Therapeutic Rejuvenation Processes and Pharmacological Detoxification Methods in Contemporary Tibetan Medicine in India and Nepal: A Critical Analysis of Cultural Translations through Ethnographic Case Studies and Classical Medical Texts on Vitality, Toxicity, and Aging
Final Report Abstract
This project investigated the culture-specific understanding of rejuvenation and detoxification in Tibetan medicine, with special emphasis on the processing of metallic mercury (Hg), which is used largely in the form of the much less toxic and insoluble form of mercury-sulphide (HgS). Tibetan medical concepts of poisons, rejuvenation, tonics, aphrodisiacs, and the ‘detoxification’ of substances, are all based on similar underlying concepts of Tibetan medical perception of ‘poisons.’ The central research focus was on the ‘detoxification’ (dukdön) of poisons (duk) in Tibetan pharmacology, in which poisons are not removed, but ‘tamed’ (dülwa), transformed from harmful agents to beneficial medicine. Ideas of taming involve subduing and controlling a substance and resurrecting the poisonous as a vitalising agent with special potency (nüpa). Taking the example of mercury, it is argued that poisons become powerful agents not only in the making of ‘rejuvenating’ and ‘precious’ medicines, but also in the purification and control of social and physical environments, as well as in the cultural construction of perceptions of safety. First, the project collected, studied, and analysed original data on mercury processing that is only available in Tibetan or to Tibetan medical specialists, creating a thorough and sound foundation on which future research can build. Second, the research focused on a special processing technique that came to Tibet during the thirteenth century CE, and that is still practiced today by medical institutions in India and the PRC. This complex manufacturing process is the pride of contemporary Tibetan pharmacologists, and takes several weeks, during which liquid metallic mercury is processed with numerous plants, metals, minerals, and other ingredients into an ash, called tsotel. This ash is then used as a potent addition to specific multicompound ‘precious pills.’ Textual research was conducted on the historical trajectories of this practice, the transmission via medical lineages, and some of the contestations of its knowledge transmission and safety concerns in the 20th century. Ethnographic research focused on semi-structured open-ended interviews with Tibetan physicians and pharmacologists in contemporary India and Nepal who are increasingly exposed to biomedicine, and critically analysed how they translate and reinterpret their ideas of mercury toxicity and safety. The project’s objective was to contribute to an in-depth understanding of the cultural construction and perceptions of toxicity and safety as well as the cross-cultural translation of notions of what constitutes a ‘poison’ in Tibetan cultural settings. It also links the findings to larger questions of safety and toxicity in Asian medicines and the cultural hegemony involved in the ‘translation’ of ideas of mercury’s toxicity, specifically in the light of the recent UN ban of mercury (the ‘Minamata Convention,’ initiated and steered by the United Nations Environment Programme), which was passed in January 2013 and signed by India in October 2014. This project also analysed studies Tibetan physicians in India have conducted to prove that their mercury-containing medicines are safe and why, and where safety debates have or have not changed manufacturing processes, and how they have responded to the atomic model and science paradigms of mercury toxicity. Methodologically, the results contribute to anthropological themes of ‘reciprocal ethnography’ (when perceptions of safety differed considerably between researcher and interlocutor), gender and self-reflexivity (women are largely banned from Tibetan mercury purification practices; issues of being a woman researching a subject in which Tibetan women have been largely excluded), and ‘event ethnographies’ (using conferences, workshops, lectures as fieldsites). Theoretically, the project contributes to critical anthropological debates on ‘cultural translations’ (Asad 1986) by integrating approaches from recent Translation Studies, especially on the nexus of power and translation (Tymoczko and Gentzler 2002). It also presents an example of how anthropological theories of ‘reflexivity’ and ‘embodiment’ can be used to better understand cultural differences in perceptions of toxicity and safety.
Publications
- (2013) ‘Treating the Aged’ and ‘Maintaining Health’: Locating bcud len Practices in the ‘Four Tantras.’ JIABS Journal of the International Association of Buddhist Studies 35:329-362
Barbara Gerke
- (2014) The Social Life of Tsotel: Processing Mercury in Contemporary Tibetan Medicine, in Asian Medicine: Tradition and Modernity. Special Issue: Mercury in Ayurveda and Tibetan Medicine, special issue editor B. Gerke, 8(1): 120-152
Barbara Gerke
(See online at https://dx.doi.org/10.1163/15734218-12341287) - Biographies and Knowledge Transmission of Mercury Processing in Twentieth Century Tibet. Special issue on ‘Medical Mercury: A Global Commodity in Transition,’ ed. D. Wujastyk. Asiatische Studien 9(4), 867-899
Barbara Gerke
(See online at https://dx.doi.org/10.1515/asia-2015-1041) - Moving from Efficacy to Safety: A Changing Focus in the Study of Asian Medical Systems. Journal of the Anthropological Society of Oxford (JASO), special issue on Medical Anthropology at Oxford: The First Decade and Beyond, eds. E. Hsu, S. Ulijaszek, C. Potter, 7(3): 370-384
Barbara Gerke
- The Poison of Touch: Tracing Mercurial Treatments of Syphilis in Tibet. Social History of Medicine. 28(1)
Barbara Gerke
(See online at https://dx.doi.org/10.1093/shm/hkv01) - (2016): When Ngülchu is Not Mercury: Tibetan Taxonomies of Mercury. In: Soulless Matter, Seats of Energy: Metals, Gems and Minerals in South Asian Religions and Culture, eds. F. Ferrari and T. Dähnhardt. Sheffield and Bristol: Equinox. 9781781791288
Barbara Gerke
- Buddhist Themes of Healing and Taming in Tibet: Ritualised Pharmacology. In: Oxford Handbook of Contemporary Buddhism, ed. M. Jerryson. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2017. - 9780199362387
Barbara Gerke
