Chinese and foreign medical experts attending the "2000 International Symposium on Tibetan Medicine", which closed in this capital of the Tibet Autonomous Region today, agreed that the 2000-year-old Tibetan medicine will be turned into the wealth of all the countries on earth.

Zhu Guoben, president of the Nationalities Medicine and Pharmacy Association of China, said, "Among the four famous medical systems in the world, the ancient Greek medicine has been lost and the ancient Indian medicine is going downhill. Only traditional Chinese medicine and Tibetan medicine are widely used in various parts of the world."

Tibetan medicine is a traditional medical system gradually built up by the Tibetan people in their long struggle against diseases and illnesses. It has miraculous curative effects on cerebrovascular disease, rheumatism, rheumatoid arthritis and chronic hepatitis. It is also notably effective against tumors, diabetes, blood diseases, hepatocirrhosis and other difficult diseases which Western medicine is unable to deal with.

Ren Wang, vice president of the Beijing Tibetan Hospital, said three-fourths of the patients at his hospital are people of the Han nationality, and one fifth of the patients come from abroad. They turn to Tibetan medicine after unfruitful medical treatment in other hospitals.

Dr. Bhagwan Dash, an Indian physician who has engaged in clinical Tibetan medicine for more than 20 years, said, "A lupus sebaceus patient of mine received Western medicine treatment for two years, but to no avail. Since he turned to Tibetan medicine not long ago, he has felt much better."

Tibetan medicine is a complete theoretical system with rich clinical practice. The "Four Medical Classics", a medical encyclopaedia compiled at the end of the eighth century, gives accurate descriptions of anatomy, physiology and other medical elementals. Later people drew 80 colorful wall maps for this monumental medical work, providing a straightforward explanation of the diagnosis and treatment of Tibetan medicine. It helps Tibetan medicine get widespread in China's Tibet Autonomous Region, and Qinghai, Yunnan and Sichuan provinces as well as in India and Nepal.

Dash has written 14 books on Tibetan medicine since he won a doctoral degree at New Delhi University in 1978. The majority of them have been published in New Delhi. He shuttles between India and Italy to attend his five Tibetan and Indian medicine clinics in the two countries.

"Tibetan medicine is a kind of natural therapy which combines human beings closely with nature. It pays attention not only to treatment of disease but also to psychological recuperation," he said, adding, "I hope my endeavors will make Tibetan medicine accepted by more people."

To date, research institutes on Tibetan medicine have been set up in more than 20 countries and regions with a large contingent of established specialists. Tibetan medicine doctors from China have been invited to give lectures in a dozen countries, including the United States, Britain, Japan, Argentina, Mexico, Brazil and Switzerland.

Inspired by a report on Tibetan medicine given at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 1983, an American doctor, named Eliot Tokar, opened his own Tibetan medicine clinic in New York in the 1980s.

Many Tibetan medical books such as the "Four Medical Classics", "Pearl Herbology" and "Selected Works of Tibetan Medicine" have been translated into English, German, French, Russian and Japanese.

Zhan Dui, president of the Tibetan Hospital in Tibet, said most of the crude drugs in Tibetan medicine are mineral products or natural plants and animals living on snow-covered mountains with an elevation of 5,000 meters. Hence, it has better curative effect than other medicine.

The Chee-Zheng Pain-Eliminating plaster made by the Qizheng Tibetan Medicine Group, won the grand prize at the 26th International Exhibition of Inventions held in Geneva in 1998.

Tibetan Rhodiolao, a new type of tonic which is good for the brain and able to inhibit the spread of cancer, now has ready markets in the United States, the Republic of Korea and Japan.

(From China Internet Information Centre)