Women and Hormones in Tibetan Medical Literature

This dissertation examines a contemporary genre of Tibetan medical writings that seek to integrate Tibetan medical and biomedical notions of “hormones” in the reproductive bodies of women. The analytical lens of ‘gender’ plays a significant role in this dissertation, specifically the ways in which medical and Buddhist language and literature surrounding the Tibetan integration of biomedical notions of hormones deeply implicates modern-day Tibetan national, ethnic, and religious identities. This dissertation provides overviews and analyses of a selection of recently published Tibetan medical works that research methods to integrate and articulate biomedical notions of ‘hormones’ into the Tibetan medical system. These works include book-length commentaries, medical journal articles, book chapters, and home reference books that focus on women’s health. This dissertation analyzes the relationship between establishing medical authority with the practice of textual research in present-day Tibetan medical writing in ‘Chinese Tibet,’ and how ‘hormones’ are the central point of intersection and integration between the Tibetan medical and biomedical systems. Many present-day Tibetan medical authors turn to Buddhist thought, and specifically the texts and language of Tantra, to explicate and articulate the Tibetan understanding of hormones. In their research into the authoritative and classical texts of their traditions, the majority of the authors discussed within this dissertation argue that it can be definitively established that the classical Indo-Tibetan medical and Buddhist writers and experts ‘knew’ about the very subtle substances circulating throughout the body that are today known in biomedicine as “hormones.”Ph.D