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Tibetan Medicine

Ⅸ-9Traditional MedicineCangyiyuan, QinghaiBatch 2 (2008)Extension Item

01 · Historical Records

Its classic work, the Four Medical Tantras, was completed in the second half of the 8th century CE during the Tubo (Tibetan Empire) period, and was written by the famous Tibetan physician Yutuo Yundan Gongbu. It is also known as the 'Five-Nectar Bath'; it was first recorded in the great Tibetan medical work, the Four Medical Tantras, compiled by the famous Tibetan physician Yutuo Yundan Gongbu, and has a history of more than 1,300 years.

02 · Core Techniques & Process

Tibetan medicine is an important component of China's traditional medicine and an important representative of the country's ethnic-minority medicines. Tibetan medicine has a long history; it is the medical experience accumulated by the Tibetan people in the special environment of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau. Tibetan medicine is combined with Tibetan astronomy and calendrical calculation and constitutes a vast and complex medical system. Tibetan medicine takes as its theoretical basis the five-element theory of water, fire, earth, wind, and void and the three-humour theory of rLung (Long), mKhris pa (Tripa), and Bad kan (Beken); it takes as its basic medicaments the plants, animals, minerals, and part of the 'southern medicines' of the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau; it adopts modes of practice suited to the plateau environment and to nomadic life; and it has unique curative effects on the common, frequently occurring, and endemic diseases of the oxygen-poor plateau environment. Its health-preserving culture is also receiving ever more attention from the medical world. Tibetan medicinal bath therapy is an external therapy of Tibetan medicine with good curative effects, summed up by the Tibetan people through long practice in the struggle against disease. Tibetan medicinal bathing is practised chiefly in three forms: water bathing, poultice bathing, and steam bathing. The medicated water bath is the most universal and most commonly used. Five Tibetan herbs — cypress leaves, yellow azalea leaves, water cypress branches, alpine ephedra, and 'kanba' — are used as the principal medicaments, decocted in water and used to bathe and soak the patient, producing the effects of loosening and freeing the collaterals, quickening the blood and transforming stasis, and dispelling wind and eliminating dampness; it has excellent curative effects in the treatment of rheumatism, rheumatoid arthritis, and skin diseases. Tibetan medicinal bath therapy is highly characteristic of its region and its people. Its formula composition, diagnosis before bathing, and comprehensive treatment are all carried out under the guidance of Tibetan medical theory; the medicinal materials it employs are all authentic materials from the original ecological environment of the snowy plateau; its bathing technique, choice of season, and nursing of the patient embody human factors peculiar to the Tibetan people; and in the course of treatment it combines Tibetan pharmacy, Tibetan medical diagnostics, and Tibetan medical nursing with the earliest traditional preparation and processing techniques so as to treat internal disease by external means, which is rare in the history of medicine in the world.

The five-ingredient sweet-dew bath

Five Tibetan herbs—juniper, yellow azalea, water-branch, alpine ephedra and kanba—boiled into a decoction that loosens the channels, moves blood and dispels wind-damp.

Boiling the decoction

Once the herbs are combined they are boiled—timing, heat and quantity all bear on the strength of the bath, under a physician's supervision.

Immersion

The commonest form of the treatment: immersion lets the remedy enter through the skin, and it is prized for rheumatic and arthritic complaints and skin disease.

Water, compress and steam baths

Water, compress and steam—three modes of the bath, each with its own use, accompanied by its own rules on season, nursing and aftercare.

Treating interior disease from outside

Pharmacy, diagnosis, nursing and traditional processing brought together so that interior disorders are treated from without, with herbs gathered in the plateau's own ecology.

Jinhe sweet-dew bath granules

A national programme turned the bathing formula into portable granules, while the inheritor also drew up clinical standards and record-keeping rules for the practice.

03 · Regional Records & Related Items

Because the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau is vast in extent, with high mountains and swift waters, the ethnic and regional characteristics of Tibetan medical culture are relatively pronounced, and the diagnostics, medical techniques, and medicaments of Tibetan medicine often differ by region and by school. In recent decades, with the development of the Tibetan medical enterprise and the wide conduct of academic exchange, the inheritance and advancement of Tibetan medicine have achieved results that have attracted worldwide attention.

Other submitting regions for the same item: Tibetan Medicine · Tibetan Medicine · Tibetan Medicine · Tibetan Medicine · Tibetan Medicine · Tibetan Medicine · Tibetan Medicine · Tibetan Medicine · Tibetan Medicine · Tibetan Medicine · Tibetan Medicine · Tibetan Medicine · Tibetan Medicine · Tibetan Medicine · Tibetan Medicine · Tibetan Medicine.

04 · Cultural Value & Contemporary Safeguarding

Tibetan medicinal bath therapy is a representative technique of traditional Tibetan medicine and the first choice for patients and researchers throughout the world who wish to come to know and understand Tibetan medicine. Because Tibetan medicinal bathing has always been transmitted through oral instruction and mental absorption, further work of organization and inheritance is a matter of no delay. Li Xianjia (recorded in the official file of the associated inheritor): Male, of Tibetan ethnicity, born in September 1963, a native of Guide County, Qinghai Province. Chief physician of Tibetan medicine. He graduated at the age of twenty-two from the Health School of Huangnan Prefecture, Qinghai Province. He is a leading figure in the disciplines of Tibetan medicine and Tibetan pharmaceutical processing in Qinghai Province, an evaluation expert for key hospitals of the National Administration of Traditional Chinese Medicine, and a member of the editorial board of the journal Chinese Tibetan Medicine. He formulated the 'Standards for the Diagnosis, Treatment, and Technical Norms of Tibetan Medicinal Bathing' and the 'Norms for Writing the Medical Records of Tibetan Medicinal Bathing.' He compiled the 21st-century undergraduate textbook of Tibetan medicine, Pediatrics. He is a representative inheritor of Tibetan Medicine (Tibetan Medicinal Bath Therapy), a third-batch national-level intangible cultural heritage item. He led the completion of the key ethnic hospital construction project of the National Administration of Traditional Chinese Medicine, and took part in the tackling project of the Ministry of Science and Technology, 'Research on the Prevention and Treatment of Rheumatoid Arthritis by Tibetan Medicinal Bathing,' and the western special project of the National Science and Technology Tackling Program, 'Development of Key Technologies for the Jinhe Ganlu Medicinal Bath Granule Product'; he has received scientific and technological achievement certificates of Qinghai Province.

05 · Associated Representative Bearers

Representative bearers recorded under this item, organized by national nomination batch:

06 · Authoritative Sources & Bibliography

  1. Tibetan Medicine (Cangyiyuan, Qinghai) · China ICH Official Project Archive
  2. Lixianjia · National Representative Bearer Archive

Sources

China Intangible Cultural Heritage Network (ihchina.cn)

Read the official ihchina.cn record ↗

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