Tashkent, Uzbekistan (UzDaily.uz) — The Museum of Tibetan Medical Culture of Qinghai Province is located in the biotechnology industrial park in Xining. According to its curators, it is the world’s only comprehensive collection dedicated to Tibetan medicine, a healing tradition based on the belief that water, along with four other elements, forms the foundation of the human body and its balance.
Origins: Legend and a lama
Tibetan medicine officially traces its origins to the eighth century, when, according to tradition, King Trisong Detsen convened the first international medical symposium at Samye Monastery, bringing together physicians from India, China, Persia and other lands.
According to tradition, the court physician Yuthok Yonten Gonpo compiled the results of these discussions in the Four Tantras (Gyushi), a treatise that remains the foundation of Tibetan medical theory.
There is an important qualification here: the tradition refers to two figures bearing this name — an “elder” associated with the eighth century and a “younger” figure who lived from 1126 to 1202 and is more reliably associated with authorship of the Four Tantras.
Some researchers regard the “elder” figure as a legend created retrospectively by descendants of the younger Yuthok to give the medical lineage greater antiquity. This serves as a reminder that part of the museum’s foundational narrative combines documented history with religious tradition.
A philosophy based on five elements
The medical exhibition is based on the theory that the universe — and the human body within it — consists of five elements: earth, water, fire, wind and space.
In this system, water is associated with bodily fluids, one of several properties that together determine health or illness. Tibetan physicians, known as amchi, diagnose imbalances among the three nyepa — wind, bile and phlegm — each of which represents a combination of the five elements.
The theory extends well beyond metaphor and has direct practical applications. Traditional Tibetan medicine prescribes specific types of hydrotherapy at hot springs depending on their mineral composition: springs enriched with carbon and calcite are used for chronic fever, sulphur springs for chronic colds, while combinations containing bitumen or realgar are used for more complex, mixed disorders.
Diagnosis through the pulse, urine — and the art of thangka
Medical thangka — painted scrolls that served as a kind of visual textbook — play a major role in shaping visitors’ understanding of historical diagnostic methods. The museum’s collection draws on a tradition dating to the late 17th century, when Desi Sangye Gyatso, regent to the Fifth Dalai Lama, commissioned a series of paintings to illustrate his commentary, known as the Blue Beryl, on the Four Tantras.
The original set consisted of 79 paintings. An 80th, depicting 13 prominent Tibetan medical masters, was added in the 20th century by Khyenrab Norbu, head of the Lhasa Mentsikhang School of Medicine and Astrology.
The thangka illustrate pulse and urine diagnosis, the anatomical structure of the body, points for moxibustion and the preparation of medicinal remedies. Twenty-one paintings from the original series are devoted separately to large-scale anatomical depictions of the human figure.
Beyond the scalpel: A range of external treatments
Although surgery attracts the most attention, museum specialists note that it represents only one area of a broader system of “external therapies” described in the Four Tantras. Traditionally, these methods are divided according to their intensity.
Gentler treatments include heating, baths with therapeutic mineral water and oil massage. More intensive methods include moxibustion, or applying smouldering herbs to the body, and bloodletting. The most radical methods include cauterisation and applying heated stones, wood or animal horns to specific points on the body.
Later, golden-needle therapy — cauterisation with a heated gold needle at precisely defined points — and cupping, including bloodletting with cups, were also incorporated into practice.
According to specialists in the field, most surgical practices outside this spectrum of external therapies were eventually lost, with the notable exception of cataract surgery, which survived as a documented surgical skill.
Surgical instruments dating back two millennia
One of the most impressive parts of the museum’s collection is a group of more than 180 traditional Tibetan surgical instruments displayed alongside thangka depicting historical operations.
According to museum materials, Tibetan physicians were using surgical instruments more than 2,000 years ago, while surviving records indicate that Tibetan healers performed cranial trepanation — a highly complex procedure for its time — several millennia ago.
Surviving sets of such instruments typically include forceps, hooks with varying depths of grip, leaf-shaped knives and lancets, forks, needles and probes believed to have been used for scraping tissue or cauterisation. Many are decorated with engraved ornamentation.
Specimens and texts as a record of a living pharmacopoeia
The museum’s specimen halls contain more than 2,000 examples of plants, animals and minerals collected across the Qinghai-Tibet Plateau. They reflect a pharmacological tradition based on the Tibetan medical belief that virtually any natural substance can possess medicinal properties.
A separate literature hall houses more than 1,000 classical texts on Tibetan medicine, as well as several hundred works on modern practice.
Overall, the museum’s collection — encompassing both medical and broader cultural materials — comprises between 40,000 and 50,000 exhibits, according to different official figures. These include 158 items classified as first-category cultural artefacts of national significance.
