When I was in Amdo province, Tibet last summer with my partner, Lobsang, I visited a traditional Tibetan medicine clinic and hospital. Lobsang’s friend had a small clinic in Thangkor town centre, with a dispensary packed with colourful packets of Tibetan medicine, (plus bottled oxygen for Chinese tourists unable to handle the altitude), and a simple treatment room with a TDP lamp and some scary looking metal tools. One was a metal prong which you heated and then set on a patient’s skin. A metal disc with a hole in the centre was placed before the prong, which prevented the surrounding skin being burnt.
Tibetans don’t mind being scarred in their treatments. Lobsang has several light circles on his skin where he has been burnt with a herb — artemisia or mugwort in English. The process is called moxibustion in Chinese medicine.
Lobsang’s nephew, Sonam, works In the hospital in Dzoige. We went ino a large treatment room with about 10 Tibetans sitting with needles in various places. Sonam demonstrated the metal tool on a woman’s neck— there were already pale circles either side of her cervical vertebrae — and he pressed the tool down again, so they would become even paler, but help with her neck pain.
Tibetan medicine is a mixture of Chinese and Indian (Ayurvedic) medicine. They have three constitutions similar to those in Ayurveda: Wind, Fire and Water/Earth — Vata, Pita and Kapha in Ayurveda; rlung, mkhris pa, bad kan in Tibetan. Traditionally, Tibetans didn’t do acupuncture as they were nomads, as disinfecting needles would be very difficult. Instead, their medicine comprised more the herbs and moxabustion. The herbs are often rolled into balls, unlike Chinese herbal medicine which is usally granules, powders or raw herbs.