[The Main Guide to the Medical Science of Tibet Gyushi]. Glavnoe Rukovodstvo po Vrachebnoy Nauke Tibeta Zhud-Shi.

Translation and foreword by P. Badmaev.

Sankt-Peterburg, Novyi Zhurnal Inostrannoy Literatury, 1903.
4to, 159 pp.

In modern hardcover.
Restoration to title page, owner mark to text in colored pencil.

Second edition of the first translation of the Four Tantras, the foundational Tibetan medical treatise Gyuzhi, in any European language. This edition comprises only two parts of the original text. The third part was also translated by Badmaev but was published only at the end of the 20th century.

The first edition of this translation, without illustrations, was published in 1898.
Our edition distinguishes itself from the first by significantly expanding the description of 'The Basics of Tibetan Medicine' and by featuring the first publication of 'Scheme of Tibetan Medicine', or the three trees from the first 'The Root Tantra' with commentary: The Tree of our General Condition, The Tree of Diagnosis, and The Tree of Treatment Methods.
The origins of the text are shrouded in mystery, believed to have been written in Sanskrit, though the original manuscript has been lost. The Tibetan version of the text is thought to have been known since the 8th century when the Tibetan doctor Junior Yuthog Yonten Gonpo compiled the accumulated knowledge in the 13th century.
Since then, Gyuzhi has been published several times in Tibetan, often as wood-block prints, with one of the earliest known editions dating back to the 15th century.
The first to introduce Tibetan medicine to the West was Russian doctor Joseph Rehmann, whose work 'Beschreibung einer thibetanischen Handapotheke' was published in Saint Petersburg in 1811. The first English summary of Gyuzhi to the West was by Hungarian philologist Sándor Csoma de Kőrös, whose article 'Analysis of a Tibetan Medical Work' was published in the Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal (Calcutta, pp. 1-20) in 1835. English translations of some parts of the text only appeared in 1973, with the first complete translation published in Chinese in 1983.
Russian doctor Jamsaran (Peter Aleksandrovich) Badmayev (ca. 1850-ca. 1920) hailed from a wealthy Buryat family. After moving to Saint Petersburg and studying at the University's faculty of Eastern languages, he served in the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and actively participated in Russia's involvement in the Great Game, harboring ambitions to expand Russia to the East. After converting to Christianity and becoming a godson of Emperor Alexander III, he later pursued medical activities, influenced by the works of Dr. J. Rehmann on Tibetan medicine.

Tibetan medicine is recognized, alongside Ayurveda and Chinese medicine, as one of the seminal Asian medical systems.

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