Transformation of Traditional Oriental Medicine in the Modern World

10.33876/2311-0546/2024-4/356-372

Abstract

The article examines one of the most important modern issues concerning the development of traditional medicines: their transformation into TMS – traditional medical systems. It is known that in some Asian countries (China, India, Vietnam, etc.) such TMS legitimately exist since the middle or end of the XX century; they are institutionalized and structured similarly to the conventional/biomedical healthcare system. TMS operates there in parallel with and in close interaction with the main medical system, with biomedicine as the primary educational basis for specialist training. Healthcare in these countries includes in its unified system a parallel with a second ministry or department, a complex structure of university training of specialists, specialized hospitals and clinics of various kinds – either separate or organized on the basis of complementarity, different pharmaceutical bases. At the same time, TMS, primarily from India and China, have long since spread to many other countries of the world and, as complementary or alternative forms of medicine, strive to form global forms (for example, the concept of "global Ayurveda" is already being used). The article first of all considers the specifics of the terminological apparatus associated with non-conventional medicine. Further the author analyzes the current situation of TM and TMS as it has developed to date in foreign countries, and compares it with what has been happening in the last three decades in the Russian Federation, primarily in the Republic of Buryatia and the Zabaykalsky Krai. Traditional medicine was initially introduced there with the practice of Buddhist lamas and with written sources from Tibet through Mongolia; later the Buryats on the basis of translated sources developed a relatively independent branch of Buryat-Tibetan medicine, which back in the XIX century spread first to St. Petersburg, and then to other cities and regions of the Russian Empire. Nowadays, in the main centers of traditional medicine in Buryatia and the Zabaykalsky Krai, the institutions of a medical system have been formed, making it possible to create a full-fledged TMS – a parallel, but closely intertwined with biomedicine branch of healthcare, which can easily become an alternative branch of healthcare in the Republic of Buryatia, where the traditional Buryat-Tibetan medicine has been institutionalized within the healthcare system since the 1980s. Currently, the Center for Oriental Medicine and its units are receiving a significant number of combatants for rehabilitation and are actively working in the field of restorative medicine.