The Health Care And Medical Practices Of The Tibetan Buddhist Nuns In Gannan Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture

Based on the perspective of the regional medical culture of medical anthropology and by integrating the research methodologies of ethnology,sociology,forklore as weal as religious studies,this dissertation means to study the health care and medical practices of nuns in Gannan Tibetan autonomous prefecture of Gansu province.The aim of this research is to explore the relations between gender and social status,diseases and treatment as well as healthcare and medical culture through the comprehensive descriptions unfolded in their social life,religious practices,medical treatments.Having conducted a few years' field research and texts studies,the paper comes to be an ethnography on the traditional medicine practiced in the everyday life of the Tibetan Buddhist nuns.This research focuses on three main issues,which are medical treatments,healthcare and medical culture.Firstly,by interpreting the reasons and goals of becoming nuns,their daily life and religious practices,it is found that this female group is alienated in a male-dominated society.Such marginalization inevitably leads to their poverty accompanied with worsening health conditions.Limited income further results in their poor access to public medical organizations.The unpleasant highland climate,poor living conditions and heavy workload all together make them more vulnerable to various kinds of diseases and mishaps.Secondly,local cultures will have their unique definitions of health and diseases,and therefore treatments will differ a lot based on different concepts on the causes of diseases and illnesses.For a Tibetan Buddhist nun,the concepts of diseases are strongly shaped by Tibetan Buddhist culture,ethnic traditions in the Tibetan society,Tibetan medicine and local ecological environments,thus they will adopt different ways to access to medical treatments.Disregard of the enculturization by the traditional Tibetan culture,nuns will still seek modern medical treatments.However,in the meantime,they will also look up to their religion to seek relieves and cure.Therefore,medical practices happening in the whole treatment processes are conducted according both to local medical traditions and cognitive framework.Finally,the effective protection of their health mainly is their self-health protections.Tibetan Buddhist nuns believe that traditional medicine care knowledge derived from traditional Tibetan traditional culture and Buddhist culture which are adequate to protect their mental and physical health.Tibetan medicine knowledge involves two key aspects,namely,health managements and medical treatments.The former is much more important than the latter in a certain way,and both are manifested in various aspects of their everyday lives.Vegetarian diets,regular and simple meals,and abiding to a series of religious observance are different forms of health managements.In particular,their religious observance can foster favourable and peaceful spiritual statuses which are important for the maintenance to a good health.Through the investigation of the healthcare and medical treatments of the nuns in Ningma Buddhist Temple in the Gannan Tibetan Autonomous Prefecture,it can be concluded as that:Firstly,in view of the mutual relations between female physical health and their social status,and improvement of female's health condition can only be achieved by the improvement of the social,financial and education conditions of the females so as to diminish the negative effects caused from gender inequality in local societies.By enhancement of the social status,especially for women of the low-income groups,they could have more disposable resources to improve their health conditions.Secondly,the Biomedicine cannot fully accounts for the understanding and the treatment of diseases,but such understanding is an outcome of various causes that are affected by certern local environment,society,culture,psychological and mental conditions.Therefore,the effective control and cure of diseases and enhancement of human health conditions cannot be achieved without paying an attention to the medical knowledge of local patients,the observation and understanding of local concepts and behaviors of local people's health protection and their related treatments.By integrating the traditional and modern medical knowledge in the treatment of diseases,some diversified approaches to medical care which has been long ignored can be upheld.Thirdly,it has been for a long time that traditional medical practices are conducted outsides the established public healthcare systems.Therefore,the study oflocal and traditional medical systems will help us to have a better understanding of people's behaviour and altitudes when they seek medical advises,as well as how social,cultural and psychological factors affects their health concepts.As such,effective measures could be raised and implemented to increase the overall health conditions of human beings.Finally,people's views about health and behavior are highly sophisticated and are mainly associated with social,psychological and cultural factors.In view of this,we should adopt a research approach with inter-disciplinary concerns,such as medical anthropology,feminist anthropology,religious anthropology,Tibetan studies,sociology,to reflect better the medical behaviour under its own context so as to derive an objective and reasonable understanding of the mutual relations between health and culture.