Tawni Tidwell | University of Wisconsin-Madison (original) (raw)
Articles & Chapters by Tawni Tidwell
Culture, Medicine, and Psychiatry, 2024
This article presents two cases from a collaborative study among Tibetan monastic populations in ... more This article presents two cases from a collaborative study among Tibetan monastic populations in India on the postdeath meditative state called tukdam (thugs dam). Entered by advanced Tibetan Buddhist practitioners through a variety of different practices, this state provides an ontological frame that is investigated by two distinct intellectual traditions-the Tibetan Buddhist and medical tradition on one hand and the Euroamerican biomedical and scientific tradition on the other-using their respective means of inquiry. Through the investigation, the traditionsenact two paradigms of the body at the time of death alongside attendant conceptualizations of what constitutes life itself. This work examines when epistemologies of these two traditions might converge, under what ontological contexts, and through which correlated indicators of evidence. In doing so, this work explores how these two intellectual traditions might answer how the time course and characteristics of physiological changes during the postmortem period might exhibit variation across individuals. Centrally, this piece presents an epistemologicalinquiry delineating the types of valid evidence that constitute exceptional processes post-clinical death and their potential ontological implications.
Brain Behavior and Immunity Integrative, 2024
Background: Despite abundant data regarding factors that influence COVID-19 symptom severity and ... more Background: Despite abundant data regarding factors that influence COVID-19 symptom severity and need for hospitalization, few studies examine time to resolution of symptoms and potential complementary and alternative therapies that may expedite outpatient recovery. Uncertainty in expected symptom duration and potential missed opportunities to decrease this time persist. Likewise, studies tracking outpatient COVID-19 experiences among marginalized communities are lacking.
Objective: To describe the impact of complex Tibetan herbal formula regimens on symptom duration among ambulatory patients with native SARS-CoV-2 infection.
Methods: This multi-center, cohort study assessed deidentified data from patients with laboratory-confirmed SARS-CoV-2 infection. The study assessed cases from March 12, 2020 to May 5, 2021 for which vaccinations were not available, and thus reflect native infections.
Intervention: Diagnoses were made via telemedicine by a traditional Tibetan medical physician, and herbal formulas were prescribed based on specific symptom presentation of COVID-19 using the personalized medicine approach integral to traditional Tibetan medicine.
Results: Of 145 patient cases assessed for eligibility, 86 (59.3%) met inclusion criteria, and 67 (46.2%) had documented symptom resolution. Resolution of symptoms occurred within a median [interquartile range (IQR)] of 11.7 (10.1-13.5) days. The most common symptoms reported were cough and fever. Time to recovery did not significantly differ based on symptom presentation at baseline, except for a couple symptom groupings such as headache and joint pain where recovery time was shorter when those symptoms were present.
Conclusions and relevance: Ambulatory patients diagnosed with SARS-CoV-2 infection receiving Tibetan herbal formulas had recovery from symptoms at a median of 11.7 days, fewer than other published reports in patients following standard of care. The Tibetan approach of targeting treatment based on symptom groups, especially those within classical Tibetan medical nosology, appears to result in quick symptom resolution.
Invisible Guts, Imaging the 'guts' through the five senses, for and with a visually impaired public and beyond, 2023
This piece contributes to a collaborative initiative for the visually impaired called Invisible G... more This piece contributes to a collaborative initiative for the visually impaired called Invisible Guts that is related to the Comparative Guts project. It explores how the living body, especially the guts, is translated into the senses. The initiative looks at the multi-sensorial dimension of any experience of ‘body’ and attempts visual translation of a selection of gut representations from medical traditions and time periods across the world and history to explore how, whether for medical or artistic purposes, body representation is always, necessarily, a metaphor. Since olfaction has been an important contributor to knowledge about the guts across cultures, potential odorant molecules were presented in a workshop settng and are described in the online exhibition. “Tibetan Medical Anatomy of the Gut” illustrates the visual metaphors important to Tibetan medical understandings of the gut through elemental representations in the gut chambers of fire, earth, and water to demonstrate properties of organ function contributing to the metabolic process. These same elemental characteristics also become descriptive metaphors for cognitive-affective patterns that affect gut functions and system processes.
Comparative Guts: Exploring the Inside of the Body through Time and Space, 2023
This collaborative work brings together perspectives on the guts from medical traditions across t... more This collaborative work brings together perspectives on the guts from medical traditions across the world and historical time periods to explore the social, cultural, ecological, historical, and sensorial contexts in which understandings of the guts framed insights into the human body, health, wellness and illness. The project looks at “scales of transformation” to examine the processes that substantially marked past human development and the social, environmental, and cultural dimensions of connectivity in past societies that frame concepts of and approaches to wellbeing today. The late 17th century was a key period in Tibetan medical history for visualizing the guts under Desi Sangyé Gyatso’s commission of 79 medical paintings in which several paintings illustrate the guts. The exhibition features several of these images that detail the three gastrointestinal chambers and functional phases most critical to digestion as well as visual supports for key paradigms related to chronic disease, metabolic processes, and the rich network of blood, neural, lymphatic and interstitial vasculature. Descriptions elaborate on the functional significance.
Phytomedicine, 2023
Chronic non-atrophic gastritis (CNG) is the most common type of chronic gastritis. If not activel... more Chronic non-atrophic gastritis (CNG) is the most common type of chronic gastritis. If not actively treated, it may induce gastric cancer (GC). Western medicine is effective in CNG, but there are more adverse reactions after long-term medication, and it is easy to relapse after treatment, which affects patient health and quality of life. Tibetan medicine Ruta 6, herein referred to as Liuwei Muxiang Pills (LWMX pills), is a traditional Tibetan medicine compound, which has a unique curative effect in the treatment of gastric inflammation, especially chronic non-atrophic gastritis. However, the mechanisms of LWMX pills for treating CNG still remain poorly known.
Transcultural Psychiatry, 2022
Although spirit possession is generally considered a psychiatric illness, the class of conditions... more Although spirit possession is generally considered a psychiatric illness, the class of conditions designated as dön (Tib. gdon, "afflictive external influences," often glossed as "spirit affliction") in Tibetan medicine represents a distinctive paradigm for an etiology where physical and mental facets inhere in every illness. This study draws upon ethnographic fieldwork in eastern Tibet to examine two conditions that represent illness presentations at both ends of the dön spectrum: one that maps onto a biomedical etiology of stroke and another that presents in a way similar to schizophrenia. The case studies illuminate the forms of harmful external influences that (1) have physiological and psychological impacts that present as symptoms and (2) contribute to a pathogenesis common to both conditions. Our analysis considers the dual role of cultural affordances and bio-looping in the cultural presentation of the two conditions, as well as how the Tibetan medical tradition draws upon cultural, social, biological, and psychological determinants to understand this class of conditions. We also explore the implications the dön illness category has for biomedically oriented paradigms through the way in which it accounts for cultural models for both diagnosis and treatment of several chronic inflammatory conditions that have significant concomitant mental health presentations.
Knowledge and Context in Tibetan Medicine, edited by William McGrath, 2019
This paper provides an hermeneutical and praxis-based comparative analysis of the biomedical conc... more This paper provides an hermeneutical and praxis-based comparative analysis of the biomedical conception of cancer into the most proximate Tibetan medical etiological categories. Recent Tibetan medical clinical practice, scholarly work and public forums refer to cancer as dréné (’bras nad) or drétren (’bras skran) as a simple shorthand. This paper analyzes the etiological and diagnostic bases for such a categorical collapse—using the Four Tantras as the analytical base with several modern commentarial contributions as clarifying additions, including The New Dawn by Samten, one of the first publications to appeal to a biomedical sensibility in its presentation of Tibetan medical categories. This paper argues for a more complex mapping that draws upon the additional categories of méwel (me dbal), surya (surya), and other conditions related to “metabolic disruptions of nutritional essence” (dwangs ma ma zhu ba), as well as distinguishing non-cancer dréné or drétren. Interest from the Tibetan medical community in providing a one-to-one categorical mapping between Euroamerican and Tibetan medical illness categories aims to garner recognition and legitimacy amidst the broader biomedical and scientific context in which Tibetan medicine is practiced and in dialogue. However, such oversimplification threatens to entangle Tibetan medical paradigms with those of biomedicine, ignoring historical, theoretical, etiological and practical distinctions of each system and how each tradition approaches disease and health. Although both medical systems engage a single body and human experience, each also assesses salient concerns of the body and experience differentially, and therefore applies a different set of diagnostic and treatment modalities to enact healing and wellness. Comparisons of Tibetan medical categories related to biomedical cancer and other neoplasms, such as dréné and drétren are instructive in that they provide fertile grounds to compare, relate, and distinguish biomedical and Tibetan medical understandings and approaches. Likewise, the severity of disease, the presence of concrete physical morphologies, and the importance of differential diagnostics for effective treatment each reflects an urgency for understanding such distinctions.
Asian Medicine, 2021
As prophesized in early Tibetan medical works, the emergence of a pathogen such as SARS-CoV-2 th... more As prophesized in early Tibetan medical works, the emergence of a pathogen such as SARS-CoV-2 that could inflict such a virulent infectious disease such as COVID-19 provided conditions for an expected yet alarming new phenomenon to threaten the health of inhabitants on the Tibetan Plateau. As SARS-CoV-2 spread into a global pandemic, Tibetan physicians worldwide engaged in symposiums, conferences, and clinical exchanges to situate the virus and its disease within Tibetan medical nosology. They sought to reconcile prophesies of global impact and develop critical treatment protocols for their communities. This article presents this particular perspective on COVID-19 as discussed among Tibetan medical colleagues in early April 2020, with follow-up discussions a year later. It introduces the disease’s nosology as a specific type of virulent infection (gnyan rims), and describes the etiology, diagnosis, and treatment as explicated in the Tibetan classic Four Medical Treatises and related commentaries. As Tibetan physicians gain attention for their treatments of mild- and medium-severity COVID-19 cases, understanding the Tibetan medical paradigm for the condition high- lights distinctions of therapeutic and investigative relevance compared to biomedical and other traditional Asian medical approaches.
World Journal of Traditional Chinese Medicine, 2020
Tibetan medicine is based on the theory of five elemental dynamic properties and three default fu... more Tibetan medicine is based on the theory of five elemental dynamic properties and three default functional energetic systems of pathways that guide differential diagnosis of disease, characterize functional activities of materia medica, inform formulation principles of compounding, determine clinical treatment of disease and shape clinical applications of therapeutic modalities. This article presents key theoretical characteristics of Tibetan medicine, framing them through scientifically relevant paradigms to facilitate their accessibility as references for multidisciplinary research and the wider clinical application of Tibetan medicine.
Data in Brief, 2020
This article provides the most updated dataset of Latin botanical identifications for the materia... more This article provides the most updated dataset of Latin botanical identifications for the materia medica in Tibetan medicine, known as Sowa Rigpa (Tib. Gso ba rig pa) or the “knowledge field of healing.” As one of the major scholarly Asian traditional medical systems, Sowa Rigpa is the principal health resource for populations across Tibetan regions of China, Mongolia, Bhutan, Nepal, India, and culturally-related areas of Russia. The geography represented by this medicinal plant dataset extends across the entire Tibetan plateau, its adjacent ranges, the wider transregional Himalayas, central Asia and much of the Indian subcontinent. Data collection drew from textual analysis of the seminal works of the Tibetan medical canon, including the Four Medical Treatises, Crystal Orb and Rosary among others; as well as the contemporary definitive work Stainless Crystal Mirror of Materia Medica by Gawé Dorjé. Study authors applied the same classification system as Gawé Dorjé, yet reanalyzed specimens according to a database cataloguing research on regional herbarium botanical specimens, geographic distributions and regional plant chemistry studies, and confirming proper identification with the most current modern botanical taxonomies. Subsequently, almost 700 of the most commonly used materia medica were selected for compilation. Thus, this dataset represents updated botanical identifications and confirmations from both early and contemporary sources. Botanical specimen names were entered into spreadsheet format with Gawé Dorjé’s categories listed alongside Deumar Tendzin Püntsok’s early standard. Enclosed raw data are written in Unicode Tibetan font to retain fidelity to entries in the classical texts, with parallel columns in standard Wylie Tibetan transliteration and phonetic transcription. Latin botanical names are updated for each materia medica specimen using Kew’s Medicinal Plant Names Services (Kew-MPNS) with missing entries supplied by World Flora Online (WFO) and Flora of China (FoC). This dataset is the first publicly available comprehensive ethnobotanical identification of Sowa Rigpa materia medica with Latin binomial nomenclature. This dataset was developed to inform botanical and pharmacological analysis of the Tibetan medical materia medica repertoire as well as make comparative analyses of related materia medica in other Asian medical systems
Cultural Anthropology Hot Spots, Fieldsights, Jun 23, 2020
Tibetan physicians’ response to the novel coronavirus outbreak and its entry onto the Tibetan pla... more Tibetan physicians’ response to the novel coronavirus outbreak and its entry onto the Tibetan plateau demonstrates a newly emerging public face of Tibetan medicine in contemporary times that is characterized by a sense of confidence, professionalism, and rigor in stark contrast to decades earlier. This Hot Spots piece provides a lens into the novel set of conditions facilitating physicians to engage this global health crisis and positioning them to re-awaken tradition.
Asian Medicine, 2020
Collaborative research on Tibetan medicine for conditions difficult to treat by Euroamerican biom... more Collaborative research on Tibetan medicine for conditions difficult to treat by Euroamerican biomedicine, such as many intractable types of cancer, has developed in recent years due to treatment outcomes and growing patient interest. In these collaborations, more nuanced analyses of how one medical tradition’s etiology maps onto the other are required for productive dialogue and sophisticated research methodologies. Building on earlier work that provides the initial etiologic and diagnostic mapping of biomedical cancer into Tibetan medical nosology, this article develops a further analytical dimension by describing the specific etiologic role of blood (Tib. khrag) and chuser (Tib. chu ser), as well as their specific ontological characterization in Sowa Rigpa more generally. The Four Treatises and its commentaries elucidate a unique perspective on these substances as implemented in clinical praxis. This analysis furthers work to disentangle contemporary Tibetan medical and biomedical paradigms by highlighting therapeutic and investigative distinctions for cancer and research collaborations more broadly.
Data in Brief, 2020
This article shares the comprehensive dataset and five visualized examples of disease categories ... more This article shares the comprehensive dataset and five visualized examples of disease categories in Tibetan medicine, or Sowa Rigpa (Tib. Gso ba rig pa), translated as the "knowledge field of healing." Sowa Rigpa is a scholarly Asian traditional medical system rigorously transmitted through canonical texts and oral teachings originating in Tibet with an extensive pharmacopeia, comprehensive treatment repertoire, and nuanced etiological explications of its nosology of diseases. This medical tradition is practiced across a broad region of Asia, particularly in Tibetan regions of China, Hi-malayan regions of India (Ladakh, Sikkim, Himachal Pradesh), Nepal, Bhutan, Mongolia, Russia, and recently in Europe and North America. The data herein depicts disease classifications listed in the encyclopedic compendium "Oral Instructions Treatise" (Man ngag rgyud) of the Tibetan medical classic, the Four Medical Treatises (Rgyud bzhi), compiled in written form during the twelfth century CE. Visualized examples depict etiological relations among diseases in five of the fifteen major categories of disease: rLung Illnesses, B eken Illneses,
Journal of Ethnopharmacology, 2020
Ethnopharmacological relevance: Tibetan medicine (Sowa Rigpa), one of the major scholarly Asian m... more Ethnopharmacological relevance: Tibetan medicine (Sowa Rigpa), one of the major scholarly Asian medical systems, has an extensive materia medica with richly unique pharmacological compounding methods. Informatization and standardization have become primary drivers in developing traditional medical systems and their pharmacology in Asia. However, methods for and related benefits from systematizing traditional medicine information and integrating it into database networks have not received much attention until recently.
Aim of the study: We introduce the existing databases and informatics systems that have developed over the last ten years in the Sowa Rigpa field. As such, we present Tibetan medical informatics as an emergent field, detail its most applicable areas for research, and propose an analytical structure for it to inform wider pharmacological, clinical, textual and cultural research analyses in Sowa Rigpa.
Materials and methods: Assessing the available bioinformatics systems, and drawing from Tibetan medicine's basic theory and traditionally applied empirical research methods, this study analyzes Tibetan medical informatics as a data integration approach drawing from: (1) Tibetan medical clinical practice, (2) Tibetan materia medica and pharmacological knowledge, (3) Tibetan medical literature, and (4) applied information and management sciences. This study assesses the existing databases, developments and methodologies of Tibetan medical informatics, and presents the first quantitative analyses from these data sources regarding Tibetan medical works, disease categories, prescription data and pharmacological characterizations. This study also introduces the role of graphic data visualization in assisting hypothesis development and data analysis for Tibetan medical informatics.
Results: The authors introduce the available data respositories for Tibetan medical informatics, and demonstrate five applications of data analysis and visualization techniques: (1) a historiographic depiction of major Tibetan medical schools, figures and works that contributed to the development of Tibetan medicine and its pharmacology; (2) an enumeration of the specific diseases in the Tibetan medical canon as well as the etiological and classification hierarchies; (3) a quantification of the materia medica and compounded formulas in the most frequently used pharmacological texts; (4) a pharmacokinetics and pharmacological modeling of medicine compounding principles; and (5) an analysis of how several recent clinical case studies drew from Tibetan medical informatics and its other data sources.
Conclusions: This study demonstrates the analytical structure and research application areas central to a developing Tibetan medical informatics. It shows how newly developed databases and structures of informatization allow research in Sowa Rigpa to bridge pharmacological, clinical and data science research; clinical practice; education structures and cultural dimensions. The study shows that Tibetan medical informatics is poised to support efforts in traditional knowledge preservation, education development and access and greater rigor in research and clinical practice. The study also suggests that this new field facilitates tools for demonstrating Tibetan medicine’s capacity for pharmacological insight, whole systems treatment and illness prevention, and comprehensive patient care.
Social Science & Medicine, 2019
This article advances the hypothesis that “traditional” Asian pharmaceutical industries are rapid... more 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.
HIMALAYA, the Journal of the Association for Nepal and Himalayan Studies, 2019
Sowa Rigpa institutions and practitioners have growing interest in examining and legitimizing Sow... more Sowa Rigpa institutions and practitioners have growing interest in examining and legitimizing Sowa Rigpa formulas vis-à-vis pharmacological research methods, seeking scientific validation of what they view as ‘potency’ and ‘purity’ for their formulas. Likewise, the pharmacology researchers have demonstrated renewed interest in herbal medical traditions in mining for new drugs to address resistance, toxicity, and optimize what they view as ‘potency’ and ‘purity.’ However, differing conceptualizations emerge when the pharmacological drug discovery process is examined to determine what is being analyzed, how it is doing so, and what assumptions underlie such methods. Whether a formula is ‘active,’ ‘toxic’ or ‘effective’ hinges on assumptions, processes, and methods that typically have low fidelity to how Sowa Rigpa formulations function from the Tibetan tradition’s perspective and are actually administered to patients. This paper argues that standard mainstream biochemical pharmacology screening methods may not be suitable for analyzing Sowa Rigpa formulas, as they are traditionally compounded and understood to function in concert with multiple physiological pathways, rather than one specific target. We examine the pharmaceutical research processes to identify points of adherence and divergence with conceptions of ‘potency’ and ‘purity' in Tibetan medical theory, and believe pharmacological research institutions will be receptive to traditional Sowa Rigpa menjor (sman sbyor), or ‘medicine compounding,’ theory due to benefits it could provide biomedical drug discovery via complementary understandings of compound synergy and distinctly different concepts of toxicity and purity. Accordingly, we suggest that efficacy, activity and safety of Tibetan medicinal formulas will be more accurately assessed by retaining fidelity to its own conceptions of potency and purity.
European Journal of Integrative Medicine, 2019
Introduction: Bhutanese Sowa Rigpa medicine (BSM) has established unique pharmacopoeias that desc... more Introduction: Bhutanese Sowa Rigpa medicine (BSM) has established unique pharmacopoeias that describe eth-notaxonomical concepts, classification systems and descriptions of medicinal plants. BSM was integrated with modern health care system in 1967. BSM uses medicinal plants, minerals and animal products as the main ingredients of the formulations used for treating various disorders. This study was aimed to highlight interesting ethnotaxonomical concepts of BSM and identify and document medicinal plants from the two remotest regions of eastern Himalayas of Bhutan-Merak and Sakteng. Methods: Ethnopharmacological data was gathered from the pharmacopoeias, published monographs and research papers on Bhutanese medicinal plants. Medicinal plants diversity was surveyed using the convenience sampling methods. A literature review on the phytochemical content of the medicinal plants and their pharmacological activities was carried out using plant databases, PubMed, SciFinder and Google Scholar. Results: A very interesting ethnotaxonomical concept of BSM has been translated into English terminologies from the traditional pharmacopoeia. A total of 50 alpine medicinal plants belonging to 25 families and 39 genera in 13 study sites between Merak and Sakteng were documented. Only 12 medicinal species were identified as priority species or are currently used at Menjong Sorig Pharmaceuticals for formulating 48 different medicines. Conclusions: This study described the ethnotaxonomical concepts, classification and description of medicinal plants in Bhutan and botanically identified 50 alpine medicinal plants from 13 different study sites under Merak and Sakteng regions. About 12 of them were currently used as ingredients in BSM formulations and 35 species were studied for their phytochemical and pharmacological properties.
ཀྲུང་གོའི་བོད་རིག་པའི་དཔྱད་རྩོམ་ཉིང་བཏུས། [China Tibetology Digest], 2017
དཔྱད་རྩོམའདིའི་ནང་ཕྱི་ལུགས་གསོ་རིག་གི་ཀན་སར་ཞེས་པའི་ནད་རིགས་དེ་བོད་ལུགས་གསོ་རིག་གི་འབྲས་ནད་དང་། ས... more དཔྱད་རྩོམའདིའི་ནང་ཕྱི་ལུགས་གསོ་རིག་གི་ཀན་སར་ཞེས་པའི་ནད་རིགས་དེ་བོད་ལུགས་གསོ་རིག་གི་འབྲས་ནད་དང་། སུརྱ། མེ་དབལ། སྐྲན་རིགས་གང་ལ་སྦྱར་འོས་མིན་ཐད་དྭོགས་སློང་དང་དཔྱད་ཞིབ་གང་ཐུབ་བྱས་ཡོད། བོད་ལུགས་གསོ་རིག་ནང་གི་ནད་རིགས་འགའ་བལྟས་ཚོད་ཀྱིས་ཕྱི་ལུགས་གསོ་རིག་གིས་བཤད་ཀྱིན་པའི་ནད་རིགས་དང་འདྲ་བོ་ཡོད་ནའང་། ནད་སོ་སོའི་རྒྱུ་རྐྱེན་དང་འགྱུར་ཚུལ། ནད་རྟགས་ལ་སོགས་པར་ཞིབ་མོར་བལྟས་ཚེ་ནད་རིགས་དེ་དག་གི་ངོ་བོ་དང་ཁྱད་ཆོས། ཚད་གཞི་སོགས་མི་འདྲ་བ་ཡིན་པ་རྟོགས་ཐུབ། ནད་གཞི་འདིའི་རིགས་ངོས་འཛིན་བྱེད་སྐབས་ང་ཚོས་ངེས་པར་དུ་དབྱེ་འབྱེད་གང་གཟབ་ཀྱིས་གཞི་མ་འཁྲུལ་བ་བྱེད་རྒྱུ་ནི་ཤིན་ཏུ་ནས་གལ། བོད་ལུགས་གསོ་རིག་གི་འབྲས་ནད་དང་ཕྱི་ལུགས་གསོ་རིག་གི་ཀན་སར་ཅུང་འདྲ་བོ་ཡོད་པ་དང་། དེ་མིན་བོད་ལུགས་གསོ་རིག་གི་སུརྱ་དང་སྐྲན་རིགས་འགའ་ཞིག་ཀྱང་དྭངས་མ་མ་ཞུ་བ་དང་ངན་ཁྲག་རྒྱས་ལ་རླུང་གིས་བསྒྲིལ་བའི་འབྲེལ་བའི་དབང་གིས་ཕྱི་ལུགས་གསོ་རིག་ཁྲོད་ཀྱི་ཀན་སར་དང་འདྲ་ཡང་ནད་རིགས་དེ་གཉིས་ངོ་བོའི་ཆ་ནས་མི་གཅིག དེ་བས་ཕྱི་ལུགས་གསོ་རིག་གི་ཀན་སར་དང་འདྲ་བའི་བོད་ལུགས་གསོ་རིག་ནང་གི་འབྲས་ནད་དང་། སུརྱ། སྐྲན་ལ་སོགས་པ་རྣམས་བོད་རང་གཞུང་དུ་འཁོད་པའི་མན་ངག་རྣམས་སྤྱད་དེ་ངོས་འཛིན་བྱེད་རྒྱུ་ལས་ནད་རིགས་དེ་གསུམ་གང་རུང་ཡིན་ན་ཕྱི་ལུགས་གསོ་རིག་གི་ཀན་སར་ཡིན་པའི་ཁྱབ་པ་དང་། ཕྱི་ལུགས་གསོ་རིག་གི་ཀན་སར་ཡིན་ནའང་ནད་རིགས་དེ་གསུམ་གང་རུང་ཡིན་དགོས་པའི་ཁྱབ་པ་མེད་པ་མཁྱེན་རྟོགས་གསལ་པོ་དགོས་པ་གལ་ཆེན་ཏུ་མཐོང་།
![Research paper thumbnail of ཕྱི་ལུགས་གསོ་རིག་གི་ཀན་སར་ཞེས་པའི་ནད་རིགས་དེ་ བོད་ལུགས་གསོ་རིག་གི་འབྲས་ནད་དང་། སུརྱ། སྐྲན་རིགས་གང་ལ་སྦྱར་རུང་བར་དཔྱད་པ། [A comparative analysis: Mapping biomedical cancer into Tibetan medical etiological categories]](https://attachments.academia-assets.com/59932411/thumbnails/1.jpg)
](བོད་སྨན་སློབ་གསོ་དང་ཞིབ་འཇུག [Journal of Tibetan Medicine and Research], 2016
དཔྱད་རྩོམའདིའི་ནང་ཕྱི་ལུགས་གསོ་རིག་གི་ཀན་སར་ཞེས་པའི་ནད་རིགས་དེ་བོད་ལུགས་གསོ་རིག་གི་འབྲས་ནད་དང་། ས... more དཔྱད་རྩོམའདིའི་ནང་ཕྱི་ལུགས་གསོ་རིག་གི་ཀན་སར་ཞེས་པའི་ནད་རིགས་དེ་བོད་ལུགས་གསོ་རིག་གི་འབྲས་ནད་དང་། སུརྱ། མེ་དབལ། སྐྲན་རིགས་གང་ལ་སྦྱར་འོས་མིན་ཐད་དྭོགས་སློང་དང་དཔྱད་ཞིབ་གང་ཐུབ་བྱས་ཡོད། བོད་ལུགས་གསོ་རིག་ནང་གི་ནད་རིགས་འགའ་བལྟས་ཚོད་ཀྱིས་ཕྱི་ལུགས་གསོ་རིག་གིས་བཤད་ཀྱིན་པའི་ནད་རིགས་དང་འདྲ་བོ་ཡོད་ནའང་། ནད་སོ་སོའི་རྒྱུ་རྐྱེན་དང་འགྱུར་ཚུལ། ནད་རྟགས་ལ་སོགས་པར་ཞིབ་མོར་བལྟས་ཚེ་ནད་རིགས་དེ་དག་གི་ངོ་བོ་དང་ཁྱད་ཆོས། ཚད་གཞི་སོགས་མི་འདྲ་བ་ཡིན་པ་རྟོགས་ཐུབ། ནད་གཞི་འདིའི་རིགས་ངོས་འཛིན་བྱེད་སྐབས་ང་ཚོས་ངེས་པར་དུ་དབྱེ་འབྱེད་གང་གཟབ་ཀྱིས་གཞི་མ་འཁྲུལ་བ་བྱེད་རྒྱུ་ནི་ཤིན་ཏུ་ནས་གལ། བོད་ལུགས་གསོ་རིག་གི་འབྲས་ནད་དང་ཕྱི་ལུགས་གསོ་རིག་གི་ཀན་སར་ཅུང་འདྲ་བོ་ཡོད་པ་དང་། དེ་མིན་བོད་ལུགས་གསོ་རིག་གི་སུརྱ་དང་སྐྲན་རིགས་འགའ་ཞིག་ཀྱང་དྭངས་མ་མ་ཞུ་བ་དང་ངན་ཁྲག་རྒྱས་ལ་རླུང་གིས་བསྒྲིལ་བའི་འབྲེལ་བའི་དབང་གིས་ཕྱི་ལུགས་གསོ་རིག་ཁྲོད་ཀྱི་ཀན་སར་དང་འདྲ་ཡང་ནད་རིགས་དེ་གཉིས་ངོ་བོའི་ཆ་ནས་མི་གཅིག དེ་བས་ཕྱི་ལུགས་གསོ་རིག་གི་ཀན་སར་དང་འདྲ་བའི་བོད་ལུགས་གསོ་རིག་ནང་གི་འབྲས་ནད་དང་། སུརྱ། སྐྲན་ལ་སོགས་པ་རྣམས་བོད་རང་གཞུང་དུ་འཁོད་པའི་མན་ངག་རྣམས་སྤྱད་དེ་ངོས་འཛིན་བྱེད་རྒྱུ་ལས་ནད་རིགས་དེ་གསུམ་གང་རུང་ཡིན་ན་ཕྱི་ལུགས་གསོ་རིག་གི་ཀན་སར་ཡིན་པའི་ཁྱབ་པ་དང་། ཕྱི་ལུགས་གསོ་རིག་གི་ཀན་སར་ཡིན་ནའང་ནད་རིགས་དེ་གསུམ་གང་རུང་ཡིན་དགོས་པའི་ཁྱབ་པ་མེད་པ་མཁྱེན་རྟོགས་གསལ་པོ་དགོས་པ་གལ་ཆེན་ཏུ་མཐོང་།
Integrative Cancer Therapies, 2014
Introduction: Tibetan medicine (TM) is a whole systems medical approach that has had growing inte... more 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.
Culture, Medicine, and Psychiatry, 2024
This article presents two cases from a collaborative study among Tibetan monastic populations in ... more This article presents two cases from a collaborative study among Tibetan monastic populations in India on the postdeath meditative state called tukdam (thugs dam). Entered by advanced Tibetan Buddhist practitioners through a variety of different practices, this state provides an ontological frame that is investigated by two distinct intellectual traditions-the Tibetan Buddhist and medical tradition on one hand and the Euroamerican biomedical and scientific tradition on the other-using their respective means of inquiry. Through the investigation, the traditionsenact two paradigms of the body at the time of death alongside attendant conceptualizations of what constitutes life itself. This work examines when epistemologies of these two traditions might converge, under what ontological contexts, and through which correlated indicators of evidence. In doing so, this work explores how these two intellectual traditions might answer how the time course and characteristics of physiological changes during the postmortem period might exhibit variation across individuals. Centrally, this piece presents an epistemologicalinquiry delineating the types of valid evidence that constitute exceptional processes post-clinical death and their potential ontological implications.
Brain Behavior and Immunity Integrative, 2024
Background: Despite abundant data regarding factors that influence COVID-19 symptom severity and ... more Background: Despite abundant data regarding factors that influence COVID-19 symptom severity and need for hospitalization, few studies examine time to resolution of symptoms and potential complementary and alternative therapies that may expedite outpatient recovery. Uncertainty in expected symptom duration and potential missed opportunities to decrease this time persist. Likewise, studies tracking outpatient COVID-19 experiences among marginalized communities are lacking.
Objective: To describe the impact of complex Tibetan herbal formula regimens on symptom duration among ambulatory patients with native SARS-CoV-2 infection.
Methods: This multi-center, cohort study assessed deidentified data from patients with laboratory-confirmed SARS-CoV-2 infection. The study assessed cases from March 12, 2020 to May 5, 2021 for which vaccinations were not available, and thus reflect native infections.
Intervention: Diagnoses were made via telemedicine by a traditional Tibetan medical physician, and herbal formulas were prescribed based on specific symptom presentation of COVID-19 using the personalized medicine approach integral to traditional Tibetan medicine.
Results: Of 145 patient cases assessed for eligibility, 86 (59.3%) met inclusion criteria, and 67 (46.2%) had documented symptom resolution. Resolution of symptoms occurred within a median [interquartile range (IQR)] of 11.7 (10.1-13.5) days. The most common symptoms reported were cough and fever. Time to recovery did not significantly differ based on symptom presentation at baseline, except for a couple symptom groupings such as headache and joint pain where recovery time was shorter when those symptoms were present.
Conclusions and relevance: Ambulatory patients diagnosed with SARS-CoV-2 infection receiving Tibetan herbal formulas had recovery from symptoms at a median of 11.7 days, fewer than other published reports in patients following standard of care. The Tibetan approach of targeting treatment based on symptom groups, especially those within classical Tibetan medical nosology, appears to result in quick symptom resolution.
Invisible Guts, Imaging the 'guts' through the five senses, for and with a visually impaired public and beyond, 2023
This piece contributes to a collaborative initiative for the visually impaired called Invisible G... more This piece contributes to a collaborative initiative for the visually impaired called Invisible Guts that is related to the Comparative Guts project. It explores how the living body, especially the guts, is translated into the senses. The initiative looks at the multi-sensorial dimension of any experience of ‘body’ and attempts visual translation of a selection of gut representations from medical traditions and time periods across the world and history to explore how, whether for medical or artistic purposes, body representation is always, necessarily, a metaphor. Since olfaction has been an important contributor to knowledge about the guts across cultures, potential odorant molecules were presented in a workshop settng and are described in the online exhibition. “Tibetan Medical Anatomy of the Gut” illustrates the visual metaphors important to Tibetan medical understandings of the gut through elemental representations in the gut chambers of fire, earth, and water to demonstrate properties of organ function contributing to the metabolic process. These same elemental characteristics also become descriptive metaphors for cognitive-affective patterns that affect gut functions and system processes.
Comparative Guts: Exploring the Inside of the Body through Time and Space, 2023
This collaborative work brings together perspectives on the guts from medical traditions across t... more This collaborative work brings together perspectives on the guts from medical traditions across the world and historical time periods to explore the social, cultural, ecological, historical, and sensorial contexts in which understandings of the guts framed insights into the human body, health, wellness and illness. The project looks at “scales of transformation” to examine the processes that substantially marked past human development and the social, environmental, and cultural dimensions of connectivity in past societies that frame concepts of and approaches to wellbeing today. The late 17th century was a key period in Tibetan medical history for visualizing the guts under Desi Sangyé Gyatso’s commission of 79 medical paintings in which several paintings illustrate the guts. The exhibition features several of these images that detail the three gastrointestinal chambers and functional phases most critical to digestion as well as visual supports for key paradigms related to chronic disease, metabolic processes, and the rich network of blood, neural, lymphatic and interstitial vasculature. Descriptions elaborate on the functional significance.
Phytomedicine, 2023
Chronic non-atrophic gastritis (CNG) is the most common type of chronic gastritis. If not activel... more Chronic non-atrophic gastritis (CNG) is the most common type of chronic gastritis. If not actively treated, it may induce gastric cancer (GC). Western medicine is effective in CNG, but there are more adverse reactions after long-term medication, and it is easy to relapse after treatment, which affects patient health and quality of life. Tibetan medicine Ruta 6, herein referred to as Liuwei Muxiang Pills (LWMX pills), is a traditional Tibetan medicine compound, which has a unique curative effect in the treatment of gastric inflammation, especially chronic non-atrophic gastritis. However, the mechanisms of LWMX pills for treating CNG still remain poorly known.
Transcultural Psychiatry, 2022
Although spirit possession is generally considered a psychiatric illness, the class of conditions... more Although spirit possession is generally considered a psychiatric illness, the class of conditions designated as dön (Tib. gdon, "afflictive external influences," often glossed as "spirit affliction") in Tibetan medicine represents a distinctive paradigm for an etiology where physical and mental facets inhere in every illness. This study draws upon ethnographic fieldwork in eastern Tibet to examine two conditions that represent illness presentations at both ends of the dön spectrum: one that maps onto a biomedical etiology of stroke and another that presents in a way similar to schizophrenia. The case studies illuminate the forms of harmful external influences that (1) have physiological and psychological impacts that present as symptoms and (2) contribute to a pathogenesis common to both conditions. Our analysis considers the dual role of cultural affordances and bio-looping in the cultural presentation of the two conditions, as well as how the Tibetan medical tradition draws upon cultural, social, biological, and psychological determinants to understand this class of conditions. We also explore the implications the dön illness category has for biomedically oriented paradigms through the way in which it accounts for cultural models for both diagnosis and treatment of several chronic inflammatory conditions that have significant concomitant mental health presentations.
Knowledge and Context in Tibetan Medicine, edited by William McGrath, 2019
This paper provides an hermeneutical and praxis-based comparative analysis of the biomedical conc... more This paper provides an hermeneutical and praxis-based comparative analysis of the biomedical conception of cancer into the most proximate Tibetan medical etiological categories. Recent Tibetan medical clinical practice, scholarly work and public forums refer to cancer as dréné (’bras nad) or drétren (’bras skran) as a simple shorthand. This paper analyzes the etiological and diagnostic bases for such a categorical collapse—using the Four Tantras as the analytical base with several modern commentarial contributions as clarifying additions, including The New Dawn by Samten, one of the first publications to appeal to a biomedical sensibility in its presentation of Tibetan medical categories. This paper argues for a more complex mapping that draws upon the additional categories of méwel (me dbal), surya (surya), and other conditions related to “metabolic disruptions of nutritional essence” (dwangs ma ma zhu ba), as well as distinguishing non-cancer dréné or drétren. Interest from the Tibetan medical community in providing a one-to-one categorical mapping between Euroamerican and Tibetan medical illness categories aims to garner recognition and legitimacy amidst the broader biomedical and scientific context in which Tibetan medicine is practiced and in dialogue. However, such oversimplification threatens to entangle Tibetan medical paradigms with those of biomedicine, ignoring historical, theoretical, etiological and practical distinctions of each system and how each tradition approaches disease and health. Although both medical systems engage a single body and human experience, each also assesses salient concerns of the body and experience differentially, and therefore applies a different set of diagnostic and treatment modalities to enact healing and wellness. Comparisons of Tibetan medical categories related to biomedical cancer and other neoplasms, such as dréné and drétren are instructive in that they provide fertile grounds to compare, relate, and distinguish biomedical and Tibetan medical understandings and approaches. Likewise, the severity of disease, the presence of concrete physical morphologies, and the importance of differential diagnostics for effective treatment each reflects an urgency for understanding such distinctions.
Asian Medicine, 2021
As prophesized in early Tibetan medical works, the emergence of a pathogen such as SARS-CoV-2 th... more As prophesized in early Tibetan medical works, the emergence of a pathogen such as SARS-CoV-2 that could inflict such a virulent infectious disease such as COVID-19 provided conditions for an expected yet alarming new phenomenon to threaten the health of inhabitants on the Tibetan Plateau. As SARS-CoV-2 spread into a global pandemic, Tibetan physicians worldwide engaged in symposiums, conferences, and clinical exchanges to situate the virus and its disease within Tibetan medical nosology. They sought to reconcile prophesies of global impact and develop critical treatment protocols for their communities. This article presents this particular perspective on COVID-19 as discussed among Tibetan medical colleagues in early April 2020, with follow-up discussions a year later. It introduces the disease’s nosology as a specific type of virulent infection (gnyan rims), and describes the etiology, diagnosis, and treatment as explicated in the Tibetan classic Four Medical Treatises and related commentaries. As Tibetan physicians gain attention for their treatments of mild- and medium-severity COVID-19 cases, understanding the Tibetan medical paradigm for the condition high- lights distinctions of therapeutic and investigative relevance compared to biomedical and other traditional Asian medical approaches.
World Journal of Traditional Chinese Medicine, 2020
Tibetan medicine is based on the theory of five elemental dynamic properties and three default fu... more Tibetan medicine is based on the theory of five elemental dynamic properties and three default functional energetic systems of pathways that guide differential diagnosis of disease, characterize functional activities of materia medica, inform formulation principles of compounding, determine clinical treatment of disease and shape clinical applications of therapeutic modalities. This article presents key theoretical characteristics of Tibetan medicine, framing them through scientifically relevant paradigms to facilitate their accessibility as references for multidisciplinary research and the wider clinical application of Tibetan medicine.
Data in Brief, 2020
This article provides the most updated dataset of Latin botanical identifications for the materia... more This article provides the most updated dataset of Latin botanical identifications for the materia medica in Tibetan medicine, known as Sowa Rigpa (Tib. Gso ba rig pa) or the “knowledge field of healing.” As one of the major scholarly Asian traditional medical systems, Sowa Rigpa is the principal health resource for populations across Tibetan regions of China, Mongolia, Bhutan, Nepal, India, and culturally-related areas of Russia. The geography represented by this medicinal plant dataset extends across the entire Tibetan plateau, its adjacent ranges, the wider transregional Himalayas, central Asia and much of the Indian subcontinent. Data collection drew from textual analysis of the seminal works of the Tibetan medical canon, including the Four Medical Treatises, Crystal Orb and Rosary among others; as well as the contemporary definitive work Stainless Crystal Mirror of Materia Medica by Gawé Dorjé. Study authors applied the same classification system as Gawé Dorjé, yet reanalyzed specimens according to a database cataloguing research on regional herbarium botanical specimens, geographic distributions and regional plant chemistry studies, and confirming proper identification with the most current modern botanical taxonomies. Subsequently, almost 700 of the most commonly used materia medica were selected for compilation. Thus, this dataset represents updated botanical identifications and confirmations from both early and contemporary sources. Botanical specimen names were entered into spreadsheet format with Gawé Dorjé’s categories listed alongside Deumar Tendzin Püntsok’s early standard. Enclosed raw data are written in Unicode Tibetan font to retain fidelity to entries in the classical texts, with parallel columns in standard Wylie Tibetan transliteration and phonetic transcription. Latin botanical names are updated for each materia medica specimen using Kew’s Medicinal Plant Names Services (Kew-MPNS) with missing entries supplied by World Flora Online (WFO) and Flora of China (FoC). This dataset is the first publicly available comprehensive ethnobotanical identification of Sowa Rigpa materia medica with Latin binomial nomenclature. This dataset was developed to inform botanical and pharmacological analysis of the Tibetan medical materia medica repertoire as well as make comparative analyses of related materia medica in other Asian medical systems
Cultural Anthropology Hot Spots, Fieldsights, Jun 23, 2020
Tibetan physicians’ response to the novel coronavirus outbreak and its entry onto the Tibetan pla... more Tibetan physicians’ response to the novel coronavirus outbreak and its entry onto the Tibetan plateau demonstrates a newly emerging public face of Tibetan medicine in contemporary times that is characterized by a sense of confidence, professionalism, and rigor in stark contrast to decades earlier. This Hot Spots piece provides a lens into the novel set of conditions facilitating physicians to engage this global health crisis and positioning them to re-awaken tradition.
Asian Medicine, 2020
Collaborative research on Tibetan medicine for conditions difficult to treat by Euroamerican biom... more Collaborative research on Tibetan medicine for conditions difficult to treat by Euroamerican biomedicine, such as many intractable types of cancer, has developed in recent years due to treatment outcomes and growing patient interest. In these collaborations, more nuanced analyses of how one medical tradition’s etiology maps onto the other are required for productive dialogue and sophisticated research methodologies. Building on earlier work that provides the initial etiologic and diagnostic mapping of biomedical cancer into Tibetan medical nosology, this article develops a further analytical dimension by describing the specific etiologic role of blood (Tib. khrag) and chuser (Tib. chu ser), as well as their specific ontological characterization in Sowa Rigpa more generally. The Four Treatises and its commentaries elucidate a unique perspective on these substances as implemented in clinical praxis. This analysis furthers work to disentangle contemporary Tibetan medical and biomedical paradigms by highlighting therapeutic and investigative distinctions for cancer and research collaborations more broadly.
Data in Brief, 2020
This article shares the comprehensive dataset and five visualized examples of disease categories ... more This article shares the comprehensive dataset and five visualized examples of disease categories in Tibetan medicine, or Sowa Rigpa (Tib. Gso ba rig pa), translated as the "knowledge field of healing." Sowa Rigpa is a scholarly Asian traditional medical system rigorously transmitted through canonical texts and oral teachings originating in Tibet with an extensive pharmacopeia, comprehensive treatment repertoire, and nuanced etiological explications of its nosology of diseases. This medical tradition is practiced across a broad region of Asia, particularly in Tibetan regions of China, Hi-malayan regions of India (Ladakh, Sikkim, Himachal Pradesh), Nepal, Bhutan, Mongolia, Russia, and recently in Europe and North America. The data herein depicts disease classifications listed in the encyclopedic compendium "Oral Instructions Treatise" (Man ngag rgyud) of the Tibetan medical classic, the Four Medical Treatises (Rgyud bzhi), compiled in written form during the twelfth century CE. Visualized examples depict etiological relations among diseases in five of the fifteen major categories of disease: rLung Illnesses, B eken Illneses,
Journal of Ethnopharmacology, 2020
Ethnopharmacological relevance: Tibetan medicine (Sowa Rigpa), one of the major scholarly Asian m... more Ethnopharmacological relevance: Tibetan medicine (Sowa Rigpa), one of the major scholarly Asian medical systems, has an extensive materia medica with richly unique pharmacological compounding methods. Informatization and standardization have become primary drivers in developing traditional medical systems and their pharmacology in Asia. However, methods for and related benefits from systematizing traditional medicine information and integrating it into database networks have not received much attention until recently.
Aim of the study: We introduce the existing databases and informatics systems that have developed over the last ten years in the Sowa Rigpa field. As such, we present Tibetan medical informatics as an emergent field, detail its most applicable areas for research, and propose an analytical structure for it to inform wider pharmacological, clinical, textual and cultural research analyses in Sowa Rigpa.
Materials and methods: Assessing the available bioinformatics systems, and drawing from Tibetan medicine's basic theory and traditionally applied empirical research methods, this study analyzes Tibetan medical informatics as a data integration approach drawing from: (1) Tibetan medical clinical practice, (2) Tibetan materia medica and pharmacological knowledge, (3) Tibetan medical literature, and (4) applied information and management sciences. This study assesses the existing databases, developments and methodologies of Tibetan medical informatics, and presents the first quantitative analyses from these data sources regarding Tibetan medical works, disease categories, prescription data and pharmacological characterizations. This study also introduces the role of graphic data visualization in assisting hypothesis development and data analysis for Tibetan medical informatics.
Results: The authors introduce the available data respositories for Tibetan medical informatics, and demonstrate five applications of data analysis and visualization techniques: (1) a historiographic depiction of major Tibetan medical schools, figures and works that contributed to the development of Tibetan medicine and its pharmacology; (2) an enumeration of the specific diseases in the Tibetan medical canon as well as the etiological and classification hierarchies; (3) a quantification of the materia medica and compounded formulas in the most frequently used pharmacological texts; (4) a pharmacokinetics and pharmacological modeling of medicine compounding principles; and (5) an analysis of how several recent clinical case studies drew from Tibetan medical informatics and its other data sources.
Conclusions: This study demonstrates the analytical structure and research application areas central to a developing Tibetan medical informatics. It shows how newly developed databases and structures of informatization allow research in Sowa Rigpa to bridge pharmacological, clinical and data science research; clinical practice; education structures and cultural dimensions. The study shows that Tibetan medical informatics is poised to support efforts in traditional knowledge preservation, education development and access and greater rigor in research and clinical practice. The study also suggests that this new field facilitates tools for demonstrating Tibetan medicine’s capacity for pharmacological insight, whole systems treatment and illness prevention, and comprehensive patient care.
Social Science & Medicine, 2019
This article advances the hypothesis that “traditional” Asian pharmaceutical industries are rapid... more 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.
HIMALAYA, the Journal of the Association for Nepal and Himalayan Studies, 2019
Sowa Rigpa institutions and practitioners have growing interest in examining and legitimizing Sow... more Sowa Rigpa institutions and practitioners have growing interest in examining and legitimizing Sowa Rigpa formulas vis-à-vis pharmacological research methods, seeking scientific validation of what they view as ‘potency’ and ‘purity’ for their formulas. Likewise, the pharmacology researchers have demonstrated renewed interest in herbal medical traditions in mining for new drugs to address resistance, toxicity, and optimize what they view as ‘potency’ and ‘purity.’ However, differing conceptualizations emerge when the pharmacological drug discovery process is examined to determine what is being analyzed, how it is doing so, and what assumptions underlie such methods. Whether a formula is ‘active,’ ‘toxic’ or ‘effective’ hinges on assumptions, processes, and methods that typically have low fidelity to how Sowa Rigpa formulations function from the Tibetan tradition’s perspective and are actually administered to patients. This paper argues that standard mainstream biochemical pharmacology screening methods may not be suitable for analyzing Sowa Rigpa formulas, as they are traditionally compounded and understood to function in concert with multiple physiological pathways, rather than one specific target. We examine the pharmaceutical research processes to identify points of adherence and divergence with conceptions of ‘potency’ and ‘purity' in Tibetan medical theory, and believe pharmacological research institutions will be receptive to traditional Sowa Rigpa menjor (sman sbyor), or ‘medicine compounding,’ theory due to benefits it could provide biomedical drug discovery via complementary understandings of compound synergy and distinctly different concepts of toxicity and purity. Accordingly, we suggest that efficacy, activity and safety of Tibetan medicinal formulas will be more accurately assessed by retaining fidelity to its own conceptions of potency and purity.
European Journal of Integrative Medicine, 2019
Introduction: Bhutanese Sowa Rigpa medicine (BSM) has established unique pharmacopoeias that desc... more Introduction: Bhutanese Sowa Rigpa medicine (BSM) has established unique pharmacopoeias that describe eth-notaxonomical concepts, classification systems and descriptions of medicinal plants. BSM was integrated with modern health care system in 1967. BSM uses medicinal plants, minerals and animal products as the main ingredients of the formulations used for treating various disorders. This study was aimed to highlight interesting ethnotaxonomical concepts of BSM and identify and document medicinal plants from the two remotest regions of eastern Himalayas of Bhutan-Merak and Sakteng. Methods: Ethnopharmacological data was gathered from the pharmacopoeias, published monographs and research papers on Bhutanese medicinal plants. Medicinal plants diversity was surveyed using the convenience sampling methods. A literature review on the phytochemical content of the medicinal plants and their pharmacological activities was carried out using plant databases, PubMed, SciFinder and Google Scholar. Results: A very interesting ethnotaxonomical concept of BSM has been translated into English terminologies from the traditional pharmacopoeia. A total of 50 alpine medicinal plants belonging to 25 families and 39 genera in 13 study sites between Merak and Sakteng were documented. Only 12 medicinal species were identified as priority species or are currently used at Menjong Sorig Pharmaceuticals for formulating 48 different medicines. Conclusions: This study described the ethnotaxonomical concepts, classification and description of medicinal plants in Bhutan and botanically identified 50 alpine medicinal plants from 13 different study sites under Merak and Sakteng regions. About 12 of them were currently used as ingredients in BSM formulations and 35 species were studied for their phytochemical and pharmacological properties.
ཀྲུང་གོའི་བོད་རིག་པའི་དཔྱད་རྩོམ་ཉིང་བཏུས། [China Tibetology Digest], 2017
དཔྱད་རྩོམའདིའི་ནང་ཕྱི་ལུགས་གསོ་རིག་གི་ཀན་སར་ཞེས་པའི་ནད་རིགས་དེ་བོད་ལུགས་གསོ་རིག་གི་འབྲས་ནད་དང་། ས... more དཔྱད་རྩོམའདིའི་ནང་ཕྱི་ལུགས་གསོ་རིག་གི་ཀན་སར་ཞེས་པའི་ནད་རིགས་དེ་བོད་ལུགས་གསོ་རིག་གི་འབྲས་ནད་དང་། སུརྱ། མེ་དབལ། སྐྲན་རིགས་གང་ལ་སྦྱར་འོས་མིན་ཐད་དྭོགས་སློང་དང་དཔྱད་ཞིབ་གང་ཐུབ་བྱས་ཡོད། བོད་ལུགས་གསོ་རིག་ནང་གི་ནད་རིགས་འགའ་བལྟས་ཚོད་ཀྱིས་ཕྱི་ལུགས་གསོ་རིག་གིས་བཤད་ཀྱིན་པའི་ནད་རིགས་དང་འདྲ་བོ་ཡོད་ནའང་། ནད་སོ་སོའི་རྒྱུ་རྐྱེན་དང་འགྱུར་ཚུལ། ནད་རྟགས་ལ་སོགས་པར་ཞིབ་མོར་བལྟས་ཚེ་ནད་རིགས་དེ་དག་གི་ངོ་བོ་དང་ཁྱད་ཆོས། ཚད་གཞི་སོགས་མི་འདྲ་བ་ཡིན་པ་རྟོགས་ཐུབ། ནད་གཞི་འདིའི་རིགས་ངོས་འཛིན་བྱེད་སྐབས་ང་ཚོས་ངེས་པར་དུ་དབྱེ་འབྱེད་གང་གཟབ་ཀྱིས་གཞི་མ་འཁྲུལ་བ་བྱེད་རྒྱུ་ནི་ཤིན་ཏུ་ནས་གལ། བོད་ལུགས་གསོ་རིག་གི་འབྲས་ནད་དང་ཕྱི་ལུགས་གསོ་རིག་གི་ཀན་སར་ཅུང་འདྲ་བོ་ཡོད་པ་དང་། དེ་མིན་བོད་ལུགས་གསོ་རིག་གི་སུརྱ་དང་སྐྲན་རིགས་འགའ་ཞིག་ཀྱང་དྭངས་མ་མ་ཞུ་བ་དང་ངན་ཁྲག་རྒྱས་ལ་རླུང་གིས་བསྒྲིལ་བའི་འབྲེལ་བའི་དབང་གིས་ཕྱི་ལུགས་གསོ་རིག་ཁྲོད་ཀྱི་ཀན་སར་དང་འདྲ་ཡང་ནད་རིགས་དེ་གཉིས་ངོ་བོའི་ཆ་ནས་མི་གཅིག དེ་བས་ཕྱི་ལུགས་གསོ་རིག་གི་ཀན་སར་དང་འདྲ་བའི་བོད་ལུགས་གསོ་རིག་ནང་གི་འབྲས་ནད་དང་། སུརྱ། སྐྲན་ལ་སོགས་པ་རྣམས་བོད་རང་གཞུང་དུ་འཁོད་པའི་མན་ངག་རྣམས་སྤྱད་དེ་ངོས་འཛིན་བྱེད་རྒྱུ་ལས་ནད་རིགས་དེ་གསུམ་གང་རུང་ཡིན་ན་ཕྱི་ལུགས་གསོ་རིག་གི་ཀན་སར་ཡིན་པའི་ཁྱབ་པ་དང་། ཕྱི་ལུགས་གསོ་རིག་གི་ཀན་སར་ཡིན་ནའང་ནད་རིགས་དེ་གསུམ་གང་རུང་ཡིན་དགོས་པའི་ཁྱབ་པ་མེད་པ་མཁྱེན་རྟོགས་གསལ་པོ་དགོས་པ་གལ་ཆེན་ཏུ་མཐོང་།
བོད་སྨན་སློབ་གསོ་དང་ཞིབ་འཇུག [Journal of Tibetan Medicine and Research], 2016
དཔྱད་རྩོམའདིའི་ནང་ཕྱི་ལུགས་གསོ་རིག་གི་ཀན་སར་ཞེས་པའི་ནད་རིགས་དེ་བོད་ལུགས་གསོ་རིག་གི་འབྲས་ནད་དང་། ས... more དཔྱད་རྩོམའདིའི་ནང་ཕྱི་ལུགས་གསོ་རིག་གི་ཀན་སར་ཞེས་པའི་ནད་རིགས་དེ་བོད་ལུགས་གསོ་རིག་གི་འབྲས་ནད་དང་། སུརྱ། མེ་དབལ། སྐྲན་རིགས་གང་ལ་སྦྱར་འོས་མིན་ཐད་དྭོགས་སློང་དང་དཔྱད་ཞིབ་གང་ཐུབ་བྱས་ཡོད། བོད་ལུགས་གསོ་རིག་ནང་གི་ནད་རིགས་འགའ་བལྟས་ཚོད་ཀྱིས་ཕྱི་ལུགས་གསོ་རིག་གིས་བཤད་ཀྱིན་པའི་ནད་རིགས་དང་འདྲ་བོ་ཡོད་ནའང་། ནད་སོ་སོའི་རྒྱུ་རྐྱེན་དང་འགྱུར་ཚུལ། ནད་རྟགས་ལ་སོགས་པར་ཞིབ་མོར་བལྟས་ཚེ་ནད་རིགས་དེ་དག་གི་ངོ་བོ་དང་ཁྱད་ཆོས། ཚད་གཞི་སོགས་མི་འདྲ་བ་ཡིན་པ་རྟོགས་ཐུབ། ནད་གཞི་འདིའི་རིགས་ངོས་འཛིན་བྱེད་སྐབས་ང་ཚོས་ངེས་པར་དུ་དབྱེ་འབྱེད་གང་གཟབ་ཀྱིས་གཞི་མ་འཁྲུལ་བ་བྱེད་རྒྱུ་ནི་ཤིན་ཏུ་ནས་གལ། བོད་ལུགས་གསོ་རིག་གི་འབྲས་ནད་དང་ཕྱི་ལུགས་གསོ་རིག་གི་ཀན་སར་ཅུང་འདྲ་བོ་ཡོད་པ་དང་། དེ་མིན་བོད་ལུགས་གསོ་རིག་གི་སུརྱ་དང་སྐྲན་རིགས་འགའ་ཞིག་ཀྱང་དྭངས་མ་མ་ཞུ་བ་དང་ངན་ཁྲག་རྒྱས་ལ་རླུང་གིས་བསྒྲིལ་བའི་འབྲེལ་བའི་དབང་གིས་ཕྱི་ལུགས་གསོ་རིག་ཁྲོད་ཀྱི་ཀན་སར་དང་འདྲ་ཡང་ནད་རིགས་དེ་གཉིས་ངོ་བོའི་ཆ་ནས་མི་གཅིག དེ་བས་ཕྱི་ལུགས་གསོ་རིག་གི་ཀན་སར་དང་འདྲ་བའི་བོད་ལུགས་གསོ་རིག་ནང་གི་འབྲས་ནད་དང་། སུརྱ། སྐྲན་ལ་སོགས་པ་རྣམས་བོད་རང་གཞུང་དུ་འཁོད་པའི་མན་ངག་རྣམས་སྤྱད་དེ་ངོས་འཛིན་བྱེད་རྒྱུ་ལས་ནད་རིགས་དེ་གསུམ་གང་རུང་ཡིན་ན་ཕྱི་ལུགས་གསོ་རིག་གི་ཀན་སར་ཡིན་པའི་ཁྱབ་པ་དང་། ཕྱི་ལུགས་གསོ་རིག་གི་ཀན་སར་ཡིན་ནའང་ནད་རིགས་དེ་གསུམ་གང་རུང་ཡིན་དགོས་པའི་ཁྱབ་པ་མེད་པ་མཁྱེན་རྟོགས་གསལ་པོ་དགོས་པ་གལ་ཆེན་ཏུ་མཐོང་།
Integrative Cancer Therapies, 2014
Introduction: Tibetan medicine (TM) is a whole systems medical approach that has had growing inte... more 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.
བོད་རྒྱ་དབྱིན་གསུམ་གྱི་སྨན་ཐང་བརྒྱད་ཅུའི་ངོ་སྤྲོད་མདོར་བསྡུས།, 2014
The Eighty Tibetan Medical Thangkas is a series of Tibetan medical paintings designated as teachi... more The Eighty Tibetan Medical Thangkas is a series of Tibetan medical paintings designated as teaching tools in Tibetan medical education. In Tibetan, "thangka" means a "painted scroll." Generally, a thangka can be used to depict various subjects, such as religious iconography, historical events, medicine, astronomy, and so forth. The Eighty Tibetan Medical Thangka series depicts the fundamental theories of traditional Tibetan medicine, such as anatomy and physiology, causes and conditions of disease, pathology, symptomology, categories of disease, diagnostic methods, treatment principles, and pharmacology. The thangka series was commissioned in the 17th century for Tibetan medical education to elucidate content from the 156 chapters of the Four Medical Treatises (Rgyud bzhi).
The initial set from the Eighty Tibetan Medical Thangkas was produced during the reign of the Fifth Dalai Lama (1617-1682) when his regent Desi Sangye Gyatso (Sde srid sangs rgyas rgya mtsho) summoned famous medical scholars and painters from all over Tibet to paint a complete series of medical scrolls, drawing from the initial instructional diagrams made by Lhunding Dudtsi Gyurme, a renowned physician of the Jang School. After combining contributions and perspectives from all schools of Tibetan medicine, the series was sketched and drafted by Lhodrak Norbu Gyamtso and tinted by Lhépa Gényen. The initial part of the series was completed in 1688, comprising a total of 60 thangkas. Later, it was supplemented to a total of 79 thangkas integrating content of urinalysis and moxibustion points as described in the Medical Arts of the Lunar King (Sman dpyad zla ba'i rgyal po), as well as fresh materia medica specimens collected from various regions across the Tibetan Plateau. Recently, the eightieth and final thangka was added to depict famous Tibetan medical doctors throughout history, thus becoming the Eighty Tibetan Medical Thangka series.
In contemporary times, the Eighty Tibetan Medical Thangka series is still valued and used in Tibetan medical education throughout Tibetan medical colleges and universities inside and outside Tibet. Tibetan medicine professors continue to value the series' necessary use for teaching and for student learning of Tibetan medical theory and practice. Based on the old renderings of the Tibetan medical thangkas, more research related to how the illustrated content details key aspects of Tibetan medical theory and practice, as well as education pedagogy and related history should be conducted.
The images and texts in this catalogue are testimony to a wonderful cooperative effort: the comin... more The images and texts in this catalogue are testimony to a wonderful cooperative effort: the coming together of over thirty anthropologists, artists, and historians to explore the human body from a comparative angle. In fact, our focus is on one particular body part: the innards of the lower torso, what English-speakers sometimes call the “guts”, and the way human beings have desired and attempted to learn about them, describe them, and represent them visually. The result of this work was the digital exhibition Comparative Guts (comparative-guts.net), which aimed at overcoming regional boundaries and cultural structures in order to provide space for testimony that was as varied as possible, no matter how particular and specific, far apart, or obscure and eccentric.
Comparison and the “comparative disciplines”, of course, never allow for straightforward, monolithic projects, and cannot be methodologically innocent in their goal to “make equal”, comparare, different things. Comparison is never safe from applying a measure that is disadvantageous to some participants, flattening incommensurable differences, or oversimplifying complex networks of ideas and influences. These and other pitfalls led Gayatri Chakravorty Spivak, in her 2003 Death of a Discipline, to speak of a demise of comparativism as an approach to the human world which divides it into neatly catalogued cultures, generally in translation, within a globalised whole. Instead, she proposed that the field be reshaped into one in which peripheries, local languages, and hybridisation between cultures assume the foreground.
This criticism is not to be ignored, and these pitfalls must be a major concern for a project such as ours. Comparative Guts, with its focus on “image” and “body”, attempted to address some of these issues in various ways: by questioning definitions of knowledge and who should be its repositories; disrupting the very concept of “image” as stably given and immediately and objectively evident to (primarily visual) perception; undermining the slicing of cultures into discrete regions and eras; and questioning the mapping of the animal body into recognisable, universal “parts”.
Medical Anthropology Quarterly, 2023
Pordié and Kloos present their collection of critical ethnographic works nearly two decades in th... more Pordié and Kloos present their collection of critical ethnographic works nearly two decades in the making that focus on Tibetan medical practice on the outer edges of its historical dissemination in India, both in the trans-Himalayan context of Ladakh and the Tibetan exile community from the late 1990s to early 2000s.
The Journal of Asian Studies, 2019
Oxford University: Tibetan and Himalayan Studies Centre, Wolfson College, 2020
In this piece, Jonathan Samuels, Research Fellow in Tibetan and Himalayan Studies at Wolfson Coll... more In this piece, Jonathan Samuels, Research Fellow in Tibetan and Himalayan Studies at Wolfson College, Oxford University, continues his interview series that explores aspects of Tibetan Studies by means of discussion with individuals who are deeply involved with the field, featuring interesting, unique or perhaps unconventional perspectives. His first interview was with Sam Van Schaik, Jigme Lingpa scholar, Tibet historian and International Dunhuang Project manager. This interview is the second interview of the series, looking at the worlds of Tibetan medicine, academia, tradition and authenticity. Aspects of traditional training, the changing nature of Tibetan medical practice, issues related to the revival and restoration of certain parts of tradition, and the controversies surrounding the use of traditional ingredients, such as mercury, are discussed.
Transcultural Psychiatry, Oct 19, 2022
Background: Acute hypoxia consistently results in altitude sickness and can be fatal. Until prese... more Background: Acute hypoxia consistently results in altitude sickness and can be fatal. Until present, no studies focusing on global proteomic changes induced by acute hypoxia have been reported. Here, we combined animal experiments and tandem mass tag (TMT)-based proteomic analysis to identify metabolic changes as a result of acute hypoxia. Methods: We first generated a rat model under acute hypoxia conditions, and combined animal experiments and TMT-based proteomics to identify metabolic changes under acute hypoxia. Then we used qPCR analyses to validate the key regulators, and present a schematic model of acute reactions occurring in the livers of rats subjected to acute hypoxia challenge. Results: We identified a large number of acute hypoxic responsive proteins in diverse biological pathways, which helped unveil the different mechanisms involved in hypoxia responses in rats. These pathways included those of peroxisome, peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor (PPAR) signaling, ...
Asian Medicine, 2021
As prophesized in early Tibetan medical works, the emergence of a pathogen such as SARS-CoV-2 tha... more As prophesized in early Tibetan medical works, the emergence of a pathogen such as SARS-CoV-2 that could inflict such a virulent infectious disease such as COVID-19 provided conditions for an expected yet alarming new phenomenon to threaten the health of inhabitants on the Tibetan Plateau. As SARS-CoV-2 spread into a global pandemic, Tibetan physicians worldwide engaged in symposiums, conferences, and clinical exchanges to situate the virus and its disease within Tibetan medical nosology. They sought to reconcile prophesies of global impact and develop critical treatment protocols for their communities. This article presents this particular perspective on COVID-19 as discussed among Tibetan medical colleagues in early April 2020, with follow-up discussions a year later. It introduces the disease’s nosology as a specific type of virulent infection (gnyan rims), and describes the etiology, diagnosis, and treatment as explicated in the Tibetan classic Four Medical Treatises and related...
Knowledge and Context in Tibetan Medicine, 2019
Journal of Ethnopharmacology, 2019
Ethnopharmacological relevance: Tibetan medicine (Sowa Rigpa), one of the major scholarly Asian m... more Ethnopharmacological relevance: Tibetan medicine (Sowa Rigpa), one of the major scholarly Asian medical systems, has an extensive materia medica with richly unique pharmacological compounding methods. Informatization and standardization have become primary drivers in developing traditional medical systems and their pharmacology in Asia. However, methods for and related benefits from systematizing traditional medicine information and integrating it into database networks have not received much attention until recently. Aim of the study: We introduce the existing databases and informatics systems that have developed over the last ten years in the Sowa Rigpa field. As such, we present Tibetan medical informatics as an emergent field, detail its most applicable areas for research, and propose an analytical structure for it to inform wider pharmacological, clinical, textual and cultural research analyses in Sowa Rigpa. Materials and methods: Assessing the available bioinformatics systems, and drawing from Tibetan medicine's basic theory and traditionally applied empirical research methods, this study analyzes Tibetan medical informatics as a data integration approach drawing from: (1) Tibetan medical clinical practice, (2) Tibetan materia medica and pharmacological knowledge, (3) Tibetan medical literature, and (4) applied information and management sciences. This study assesses the existing databases, developments and methodologies of Tibetan medical informatics, and presents the first quantitative analyses from these data sources regarding Tibetan medical works, disease categories, prescription data and pharmacological characterizations. This study also introduces the role of graphic data visualization in assisting hypothesis development and data analysis for Tibetan medical informatics. Results: The authors introduce the available data respositories for Tibetan medical informatics, and demonstrate five applications of data analysis and visualization techniques: (1) a historiographic depiction of major Tibetan medical schools, figures and works that contributed to the development of Tibetan medicine and its pharmacology; (2) an enumeration of the specific diseases in the Tibetan medical canon as well as the etiological and classification hierarchies; (3) a quantification of the materia medica and compounded formulas in the most frequently used pharmacological texts; (4) a pharmacokinetics and pharmacological modeling of medicine compounding principles; and (5) an analysis of how several recent clinical case studies drew from Tibetan medical informatics and its other data sources. Conclusions: This study demonstrates the analytical structure and research application areas central to a developing Tibetan medical informatics. It shows how newly developed databases and structures of informatization allow research in Sowa Rigpa to bridge pharmacological, clinical and data science research; clinical practice; education structures and cultural dimensions. The study shows that Tibetan medical informatics is poised to support efforts in traditional knowledge preservation, education development and access and greater rigor in research and clinical practice. The study also suggests that this new field facilitates tools for demonstrating Tibetan medicine’s capacity for pharmacological insight, whole systems treatment and illness prevention, and comprehensive patient care.
Asian Medicine, 2020
Collaborative research on Tibetan medicine for conditions difficult to treat by Euroamerican biom... more Collaborative research on Tibetan medicine for conditions difficult to treat by Euroamerican biomedicine, such as many intractable types of cancer, has developed in recent years due to treatment outcomes and growing patient interest. In these collaborations, more nuanced analyses of how one medical tradition’s etiology maps onto the other are required for productive dialogue and sophisticated research methodologies. Building on earlier work that provides the initial etiologic and diagnostic mapping of biomedical cancer onto Tibetan medical nosology, this article develops a further analytical dimension by describing the specific etiologic role of blood (Tib. khrag) and chuser (Tib. chu ser), as well as their specific ontological characterizations in Sowa Rigpa more generally. The Four Treatises and its commentaries elucidate a unique perspective on these substances as implemented in clinical praxis. This analysis furthers work to disentangle contemporary Tibetan medical and biomedica...
Data in Brief, 2020
This article shares the comprehensive dataset and five visualized examples of disease categories ... more This article shares the comprehensive dataset and five visualized examples of disease categories in Tibetan medicine, or Sowa Rigpa (Tib. Gso ba rig pa), translated as the "knowledge field of healing." Sowa Rigpa is a scholarly Asian traditional medical system rigorously transmitted through canonical texts and oral teachings originating in Tibet with an extensive pharmacopeia, comprehensive treatment repertoire, and nuanced etiological explications of its nosology of diseases. This medical tradition is practiced across a broad region of Asia, particularly in Tibetan regions of China, Hi-malayan regions of India (Ladakh, Sikkim, Himachal Pradesh), Nepal, Bhutan, Mongolia, Russia, and recently in Europe and North America. The data herein depicts disease classifications listed in the encyclopedic compendium "Oral Instructions Treatise" (Man ngag rgyud) of the Tibetan medical classic, the Four Medical Treatises (Rgyud bzhi), compiled in written form during the twelft...
International Journal of Psychophysiology