Knowledge and Context in Tibetan Medicine is a collection of ten essays in which a team of international scholars describe and interpret Tibetan medical knowledge. With subjects ranging from the relationship between Tibetan and Greco-Arab conceptions of the bodily humors, to the rebranding of Tibetan precious pills for cross-cultural consumption in the People's Republic of China, each chapter explores representations and transformations of medical concepts across different historical, cultural, and/or intellectual contexts. Taken together this volume offers new perspectives on both well-known Tibetan medical texts and previously unstudied sources, blazing new trails and expanding the scope of the academic study of Tibetan medicine.

Contributors include: Henk W.A. Blezer, Yang Ga, Tony Chui, Katharina Sabernig, Tawni Tidwell, Tsering Samdrup, Carmen Simioli, William A. McGrath, Susannah Deane and Barbara Gerke
Knowledge and Context in Tibetan Medicine, William A. McGrath (editor), Brill, Hardcover, 392 pages, $136.00

William A. McGrath (editor), Ph.D. (2017), University of Virginia, is a Visiting Assistant Professor at Manhattan College. His research concerns the intersections of religion and medicine in Tibet, and his dissertation is about the institutionalization of medicine at the Buddhist monastery.

CONTENTS: Knowledge and Context in Tibetan Medicine
	Introduction: Navigating the Ocean of Tibetan Medical Literature William A. McGrath	vii
	A Note on Transcription, Transliteration, and Bibliography	xvi
	List of Figures	xvii
	Contributors	xviii
PART 1 The Vicissitudes of Meaning in Context
1	A New Sense of (Dark) Humor in Tibet: Brown Phlegm and Black Bile Henk Blezer	9
2	A Preliminary Study on the Biography of Yutok Yonten Gonpo the Elder: Reflections on the Origins of Tibetan Medicine Yang Ga	59
3	"Secret Medicine" in the Writings of Ganggye Gyatso: The Encoded Esoteric Material of Therapeutics Tony Chui	85
4	Visceral Anatomy as Depicted in Tibetan Medicine Katharina Sabernig	111
5	The Modern Biomedical Conception of Cancer and Its Many Potential Correlates in the Tibetan Medical Tradition Tawni Tidwell	140
PART 2 Medicine and Religion in Context
6	The Nine-Fold Magical Cord Cycle: Investigating 'Phrul gyi the gu brgu skor, a Wartime Medical Manual Tsering Samdrup	199
7	Knowledge, Imagery, and the Treatment of Communicable Disease in the Vase of the Amrta of Immortality: A Preliminary Analysis of a Nyingma Medical Corpus Carmen Simioli	218
8	Tantric Divination and Empirical Diagnosis: A Geneology of Channel Prasena Rituals in the Tibetan Medical Tradition William A. McGrath	261
9	Madness and the Spirits: Examining the Role of Spirits in Mental Illness in the Tibetan Communities of Darjeeling Susannah Deane	309
10	Material Presentations and Cultural Drug Translations of Contemporary Tibetan Precious Pills Barbara Gerke	337
	Index	369