This lavish two-volume  reproduction of the full set of  77 Thangkas in the  collection of the History  Museum of Buryatia in Russia  offers fascinating  insights into this venerable  medical and artistic tradition.  The volume of plates includes a  foreword by His Holiness the  Dalai Lama. Essays by Fernand  Meyer of the Centre National de  la Recherche Scientifique, Paris,  and Gyurme Dorje of the School  of Oriental and African Studies,  University of London, discuss  the history, structure, and  contents of the traditional  Tibetan medical texts. The  second volume offers a full  translation of all inscriptions  contained in the paintings, keyed  by number to the reproductions  of the plates; 336 pp.; cloth,

Originally created during the seventeenth century, the forty paintings in The Blue Beryl were copied  early in this century, in the time of the XIII Dalai Lama. The copies were sent to Buryatia, near Lake  Baikal in Siberia, to train physicians in the Tibetan medical tradition. The original paintings, which  hung on the walls of Chakpori Medical College in Tibet, were destroyed during China's Cultural  Revolution in 1959, a decade after China invaded Tibet.