Medical benefits - the traditional Tibetan way

My beautiful friend in the Men-Tsee-Khang waiting room

“You’ve got sore knees,” says the Tibetan traditional doctor.

“How did you know that?” I ask amazed.

I had literally taken just one confident step into the consulting room – how could he diagnose that I’ve had newly and unusually swollen and sore knees starting 10 days ago, just the week before I left for India?

I’m in back in Dharamsala for another 3 months editing publications for the Library of Tibetan Works and Archives. I’ve had a tough year health wise – head colds, tonsillitis, low iron, and the knees were the last straw – so one of the first things I did when I got back to my guest house away from home, Kailwood in McLeod Ganj, was to drop across Tipa Road to the Men Tsee Khang branch office to get a Tibetan traditional medicine check.

Men-Tsee-Khang – the Tibetan Medicine and Astro Science Institute – was founded in Tibet in 1916 by the 13^th Dalai Lama to formalize the study of Tibetan traditional medicine, which is related to the ancient Indian Ayurvedic system. Men-Tsee-Khang was re-founded in India in 1961 by His Holiness 14^th Dalai Lam. It was one of the first Tibetan Government in Exile bodies established after HHDL settled in this town in the foothills of the Dhauladar Ranges following his flight from the Chinese forces in 1959. Its mission is to preserve, promote and practice Sowa Rigpa, the traditional science of medicine, astronomy and astrology.

Old and young, monastic and lay come here

There are already a few people in the long narrow waiting room when I arrive. A traditionally dressed old lady with long silver-grey plaits is bustling around with an acupuncture needle sticking up out of her right hand between thumb and forefinger. She impatiently pops her head into a closed consulting room and is obviously told to go away and sit down.

Across from my bench by the window sits a very old man with bottle bottom spectacles and cloudy eyes. Along from me is a sick woman completely wrapped in shawls and scarves lying curled on the bench in silent suffering; a couple of maroon-robed monks primly hold their green health record books – like old fashioned savings account pass books.

I read my novel for a few minutes until the old lady charmingly but forcefully indicates I should get up and pass her the shopping bag she has left on my bench. Taking that as an introduction, I get permission to take her photo and tell her truthfully that she has a beautiful face.

“Beeeooootifull!” she echoes in amusement.

I take the old man’s photo too, but he is so blind I’m not sure he can see what I show him. He is also very deaf because one of the doctors comes out and shouts instructions (?) loudly and directly into his left ear.

I have picked up numbered wooden disk 30 from the bunch hanging by the open window and soon it’s my turn to take one step into tiny consulting room number C-2 (written in uneven painted hand on the wooden door) to see CMO Doctor Yeshe Dorjee. He looks like a tired middle-aged middle school maths teacher in his grey knitted vest and checked shirt and horn rims.

Millimetre by millimetre he checks the pulses in my left and then right wrists. The first thing he diagnoses is the accurate assessment of my knees, but the rest of the diagnosis sounds like vague end-of-the-pier fake mind reading waffle.

“You have tiredness ” (He really only had to look at me.)

“You have wind, a bit of nausea, loose bowels, headaches, breathlessness.” ( Hey, I’m an elderly white tourist in the Himalayas, that’s not a difficult call.)

“Yes, a bit, now and then,” I concur politely.

A couple of suggestions I fling straight back. “Earaches.” “Nah, never get earaches.”

My prescription and medicines, with instructions

He scrawls Tibetan across a prescription sheet and tells me to come back in 15 days because I have deep issues.

At the cashier’s window, the very sick woman is now leaning her head and arms on the counter as if unable to stand. I hope she hasn’t got something contagious but I’m ‘queuing’ in a tight huddle with my fellow patients so we are all at equal risk.

Once I’ve paid my 375 rupees for consultation and medicine, I cross to the pharmacy window where Norbu the dispenser works in a room lined with shelves holding huge jars of 48 shades of brown balls of medicine, like an old-fashioned monochrome sweet shop. I get 5 little brown envelopes of various brown balls and graphic instructions. I will have to grind the balls down to gritty bitter powder at various times of day and swill them down with warm water. Like concentration camp coffee.

Working at my desk later that day I experience a half hour of acute, out-of-the-blue earache. Did Dr Dorjee predict that,? Or cause it? And how did he know about my knees?

I’ll be back to find out in fifteen days.

Norbu the dispenser fills my prescriptions

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