Critically exploring scientific thought and its relation to religion in traditional Tibetan medicine, Being Human expands our sense of Tibetan cultural history, unpacking the intersection of early modern sensibilities and religious ideals during the time of the Fifth Dalai Lama. Studying the adaptation of Buddhist concepts and values to medical concerns, the book also advances an appreciation of Buddhism's role in the development of Asian and global civilization.

Through its unique focus and sophisticated reading of source materials, Being Human captures the religious character of medicine in Tibet during a period when it facilitated a singular involvement in issues associated with modernity and empirical science, all without discernible influence from the European Enlightenment. The book opens with the bold achievements of medical illustration, commentary, and institution building, then looks back to the work of earlier thinkers, tracing a subtle dialectic between scriptural and empirical authority on questions of history and the nature of human anatomy. It follows key differences between medicine and Buddhism in attitudes toward gender and sex, and the shaping of medical ethics to serve both the physician and the patient's well-being. Being Human ultimately finds that Tibetan medical scholars absorbed ethical and epistemological categories from Buddhism yet shied away from ideal system and absolutes, embracing instead the imperfectability of the human condition.
Being Human in a Buddhist World: An Intellectual History of Medicine in Early Modern Tibet, Janet Gyatso, Columbia University Press, Hardcover 519 pages, 2015, $60.00

Janet Gyatso is Hershey Professor of Buddhist Studies at Harvard University, where she serves on the faculty of the Divinty School, the Study of Religion, East Asian Languages and Civilizations, and Inner Asian and Altaic Studies. Her writing has centered on Tibetan Buddhism and its cultural and intellectual history from the perspective of large issues in the humanities about human experience and its literary presentation. She is the author of Apparitions of the Self: The Secret Autobiographies of a Tibetan Visionary, as well as several edited volumes.

List of Illustrations	VII
Acknowledgments	IX
A Technical Note	XIII
Abbreviations	XV
Introduction	1
PART I: IN THE CAPITAL
1. Reading Paintings, Painting the Medical, Medicalizing the State	23
2. Anatomy of an Attitude: Medicine Comes of Age	81
PART II: BONES OF CONTENTION
3. The Word of the Buddha	143
4. The Evidence of the Body: Medical Channels, Tantric Knowing	193
5. Tangled Up in System: The Heart, In the Text and In the Hand	251
Coda: Influence, Rhetoric, and Riding Two Horses at Once	265
PART III: ROOTS OF THE PROFESSION
6. Women and Gender	287
7. The Ethics of Being Human: The Doctor's Formation in a Material Realm	343
Conclusion: Ways and Means for Medicine	397
Notes	409
Bibliographies	473
Index	499