Traditional Mongolian medicine
[weasel words] The Mongols were part of a wider network of Eurasian people who had developed a medical system of their own, including the Chinese, Korean, Tibetan, Indian, Uighur, Islamic, and Nestorian Christians.
The Mongols were also able to contribute new or more advanced knowledge on topics such as bone setting and treatments of war wounds because of their nomadic lifestyle.
Recorded in the Yuan Shih, are many incident where the blood of a freshly killed animal, usually a cow or an ox, was used to treat illness.
On the battlefield, when a soldier became unconscious due to massive amount of blood loss, he would be stripped and placed into the stomach of a freshly killed animal until he became conscious again.
In less severe cases, the skin of a freshly killed ox was combined with the masticated grass found in a cow's stomach to form a sort of bandage and ointment to heal battle wounds.
It was believed that the stomach and fat of the freshly killed animal could absorb the bad blood and restore the wounded to health.
From the Chinese, Mongolians also used cinnabar or mercury sulfide as treatment options, despite the high number of casualties it caused.
They adapted this tradition and made it a Mongolian form of treatment when they burned herbs over the various meridian points rather than used a needle.
When Chinese physicians were brought into the Mongolian empire, Wei Yilin, a famous Yuan orthopedic surgeon established particular methods for setting fractures and treating shoulder, hip, and knee dislocations.
Pulse diagnosis is very popular in Western Asia and especially Iran, and its introduction to the Islamic West can be traced back to the Mongols.
His successor, Temür, in 1305, ordered that pulse diagnosis be one of the ten compulsory subjects in which Imperial Academy of Medicine medical students be tested.
In 1330, Hu Sihui, a Mongolian physician published Yinshan Zhengyo (Important Principles of Food and Drink).
He also listed beneficial properties of various common foods, including fish, shellfish, meat, fruit, vegetables, and 230 cereals.
A common menu item, dog meat, was very beneficial because it calmed the liver, spleen, heart, lungs, kidneys, and pericardium.
[8] Dom is the tradition of household cures, many based simply on superstition – one instance being that a picture of a fox hung over a child's bed will help it sleep.
The Chinese government has also established scores of Mongolian medicine hospitals since 1999, including 41 in Inner Mongolia, 3 in Xinjiang, and 1 each in Liaoning, Heilongjiang, Gansu and Qinghai.
