Wine and raw mutton as mercury is made safe ...
Print Edition
MERCURY is poisonous, but Tibetan doctors are said to have invented a way to process the liquid to enable it to be used as a medical treatment.
The technique remains under wraps to the common man, as it is only passed down by masters to their chosen apprentices.
Even today there are only a few people with the skill to produce rare drugs for the treatment of cerebral hemorrhage, leprosy, gout and other diseases.
Dampa Wangchug, president of the Xungba Zachu pharmaceutical factory of Tibetan medicine in the regional capital Lhasa, says the process is safe and that no one has ever been poisoned.
With processing done in a dark room over a period of days, pharmacists stop every one hour to drink chang or highland barley wine to “sterilize their bodies.” The masks and clothes they wear have been soaked in chang to protect them as they undertake their work, while during the period they only eat raw mutton and beef and garlic, Dampa Wangchug said.
“When quicksilver turns into black granules and floats on water, it is completely harmless and suitable for human consumption,” he said.
The master-apprentice approach is very important to Tibet’s modern medical education, as many processes can’t be learned from books or lectures, said Yeshe Yangzong, vice president of a Tibetan Hospital in Lhasa.
Since 2012, the didactic approach has been included in postdoctoral education, according to Tsetop, deputy chief of the hospital’s medical affairs department.
He said 20 apprentices are undertaking apprenticeships at the hospital, and, since 1990, 48 had completed their studies.
They are all engaged in teaching as well as practicing medicine in smaller hospitals elsewhere.
The hospital has also started a project called the Oral history of Famous Tibetan Medical Masters last year to collect the experiences of more than 170 senior Tibetan doctors.
Later, their lectures will be used in education or on-the-job training, Yeshe Yangzong said.
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