Background: During the historical development of traditional medicine, many books and manuscripts have been written in Mongolian medicine. The main textbook of traditional medicine states that: “The size of a bone consists of 23 bone species, 28 spinal joints, 24 ribs, 32 teeth, and 360 pieces of bone.”
However, modern medicine estimates that the human body has 206 bones. Therefore, this topic was chosen to study the source material of traditional medicine, including the structure of the human body, and the number of bones in the modern medical anatomy textbook. Purpose: Details of the number of bones in the human body in the “Four Medical Tantras” (རྒྱུད་བཞི) of traditional medicine and its commentary, as well as compare with the number of bones in the basic textbook of anatomy of modern medicine. Objectives: In order to successfully implement the research objectives, the following objectives will be implemented. These include:
1. Sampling and analyzing number of bones from traditional medicine;
2. Sampling and analyzing bone numbers from modern medical textbooks;
3. Compare the names and numbers of bones in traditional medicine and modern medicine Results: The number, classification and features of human bones were analyzed from the main scriptures of traditional medicine such as “Explanatory Tantra”, of the “Four Medical Tantras” and the “Legs bshad gser gyi thur ma” by Blo-bzang-chos-grags. In addition, the number of bones in the human body was sampled from modern medical textbooks and prepared for comparison. The number and characteristics of bones in the human body were compared by traditional medicine and modern medicine and made a conclusion.
This study reveals that the foundations for the integrated development of traditional medicine were laid long ago in Mongolian medicine. In addition, to highlight the book “Four Medical Tantras”, which is the basis of the textbook on the structure of the human body and the research work of scientists and scholars, which is considered in Mongolian mamba datsan’s contribution to the science of human anatomy. The importance of this research is to change the extremes of Western medicine and traditional medicine and increase opportunities to use its introduction and development into training and clinical practice. Conclusion
1. The main creature of body structure in traditional medicine is the “Four Medical Tantras” which generally assumes that the numbers of bones are 360 but does not specify it in detail. During the research, we identified 357 bone names to identify each bone. The names and locations of the three bones were not clearly marked in the medical sources.
2. The numbers of bones are 206 in modern medical textbooks. We recalculated 151 bones based on traditional medical sources without duplication of that.
3. Compared to traditional medicine and modern medicine, the number of bones and are higher than 154 bone names in traditional medicine because we included the number of teeth, small bones in the ears and small bones in the fingers and toes. Some cartilage was also counted as bones.