Review of Essentials of Tibetan Traditional Medicine 105  Book Review  to procure materials from the vast cannon of materia medica in the tradition. Another section in Part III, titled “Commonly Used Herbal Formulas” provides ingredient information (arranged, again, by the disorders being treated and using Tibetan names with English common names) for 59 recipes; no infor- mation on measurements or proportions is given. A related section discusses building-block herbal combi- nations. These sections are interesting as well as extremely important, as such information is not at all easily available to a western audience; to the best of my knowledge, this information has not been published previously in English. Some medicine formulas are highly secretive, and therefore not appropriate to share, but the ones provided in this volume apparently fall more into the domain of public use. Other strengths of the book include the use of Tibetan script, Wylie transliteration, appendices with the Tibetan alphabet and Wylie transliteration, sample curricula for courses in Tibetan medicine, and various references. My main criticisms generally have to do with the authors’ choices in the section on materia medica. The decision to use “herb” for “materia medica” does not make sense to me. The authors state that they do so for the sake of brevity. But semantically “herb” does not and will not—at least in our lifetime—mean anything other than “plant material.” So using “herb” to refer to animal parts or minerals (important types of materia medica used in many traditional medical systems, including Tibetan medicine—and included in this volume) is extremely misleading and in fact, incorrect; the sacrifice for brevity (saving 10 typed spaces?) seems not worth it. The authors rightly note the difficulty in translat- ing Tibetan names into botanical names; this is a This volume is undoubtedly a significant contribution to the dissemination of traditional Tibetan medical knowledge to an English-reading audience. It contains concise summaries of key concepts in the medical tradition: explanations for various types of disorders, caused by imbalance in the three funda- mental humors of the body; a very cursory descrip- tion of the healthy body and how to diagnose a body in dis-ease; and a fairly extensive (although by no means exhaustive) presentation of therapeutics used to restore health. Much of the text is in summary of a 4-volume work from the 11th Century that forms the heart of the Tibetan medical tradition: The Four Tantras or the Rgyudbzhi. The pithy presentation of Essentials of Tibetan Traditional Medicine is effective, perhaps because the authors themselves have studied Tibetan medicine (one of them—Gyatso—a graduate of the Men Tsee Khang, Tibetan Medical and Astrological Institute, in Dharamsala, India, and a doctor of Tibetan medicine, and the other—Hakim— a graduate from the International College of Tradi- tional Chinese Medicine in Vancouver, Canada, and a student of Tibetan medicine) and can therefore identify key points that should be emphasized to a western audience. Part III (on therapeutics) is perhaps of the most interest to ethnobiologists. This is where information is provided on over 100 different materials used, arranged according to the disorders that the materials treat.1 Typically, each entry has the following: the Tibetan name, often a drug name, a botanical name, part of the material used, tastes and properties, therapeutic uses and actions, and a small-sized line drawing of the material. Most entries also have information on known pharmacological properties, some have a list of references, and a few have additional comments. The authors indicate that they choose to include the most commonly used and easy Essen als of Tibetan Tradi onal Medicine Thinley Gyatso and Chris Hakim. 2010. North Atlan c Books, Berkeley. Pp. 416. $24.95 (paperback). ISBN 978‐ 1556438677.  Reviewed by Denise M. Glover  Reviewer address: Department of Sociology & Anthropology, University of Puget Sound, Tacoma, WA 98416.  Received: August 30, 2013  Volume: 4:105‐106  Published: October 13, 2013  © 2013 Society of Ethnobiology  106  Book Review  perpetual problem when any two ethnobotanical and linguistic systems meet. Some of the troubles they indicate, however, are quite easily solved by identifica- tion to the genus level. For example, they discuss the challenge in identifying khur mang at the species level—it could be Taraxacum officinale, Taraxacum mongolicum, Taraxacum tibetanum, Taraxacum sikkimense, or altogether some other species of Taraxacum; they therefore chose to use the common English transla- tion of dandelion for khur mang. This is all fine and good (and in fact works well for khur mang and dandelion, I believe), but in fact they could use the botanical designation of Taraxacum spp. which means “several species of the genus Taraxacum.” In fact, this designation is often the best to use anyway (or a list of all possible species, as the authors provide for bong nga nag po), since, as the authors note themselves, local varieties in plant geography as well as human practice can make identification to the species level very difficult if not impossible. Lastly, the decision to use drug names has both positive and negative aspects. Sometimes it helps a non-botanist/biologist reader identify a material. For instance, ka ko la is identified as Amomum subulatum, with the drug name of black cardamom. Readers might recognize black cardamom but possibly not the botanical name, so in this case the use of a drug name is helpful. At other times, however, it adds another level of translation that seems unnecessary. For example, the drug name of bolenggua is used for gser gyi me tog (identified as Herpetospermum pedunculosum). As the authors explain, bolenggua comes from Chinese bo leng gua zi which is itself a term unidentifiable to the species level and including plants grouped together in the Chinese medical tradition (H. pedunculosum, Momor- dica charantia and Momordica cochinchinensis)2 but not the Tibetan medical tradition. In this case, the use of a drug name may in fact complicate or conflate knowledge from the Tibetan tradition with another. Despite these criticisms, I highly recommend Gyatso and Hakim’s volume to those interested in Tibetan medicine, ethnomedicine, and ethnobotany in general. I commend the authors on their success in synthesizing key components of a very complex medical system, and at making Tibetan medical knowledge accessible to a broad audience. Notes 1 This, coincidentally, was the most salient schema of classification that the review author found in her work with doctors of Tibetan medicine (classifying/sorting according plants according to the disorders that they treat). 2 These three species are also members in the same botanical family, Cucurbitaceae. << /ASCII85EncodePages false /AllowTransparency false /AutoPositionEPSFiles true /AutoRotatePages /None /Binding /Left /CalGrayProfile (Dot Gain 20%) /CalRGBProfile (sRGB IEC61966-2.1) /CalCMYKProfile (U.S. Web Coated \050SWOP\051 v2) /sRGBProfile (sRGB IEC61966-2.1) /CannotEmbedFontPolicy /Error /CompatibilityLevel 1.4 /CompressObjects /Tags /CompressPages true /ConvertImagesToIndexed true /PassThroughJPEGImages true /CreateJobTicket false /DefaultRenderingIntent /Default /DetectBlends true /DetectCurves 0.0000 /ColorConversionStrategy /CMYK /DoThumbnails false /EmbedAllFonts true /EmbedOpenType false /ParseICCProfilesInComments true /EmbedJobOptions true /DSCReportingLevel 0 /EmitDSCWarnings false /EndPage -1 /ImageMemory 1048576 /LockDistillerParams false /MaxSubsetPct 100 /Optimize true /OPM 1 /ParseDSCComments true /ParseDSCCommentsForDocInfo true /PreserveCopyPage true /PreserveDICMYKValues true /PreserveEPSInfo true /PreserveFlatness true /PreserveHalftoneInfo false /PreserveOPIComments true /PreserveOverprintSettings true /StartPage 1 /SubsetFonts true /TransferFunctionInfo /Apply /UCRandBGInfo /Preserve /UsePrologue false /ColorSettingsFile () /AlwaysEmbed [ true ] /NeverEmbed [ true ] /AntiAliasColorImages false /CropColorImages true /ColorImageMinResolution 300 /ColorImageMinResolutionPolicy /OK /DownsampleColorImages true /ColorImageDownsampleType /Bicubic /ColorImageResolution 300 /ColorImageDepth -1 /ColorImageMinDownsampleDepth 1 /ColorImageDownsampleThreshold 1.50000 /EncodeColorImages true /ColorImageFilter /DCTEncode /AutoFilterColorImages true /ColorImageAutoFilterStrategy /JPEG /ColorACSImageDict << /QFactor 0.15 /HSamples [1 1 1 1] /VSamples [1 1 1 1] >> /ColorImageDict << /QFactor 0.15 /HSamples [1 1 1 1] /VSamples [1 1 1 1] >> /JPEG2000ColorACSImageDict << /TileWidth 256 /TileHeight 256 /Quality 30 >> /JPEG2000ColorImageDict << /TileWidth 256 /TileHeight 256 /Quality 30 >> /AntiAliasGrayImages false /CropGrayImages true /GrayImageMinResolution 300 /GrayImageMinResolutionPolicy /OK /DownsampleGrayImages true /GrayImageDownsampleType /Bicubic /GrayImageResolution 300 /GrayImageDepth -1 /GrayImageMinDownsampleDepth 2 /GrayImageDownsampleThreshold 1.50000 /EncodeGrayImages true /GrayImageFilter /DCTEncode /AutoFilterGrayImages true /GrayImageAutoFilterStrategy /JPEG /GrayACSImageDict << /QFactor 0.15 /HSamples [1 1 1 1] /VSamples [1 1 1 1] >> /GrayImageDict << /QFactor 0.15 /HSamples [1 1 1 1] /VSamples [1 1 1 1] >> /JPEG2000GrayACSImageDict << /TileWidth 256 /TileHeight 256 /Quality 30 >> /JPEG2000GrayImageDict << /TileWidth 256 /TileHeight 256 /Quality 30 >> /AntiAliasMonoImages false /CropMonoImages true /MonoImageMinResolution 1200 /MonoImageMinResolutionPolicy /OK /DownsampleMonoImages true /MonoImageDownsampleType /Bicubic /MonoImageResolution 1200 /MonoImageDepth -1 /MonoImageDownsampleThreshold 1.50000 /EncodeMonoImages true /MonoImageFilter /CCITTFaxEncode /MonoImageDict << /K -1 >> /AllowPSXObjects false /CheckCompliance [ /None ] /PDFX1aCheck false /PDFX3Check false /PDFXCompliantPDFOnly false /PDFXNoTrimBoxError true /PDFXTrimBoxToMediaBoxOffset [ 0.00000 0.00000 0.00000 0.00000 ] /PDFXSetBleedBoxToMediaBox true /PDFXBleedBoxToTrimBoxOffset [ 0.00000 0.00000 0.00000 0.00000 ] /PDFXOutputIntentProfile () /PDFXOutputConditionIdentifier () /PDFXOutputCondition () /PDFXRegistryName () /PDFXTrapped /False /CreateJDFFile false /Description << /ARA /BGR /CHS /CHT /CZE /DAN /DEU /ESP /ETI /FRA /GRE /HEB /HRV (Za stvaranje Adobe PDF dokumenata najpogodnijih za visokokvalitetni ispis prije tiskanja koristite ove postavke. 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