Traditionally, in Tibet, there was always a lot a developed space, with no many big towns, favouring the existence of small villages with the combination of two main ways of life : nomadism and agriculture. These statements were the basis of the Tibetan medicine organization and of Tibetan Amchis’ (physicists) practice – that is why you can find fundamental differences between the current medicine known in Occident, and stories told by physicists such as Amchi LungTok, whose knowledge of medical science (“gSoba Rigpa”) now turns out to be very rare.

To answer this distance issue, and also considering that farmers and nomads can’t easily leave their animals and travel for one or several days – particularly when they are ill ! –, physicists move to their patients instead of the contrary. Moving from village to village, meeting an invitation or request of someone or a family, the arrival of a physicist is a piece of news generally spread by word to mouth. When he arrived, not only one patient, but several – sometimes a good many – would wait for the long-waited Amchi. Consultations took place in the host’s house, occasionally turned into an improvised surgery, with on one side a waiting room, and on the other side a consultation room where the physicist himself would give treatments to his patients.

Working hours ? Tibetan physicists never considered things that way. Either at home or on travel, going on holidays or just a free week-end was not something to think of. Night and day, he is at the patients’ disposal, ready to leave on a nomad’s request who came riding a horse for a dying person, or to welcome a mother with her child in trouble right in the middle of his sleep.

This body-and-soul commitment (gave Tibetan physicists a very particular aura and Tibetan people’s true worship, who acknowledged them as beings full of compassion for their fellow men and fellow women. Even physicist’s remuneration didn’t depend on their desire, nor even on the treatment cost, but on the sick person’s or the family’s capacity for paying them.

Binds between patients and physicists are stronger than those in Occident, particularly because the physicist himself had made the medicines distributed to the patients, and tested them before, to check on their positive qualities. You still have to figure how numerous the medicines are (the GyuShi lists more then 2.000 medicines !) and how complex they are since they are the combination of about twenty – even thirty – plants, minerals, or other natural elements.

What also contributed to strengthen binds is the fact that villagers often join a group of physicists who went to harvest plants to increase their pharmacopoeia and to prepare the next medicines. This kind of expeditions sometimes ended with about then villagers, not mentioning physicists, in summer or in others seasons, for everyone’s sake without compulsory remuneration. But plants picking, particularly in mountains, was a demanding and difficult art that really required additional help, otherwise the quantities of medicines would be bound to quickly decrease.

When nomads or villagers meet one or several physicists, it isn’t uncommon to see them give the best delicacies at their disposal. Happy to share their meals with those who represent their last solution against illness, they brought them fresh yoghurts, meat, lunch or dinner, with some wood and some dried cow dung to make a fire. When you look more closely to this, it isn’t illogical ; indeed, all the time he wouldn’t spend to look for wood, the physicist could devote it to picking medicinal plants and to granting consultations to villagers, who would be happy to see physicists in the flesh not far from their houses !

The Tibetan’s admiration crystallized in a saying that firstly shows, with the sharp humour characterizing the country, the great devotion of physicists and of their circle, then secondly, how worshipped they are. This saying stated that : “A physicist’s mother is more compassionate than a Rinpoché’s (great spiritual Buddhist master) mother”. Actually, when the physicist visited a seriously ill person, his mother would worry a lot for her son’s patient’s health, for the happy ending of the treatment. But when a Rinpoché visited a disciple, his mother would worry a lot for her son’s comfort, his food, and even the money he will earn !

But true Tibetan tradition is progressively disappearing to be taken over by organisation patterns more close to those currently known in Occident. You can still see physicists in villages, but nowadays a good many of them join hospitals, which use traditional and modern methods – these hospitals being in cities, far from nomads or from numerous farmers.

Besides, medicines are made in most significant quantities, because the demand has significantly increased (these factors can be attributed numerous causes, among which the knowledge of Tibetan medicine can be included).

Situation in cities, demand of plants, make plants picking harder, particularly because plants are becoming rare and because physicists are confronted with owners reluctant to see their soils becoming impoverished.