The interaction with, or translations (as the term is used in this volume) of, biomedicine in Tibetan medical practice is the point of departure in this thought-provoking and ethnographically rich volume. The volume, edited by three of the most prominent medical anthropologists researching Tibetan medicine, establishes from the start that the issue is not Tibetan medical practice being colonized by biomedical science; instead we learn how Tibetan doctors, individually or collectively, translate biomedical science into their practice, how religious aspects of the medical tradition are sometimes foregrounded, sometimes not, and how Tibetan medicine might help change science practices internationally. The volume's thirteen chapters look at this interaction in Tibet, India, Russia, and the United States in both past and present. What all the chapters share, according to the editors, is Sowa Rigpa (traditional Tibetan medicine) "sensibilities." This is a methodological and analytical approach that understands Tibetan medical tradition to be more than the classical body of Tibetan medical texts—the Gyüshi. Furthermore, it includes a range of various practitioners and healing practices, practices that might seem as much religious as medical. In the epilogue, anthropologist Geoffrey Samuel gives an excellent summary of how a focus on Sowa Riga sensibilities is evident in each chapter, and, moreover, how such an approach might be an initial, but ambitious, step toward a new and different relationship between Tibetan and biomedical approaches to healing: a model of efficacy that hinges on different notions of truth making.
