A Model Medicine Factory
With the obvious exception of Nirvana, there are few things in the world that I feel would be capable of providing me with more satisfaction than that which I feel right now as a result of being fully immersed within a community project. While our medicine factory is in the planning stages at best, the mere thought of bringing the village closer to something considered by most scriptures to be a “jewel” (i.e. medicine) has been enough motivation to facilitate my waking up at dawn to meet with my fellow team members to discuss the details of our endeavour, and subsequently returning late at night to wake up Pala and discuss the plans with him.
I suppose a major contributor to my excitement is the fact that when my parents and I first came to these lands, one of the places where we were stationed, and thus one where I spent ample time exploring, was the Mentsekhang, or the Tibetan Medical and Astrological Institute. This was a mammoth of a building that served as the region’s primary centre for treatment, training, research, and the production of Tibetan medicine. The factory portion of the building, responsible for the latter, contained special medical departments for concocting medicines related to brain blood vessels, orthopaedics, paediatrics, internal medicine, and surgery.
While a Western perspective would lead one to think that the production of medicines at this factory was regulated by a series of supply vs. demand curves, the truth could not be more… radical. It is not established laws of economics, but rather the latter part of the building’s name that governs which medicines need to be made at any given time. Indeed, because Tibetan medicine has a very close relationship to the Tibetan calendar, i.e. doctors believe that the body changes with the seasons, the types of medicines that are made at Mentsekhang vary with the changing of the movements of the stars, clouds, winds, lakes, and migratory patterns of the birds. In this way, the factory is prepared to provide medicines made with plants that produce a cooling effect on the hot disorders that appear in the summer months, and those with a warming nature on cold disorders that appear in the winter months.
In addition to being made with plants and herbal products, much of Tibetan medicine also contains mineral and animal substances. Modes of preparation involve first combining the ingredients together in their whole forms and then crushing them into a homogenous powder. From this powder, it is most common for pills to be made, though other forms of medicine like tablets and syrup-like substances may exist as well. Regardless of the type of medicine, however, all plant, mineral, and animal matter that is put to use in its creation is characterized according to two main aspects of the substance’s potency, 1) How a given medicinal substance is linked to the five main elements of fire, water, earth, air, and space (which in turn confers upon the medicine a nature, a taste, primary, and secondary qualities) and 2) The intrinsic potency or power of the substance, namely its aromatic power, the shape of the drug, auspicious power, power from prayers, etc.
With regards to the prescription of these medicines, it is common for medicines to be assigned as compounds because there are fewer side effects when a dose is composed of two or more recipes of herbal medicines. Prayer and meditiation are also coupled with the prescription of medicine, in that it is rare for any one to work exclusively. Healing in Tibet is a holistic process that involves the coming-together of an entire community, and thus Mentesekhang was situated within very close proximity to the village’s monastery, nunnery, and town square.
It is clear then, that we have a solid foundation upon which to build our factory, as we possess knowledge (gained by way of precedent) of the economics, science, and mechanics involved.
