibetan people live a nomadic life, and most of them live on indigestible foods such as mutton, beef and butter. Hence many Tibetans suffer from gastric disease, liverish and enteric illness. Tibetan doctors therefore produce incredibly effective prescriptions according to the medical principles.
Tibetan medicine is also rich in local feature in terms of prescriptions. Medicine is one of the five branches of Tibetan science, and is known to the Tibetans as gSoba Rig-pa, i.e., the science of healing. In the treatment of disease the Tibetan pharmacopoeia utilizes many different elements, such as trees, rocks, resins, soil, precious metals, sap, and so on. However, just like Chinese medicine, it mainly relies on herbs for treatment. Records show that the earliest popular healing art in Tibet was called "local medicine." At that time, without any systematic theory, doctors treated patients in three main ways, namely, bloodletting, fire treatment, and spreading-kneading (massage). In addition, some primitive and simple therapies such as ghee (butter) for stanching (stopping blood flow) and highland barley wine for trauma treatment were also used. The unique ways of preparation for Tibetan medicine make it effective and incredibly powerful. Tibetan doctors pay great attention to the process of preparing Tibetan medicines. The toxicity of processed Tibetan medicine is eliminated or reduced, and sometimes its function and effectiveness can be changed and raised respectively. There are three main ways of medicine processing: fire processing, water processing, and fire-and-water processing. If doctors do not observe the ways strictly, the effect of Tibetan medicine would be greatly discounted.
Perhaps because of the influences of natural Tibetan condition and the traditional customs, many kinds of minerals such as gold, silver, copper, iron, coral and agate are widely used in the prescriptions of Tibetan medicine. This special feature may be the reason why Tibetan medicine is different from other traditional Chinese medicines and western medicines and it is so curative and precious.
What’s more, one significant feature of Tibetan medicine is that it is effective and useful to many different kinds of illnesses. One prescription of Tibetan medicine can cure many kinds of diseases because of its unique ways of preparation. Tibetan doctors pay great attention to the process of preparing Tibetan medicines. If you have any doubt, just go further to learn more about Tibetan medicine, you would soon find that it is not exaggerative. Tibetan medicine is right there, real, powerful and effective.