Traditional Thai Medicine

Traditional Thai Medicine presents readers with the definitive overview of the history and contemporary practice of TTM. This is an updated, re-organized, and mostly re-written edition of the 2007 book that provided English-language readers with the first comprehensive overview of traditional Thai medicine in print. The culmination of two decades of field study, academic research, and teaching experience, this book approaches TTM from an academic perspective, but it is geared toward practitioners, tourists, and general readers. It provides a broad-brush history of Thai medicine from ancient times to the present day, and describes in detail the unique synthesis of healing practices that is found today across Thailand. The author demonstrates that traditional Thai medicine is not a timeless static tradition, but rather a dynamic and syncretic combination of multiple cultural influences, including Theravada Buddhism, Ayurveda, yoga, Tantra, Chinese medicine, Western tourism, and indigenous spirit religions. TTM is revealed to be both a fascinating time capsule of practices and beliefs from many historical eras, and also a vibrant, living, and creative modern phenomenon.