Buddhist Medicine in Tibet, with Bill McGrath

Blue Beryl

In this episode, I sit down with my friend Bill McGrath, a historian of Tibetan Buddhism and medicine. He's one of the most knowledgeable people in the world on this subject, and we get deep into the weeds in an academic conversation about traditional Tibetan medicine, the category of Buddhist medicine, and Bill's perspectives on magic, religion, and science. We also reminisce about the time that Bill once used a Tibetan mantra to save the day when we ran out of gas driving home from a conference!
Resources mentioned in the pod:

• Bill's website (ww.wmcgrath.com)
• Yoeli-Tlalim, ReOrienting Histories of Medicine: Encounters along the Silk Road (2022)
• Gerke, Taming the Poisonous: Mercury, Toxicity, and Safety in Tibetan Medical Practic (2021)
• Janet Gyatso's review of Pierce's 2014 book
• Salguero, A Global History of Buddhism and Medicine (2022)
• Gyatso, Being Human in a Buddhist World: An Intellectual History of Medicine in Early Modern Tibet (2017)
• McGrath, Knowledge and Context in Tibetan Medicine (2019)
• Saxer, Manufacturing Tibetan Medicine: The Creation of an Industry and the Moral Economy of Tibetanness (2013)
• Reassembling Tibetan Meicine (www.ratimed.net)
• Weber, The Protestant Ethic and the Spirit of Capitalism (1905)