Berghahn Books
Precious pills; medicine and social change among Tibetan refugees in India.
In this ethnography, Prost (international health, University College, London) examines the social and medical worlds of a community of Tibetan refugees in India. He asks how the prolonged displacement of Tibetan refugees has affected their concepts of health, and how exile has changed traditional Tibetan Medical practice. He finds that Tibetans have a special way of talking about health, that some have accepted exile despite its evils, and that exile itself is pathogenic and highly hierarchical. He investigates the changes in traditional authority of medical practitioners, and the dilemmas of the medical practitioners as they must prove and re-prove the value of traditional Tibetan medicine in exile culture and to a largely westernized India. (Annotation ©2008 Book News Inc. Portland, OR)
