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Tibetan Medicine

Ⅸ-9Traditional MedicineXiongbalaqushenshuizangyaochang, TibetBatch 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.

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. The Coral Seventy-Flavor Pill is one of the precious Tibetan medicine varieties used in the Tibetan medical treatment of cardiovascular and cerebrovascular diseases; it has the function of comprehensively regulating the body's three factors of rLung (Long), mKhris pa (Tripa), and Bad kan (Beken), keeping the body's internal environment in a healthy and balanced state. The Coral Seventy-Flavor Pill regulates the body's blood circulation and blood pressure as a whole, reduces blood viscosity and blood lipids, frees the collaterals, improves cardiovascular and cerebrovascular spasm and sclerosis, activates damaged nerves, and improves nerve function. It has a certain curative effect in restoring the bodily functions of patients suffering hemiplegia after stroke, and has a comprehensive effect in the treatment of cardiovascular and cerebrovascular diseases, being able to prevent and treat, to a certain degree, hypertension, polycythemia, coronary heart disease, ischemic heart disease, and cerebrovascular disease, as well as post-stroke sequelae such as paralysis of the limbs and hemiplegia, and nervous-system diseases of various kinds including neuritis, neurasthenia, neurosis, and functional nerve damage; it has also shown fairly good therapeutic effects on poliomyelitis, epilepsy, and insomnia. In addition, the Coral Seventy-Flavor Pill can raise the immunity of middle-aged and elderly people, improve blood circulation and microcirculation as well as the function of the nervous system, and has a certain health-protective role in the prevention of cardiovascular and cerebrovascular diseases. The Coral Seventy-Flavor Pill fully demonstrates the advantages and unique curative effects of Tibetan medicine in the treatment of cardiovascular and cerebrovascular diseases; it has become not only a best-selling Tibetan medicine variety sought after by the many patients with such diseases but also one of the preferred clinical medicaments of Tibetan medicine for treating them.

The composition of Coral Seventy

Developed when the physician founded the works in 1996, it works not on a single organ but on the balance of the three factors within the body.

Balancing wind, bile and phlegm

Wind, bile and phlegm each govern a different system; when they fall out of balance illness follows, so the formula works first to free the channels and regulate the blood.

First choice in cardiovascular disease

Regulating circulation and blood pressure as a whole, thinning the blood and freeing the vessels, it is widely sought after for conditions of the heart and brain.

Use in recovery from stroke

For paralysis and hemiplegia following stroke, it is credited with reviving damaged nerves and restoring function, drawing on the compiler's thirty-eight years of practice.

Minerals in the formula

Coral and other minerals are the hinge of the formula; the compiler's treatises on Tibetan mineral drugs set down their nature, combination and indications in a form that can still be checked.

Pathology and treatment of Mabu disorders

Another of the compiler's works breaks a traditional disease name into thirteen distinct pathologies, each with its own therapeutic rule—a habitual precision of Tibetan medicine.

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

Under the impact of Western medicine and pharmaceuticals, both Tibetan medicine processing and the clinical experience of elderly Tibetan physicians face a crisis of transmission and urgently require rescue and protection. Pema Gyatso (recorded in the official file of the associated inheritor): He is a representative inheritor of Tibetan Medicine (Compounding Technique of the Coral Seventy-Flavor Pill), a third-batch national-level intangible cultural heritage item. Chief physician, and an expert enjoying the special government allowance of the State Council. A provincial-level outstanding Tibetan medicine expert of the Tibet Autonomous Region. He has been engaged in Tibetan medical work for thirty-eight years and has rich experience in the Tibetan medical treatment of cardiovascular, cerebrovascular, and nervous-system diseases. In 1996 he prepared and established the Tibet Xiong Balaqu Sacred Water Tibetan Pharmaceutical Factory, developing the precious Tibetan medicine 'Coral Seventy-Flavor Pill.' Male, of Tibetan ethnicity, born in May 1938, died in January 2013, a native of Lhasa, Tibet Autonomous Region. He authored works including Tibetan Mineral Medicine, An Introduction to New Tibetan Prescriptions, General Principles and Methods of Tibetan Medical Research, and The Thirteen Pathological Characteristics and Treatment Principles of the Tibetan 'Mubu' Disease, and received science and technology progress awards of the Tibet Autonomous Region and of Nagqu Prefecture.

05 · Associated Representative Bearers

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

06 · Authoritative Sources & Bibliography

  1. Tibetan Medicine (Xiongbalaqushenshuizangyaochang, Tibet) · China ICH Official Project Archive
  2. Baimajiacuo · National Representative Bearer Archive

Sources

China Intangible Cultural Heritage Network (ihchina.cn)

Read the official ihchina.cn record ↗

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