On the Lives of  Alexander A., Pyotr A., and Vladimir N. Badmaev * and the Introduction of  Tibetan Medicine to Russia and Poland  Badma, Badmaev, Badmayev, Badmajeff and Badmajew are different spellings of the same name in different countries.

Pyotr Alexandrovich  Badmaev  (died 1920)

English Translation of two chapters from the book Sensing Illness: Tibet’s Healing Art and the West by Richard Kaufmann

Translated from German by Barbara Gerke

With Critical Comments  by Natalia Bolsokhoeva, Vladimir Badmaev Jr. &
Tatiana I. Grekova

The following chapter is published with the kind permission of PIPER VERLAG GmbH, Munich, where the German original appeared in 1985 under the title Die Krankheit erspüren: Tibets Heilkunst und der Westen. Of chapter one, ‘The Mongolian Miracle’ (Das Mongolische Wunder), part one, ‘A strange Saint’ (Ein seltsamer Heiliger) and part two, ‘His Passion as a Physician’ (Arzt aus Leidenschaft) are translated and commented upon here.

Kaufmann’s work is presented in its English translation. Controversial statements are referred to in footnotes which will guide the reader to the ‘Comments’ on page 20 to clarify information. Unfortunately, attempts to contact Richard Kaufmann in Germany remained without response. However, his research on the Badmaevs, carried out during the 1980s, deserves its rightful appreciation.

The extraordinary lives of the Badmaevs certainly demand further study. This article seeks to make a modest contribution in this field and to encourage further research.
 

Part One:  A Strange Saint

Lama Sultim Badmaev

In the summer of 1857, the Russian Governor General of East Siberia, Nikolay Nikolayevich Muravyev [1], returned to St. Petersburg. In his entourage was Sultim Badma [2], a monk from the Buddhist monastery Aga. [3] His pack horses were burdened with sacks full of medicinal herbs and a modest amount of medical equipment. Muravyev had invited him to come to St. Petersburg to open a medical clinic.

The idea did not develop by chance. The Russian was grateful to Sultim Badma. [4] During the long journey between Amur and Lake Baikal, his wife had fallen ill. While travelling, her condition worsened, and finally Russian physicians diagnosed her as incurable.

The story does not reveal the specific nature of the illness because at that time, female diseases were never discussed openly. Even gynaecologists in Europe were not allowed to see the naked bodies of their patients. At any rate, in spite of all obstacles, Sultim Badma, nearly 65 years old at the time [5], succeeded in discovering the source of the lady’s mysterious disease and promptly cured her with methods he would not reveal. The group then continued their journey.

N. N. Muravyev-Amursky was eager to return to St. Petersburg. During the reign of Tsar Nicholas I, he had left the Russian capital with orders to discover a suitable harbour for the Russian fleet somewhere along the east coast of Siberia. While pursuing his duty, he navigated the Amur river four times, from source to mouth, and eventually occupied its left bank, leaving a number of troops, and establishing a township at the river’s mouth. This town would later be named ‘Nikolayevsk-na-Amure’, in his honour.

In a chartered steamer, named ‘America‘, he also explored more than a thousand kilometres of the coastal regions. During this journey, he discovered the site where Vladivostok would later be built. There, too, he left a small garrison.

He carried a provisional agreement with the Japanese concerning the ceding of the island, Sakhalin. As well, he carried a draft of another agreement, which he had discussed with the Chinese General, I-shan. This proposed a peaceful resolution to questions concerning the occupied regions of Amur and Ussuri.

By autumn, he reached St. Petersburg and found a Russia in transformation. The stalwart conservative, Tsar Nicholas [6], had died at the height of the destruction left by the Crimean War (1853-56), which he had started. The treaty known as the ‘Peace of Paris’ had severed Russia’s access to the Black Sea. Nor was she allowed to use her war-ships or to build ship yards and harbours along its coast.

Under such circumstances, the message from the Far East of the country sounded like a good omen to Alexander II [7], the new ‘liberator of the Tsar’. The foreign ministry hurried to finalise the agreements with the Japanese and Chinese. By 1860, colonisation had begun and the first soils were turned along the bay of Vladivostok. The discoverer himself was honoured with the name ‘Muravyev-Amursky’ and was conferred the rank of Earl. [8]

He did not, however, forget his friend from the Transbaikalian monastery. In the Western suburbs of St. Petersburg, on the so-called Poklonnaya Hill, he established a personal residence and a clinic for Sultim Badma. [9] Soon, the society women as well as poor people gathered in his clinic. With increasing numbers of cured patients, Russian physicians began to ponder the reliability of this exotic healing art.

Until this moment, the story of Sultim Badma does not sound much different from many other miracle healers, who, by whatever means, make a crowd of hysterical patients believe that they can be cured. But then, in the year of 1860, the following short letter by Tsar Alexander [10] reached the Military Hospital [11] in St. Petersburg, which was under his personal supervision:

“The Lama Badmaev is instructed to apply his herbal healing drugs to patients who suffer from all stages of tuberculosis. As well, he shall try his remedies on cancer patients. The treatment shall be conducted under the supervision of the hospital physicians. In case he runs out of herbal ingredients, he shall inform the authorities in time, who are instructed to ensure sufficient supply. If he fails in treating the patients successfully, he shall not receive  permission to practise as a doctor in our country.”

It is not clear who advised the Tsar to write this letter. It might have been influential physicians who wanted to remove their competitor. Or, it may also have been on the suggestion of Muravyev.

The Lama, however, passed his four years of probation without reprimand. The concluding report by his colleagues to the Tsar, in 1864, must have been favourable because, without any further formalities, he received permission to practise as a physician in St. Petersburg. In addition, he was invited to work at the Medical Surgical Academy. [12]

The daily work load had become a burden to the 70-year old monk. Apart from the clinic, pharmacy and Academy, he taught Mongolian [13] at the university as a visiting professor. In addition, following the Tsar’s wish, he was asked to translate the Tibetan medical treatise Gyushi (Tib. rgyud bzhi). [14] To assist him, a younger brother, nine years his junior, was allowed to join him. As well as being a fully ordained monk of the fourth grade, known as a Gelong, he too had studied Tibetan medicine in Aga. [15]

Political reasons may have played a decisive role in inviting the brother to the capital. For the first time, Russia had plans to establish an overland connection through the vast country. In this way, the country hoped to become independent of the tedious ship passages between St. Petersburg and Vladivostok. Talk of a Trans Siberian railway was in the air. Achieving this goal required the goodwill and tolerance of the peoples of Central Asia, especially the Mongols. In this regard, the two Lama-physicians were of political value. They belonged to the race of Zazogols, or hereditary princes [16], which meant that they were directly descended from Genghis Khan. This fact, it was believed, might be useful during later negotiations.

Somewhere around 1870, Sultim Badma’s brother arrived in St. Petersburg. His life is documented to some extent elsewhere. Sultim had already converted to Russian Orthodoxy, and was subsequently called by his Christian name, Alexander Badmaev. His younger brother also was baptised as a Christian and chose the name, Pyotr. In 1871, Pyotr assumed the role as a visiting professor for Mongolian language at the university. At the same time, he studied Western medicine at the Academy [17] and, in 1877, he received his doctorate as a Russian physician. [18] Two years later, he was invited to work as an associate or advisor to the Asian Department at the Ministry of External Affairs. [19] All the while, along with his brother, he administered the Tibetan medical clinic.

Alexander Badmaev died in 1882. [20] The year before, a bomb had killed Tsar Alexander II, his firm supporter. As well, a few months later, Earl Nikolay Muravyev-Amursky, who had introduced him to St. Petersburg society, died in Paris. Within a short period of time, the three central figures who had paved the way for Tibetan medicine to reach the West, disappeared from the stage. All this happened at the same time as Robert Koch, with his Four Steps to Identify the Tuberculosis Bacillus, opened the era of bacteriology.

By the time Sultim Badma had left his monastery in 1857, Pasteur had written his first ground-breaking works in Paris on ‘suspending germs’ [in German,  ‘schwebende Keime’] and fermentation of lactic acid. He proved experimentally that the ‘abiogenesis’ of life does not take place. Only a year later, Virchov gave his presentation on cellular pathology and, the following year, Darwin published his Origin of the Species. A year after that, Mendel wrote his report on the laws of heredity. This remarkable succession of events continued for a quarter of a century, until the time of Koch and his disciples.

By the time Alexander Badmaev passed away, allopathic medicine had become predominant west of the Russian border. It had not existed when Badmaev left the Aga monastery with Muravyev. Suddenly, the victorious march of the natural scientists had blocked the interest in all healing methods that were not based on exact, i.e. chemical or physical methodologies. As a result, medical papers on diseases and their cures which were not ‘strictly scientific’, were not accepted by the new specialised journals and publishers.

Therefore, one seldom came to know about therapies of Tibetan physicians in the West, little about their daily clinical practice, and practically nothing about the composition and manufacturing of their medicinal herb preparations. What remained were, at best, vague memories of their contemporaries.

One reads that Pyotr, Alexander’s younger brother, was among the striking figures of the St. Petersburg city life. He was described as a serious person with hypnotic eyes, who knew not only all the names of every one of his patients but also their case histories intimately. He was praised for his generosity. He not only treated poor patients for free but often presented them with gifts or organised employment for them with rich clients who were billed extravagantly since his achievements as a physician were unquestionable.

In the external politics of Russia, he was a proponent for an occupational policy in the East. He pressed for occupying Tibet, Mongolia and neighbouring Chinese regions. [21] He supported a policy of encircling Korea as well. It is not known how far he was able to carry through his ideas, and whether he was heard by ministers with decision-making power. It is quite possible.

During the ‘90s, he endeavoured to find a successor. His twelve year old nephew came from the same noble family, in which he himself had been born and raised, “in an estate not far from the city of Csyta [Chita] in the Buryat province of Russia.” [22] Already at the time of his birth he must have appeared to be a miraculous child. He had a mole at his wrist, at the same spot where his sister, by then deceased, had worn a medallion. At the time of her death the Lama present prophesied that by the end of the year the family would have a son who would be the reincarnation of the departed sister.

The boy was sent to the Aga monastery at the age of eight where he joined the medical department, and was mainly educated in botany, that is, in the identification, classification and preparation of plants. In 1894, his uncle called him to St. Petersburg. There, he worked in the clinic of the 85-year old Pyotr, whose house resembled, both inwardly and outwardly, a monastery. [23] He studied Tibetan medicine with him, received spiritual education, but was also taught by a priest and finally baptised as Vladimir. [24] His godfather was Tsar Nicholas II [25], who had appointed Vladimir’s uncle as his court physician. [26]

Little is known about Vladimir’s life in Russia. After completing high school he studied medicine at the Academy [27], received a doctorate and returned to his uncle’s clinic. At the beginning of  the First World War, he was conscripted and appointed leading physician of a military hospital train on the Russian railways.

Later, he still remembered one event of those years before the World War. In 1907, the Siberian monk and miracle healer Rasputin [28] appeared in St. Petersburg. A strange relationship sprang up between him and the old court physician Pyotr Badmaev. [29]

The Tsar’s heir, Alexey, had been born suffering from the bleeding disease. Badmaev had a remedy with which he used to stop bleedings; but he could not completely cure the disease. Even today, the disease is still considered incurable. However, as soon as such an emergency case happened at the Tsar’s court, the physician was called. He then prepared a medicine from fresh herbs and gave it to the child. After he had drunk the medicine, Rasputin appeared with the royal household of the Tsarina and made the sign of the cross over the crown prince. Officially he had then ‘cured’ him. It is one of the peculiarities of our time that most people regard a miraculous healing by a Siberian sectarian as more likely than simple blood stoppage by a man who spent 80 years of his life with the study of a non-scientific herbal medicine. But the Tsarina wanted it that way, for the ‘great monk’ was her favourite.

One actually cannot speak about a friendship between Rasputin and Pyotr Badmaev, as it was proclaimed later, because Badmaev, at that time, was nearly a hundred years old. [30] A celibate and Gelong, he had reached such age because of a strict ascetic life style. [31] The 36-year old Rasputin was in all things just his opposite.

Pyotr Badmaev lived through the First World War, the Kerensky regime, the October revolution and the time of the civil wars. One day in 1923 [32] he called for his nephew and friends and said good-bye to them. He then sat in the lotus position on a cushion that was placed on the floor, and began to recite with a clear voice, his hand folded to prayer, the text of the Tibetan Book of the Dead. These words are usually read to the dying by a Lama to prepare his soul for the coming reincarnation.

After reading his own last service, he remained for a while immobile, and finally, gently sank back. He was 112 year old. [33] He had lived more than 50 years in the society of St. Petersburg, but at the moment of his death he returned to the ritual of his Buryat ancestors. [34]
 
 

PART TWO   His Passion as a Physician

Dr. Vladimir N. Badmaev (1884 - 1961)

After the death of his uncle, Vladimir Badmaev left Russia and travelled to Poland, where he was to live with his wife from 1923 until his death in 1961. [35] On reaching Poland he was 39 years old, and if he was to look back on his own life, it might have seemed to him as a period of constant adaptation. When he was seeking naturalisation from the Polish authorities, the official hardly changed his last name, but the first name, Vladimir, turned into Wlodimierz.  Simultaneously, he received permission to settle down as a practising physician.

The first station was a district town in the Voivodschaft Lodz, named Tamaszóv-Mazoviecki, a developing township in a farming region, with 33,000 inhabitants. He stayed long enough to learn the Polish language fluently. He realised that it was up to him, being the first Tibetan medical practitioner in a Western country, to either practise the tradition that he had studied, or to adapt to his Western colleagues. He was determined to remain loyal to Tibetan medicine, though he foresaw that it would not be an easy task.

Difficulties had always been a part of his life. On closer observation, he had thus far been like an object, one obediently passed from hand to hand, from the parental house, where he learnt how to read and write, to the Aga monastery, where he was taught theology and botany [36], the two basic sciences of Tibetan medicine; from there onwards, to the home of his 85-year old uncle, where life had been as strict as in the monastery. [37]

After much effort, having  comprehended the secrets of Tibetan Buddhism, he was sent to a priest who converted him to Orthodox Christianity. In his uncle’s house, alternately the Russian and Buryat languages were spoken, at school, he had to speak Russian fluently. Having completed the complicated training as a Tibetan medical novice with Pyotr, he studied allopathic medicine, which was completely different in nature. He mastered allopathic medicine, because he was diligent and intelligent, but he seems to have been little impressed by it.

Many years later, he compiled a brochure about his ways of treating patients. He did not do so for his Western colleagues but for his Polish patients. The brochure contains harsh words of criticism against the new scientific medicine, which, to him, was too materialistic, too one-sided, seemingly emphasising the single purpose of a quick recovery.

Poland became the first period in his life where he could freely unfold himself. The old, dominating uncle had passed away; no longer were there any military authorities. The time where people took charge of him was over. In the winter of 1924/25, when he opened his practice in Warsaw, he need not have worried about patients. They came from all walks of life to see him. During this first year he also happened to meet Johannes von Korvin-Krasinski. [38]

The beginning of this story reads like a Victorian novel. A woman appeared in his clinic and said, “My brother’s son, nineteen years old, a pianist who daily practises eight to twelve hours preparing himself for the Conservatories in Paris, suffers from a serious illness. The family physicians are helpless. As his condition worsens day by day, I proposed to his father, Earl Heinrich von Korvin-Krasinski, to bring the boy to the new Tibetan doctor. But he strictly refused. In his youth he befriended Robert Koch and the neurologist, Jean-Martin Charcot. He swears by the new allopathic medicine and regards all other medical systems as quackery.” Therefore she had had to bring the young man in secretly. It would have to be treated as confidential. She had taken the opportunity while her brother had left for a week’s journey. The case would have to be treated discreetly.

Badmaev asked to be left alone with the nephew and diagnosed him. Obviously, it was a case of peristaltic atony, a paralysis of the digestive tract. The disease is found more often with newborn babies than with adults. The intestines had given up their independent movements or peristaltic, and digestion no longer took place. The cause was perhaps the over-enthusiastic sitting at the piano for many months. The general condition of the Earl was bad; his hands were continuously trembling.

In 1984, Brother Cyrill, previously Johannes von Korvin-Krasinski, narrated to me the history of his illness and his cure. It still seemed like a miracle to him. He spoke in short sentences, emotionless, and with clinical precision, about all relevant points in the process of his illness. “My intestines were like dead. I could neither eat, nor pass any stool. My hands were continuously trembling, day by day I felt weaker and suddenly I realised,  you will never again be able to play the piano. My father’s physicians gave me castor oil in glasses, but as it was given above, it left me below.”

About Badmaev’s therapy he gave the following details,  “Badmaev welcomed me in his clinic and wanted to know everything about me and the symptoms of my illness. While I was narrating, rather embarrassed, my life and habits, I felt that he was not only interested in my case but also in my personal fate. At that time he was about 40 years old, and had a smooth, quiet face with a high forehead, intelligent eyes and a small, sharply carved mouth. When I finished, he ensured me in his dry manner that I was not suffering from an incurable illness. He went over to his laboratory, in which I was later to frequently work, and returned with a packet of herbal tea, of which, he said, I should drink daily several cups.

During my second or third visit he asked me to undress and lay down on a table. He performed what he called ‘the dry surgery’. Initially his hands slid gently over my skin, the soft massage then turned into a kneading, he deeply gripped into my intestines as if he was searching for something. His face was expressionless; it was as if he was listening inside himself. Suddenly, I felt a deep trust in him and remained quiet, even though his grips were painful. At one point he seemed to have found what he had been looking for. For a moment he kept on feeling and then, suddenly, pushed one finger strongly into a specific point of my belly. What happened next remains unforgettable to me. I felt a kind of electric shock that went from the point he had touched through my abdomen right into my legs. For a moment I thought my big toe was glowing, but the pain passed and a comforting warmth remained in the lower extremities. He watched me for a while, then told me to get up and go home. He asked me to return two days later, and in the meanwhile to continue drinking my tea. On my way home, I already felt the trembling of the hands disappearing. A few hours later, my bowl movement and digestion started working again.”

The described procedure is called, ‘manu therapy’ and should not be mistaken with ‘laying on hands’ or the ‘bloodless spiritual surgery’ of the Philippines. But let Brother Cyrill continue.
 “My career as a pianist had come to an end, but I did not mind. Since then, a bond of friendship developed between Badmaev and me; better, a student-teacher relationship. He hoped that I would become a physician, and during my visits he told me a lot about the school of Tibetan medicine. The experience of my illness had changed me. All my ancestors had been strong believers and remained loyal to the Roman Catholic Church, even at a time when our patronage estate in the Polish Ukraine became Russian and we were asked to convert to Orthodoxy. I left the estate after a year and studied theology in Innsbruck with Jesuit monks. I entered the Benedictine monastery Maria Laach as a novice, where one of my relatives had been the abbot a long time ago.

But I did not give up my friendship with Badmaev until his death. I visited him again and again, and kept a vivid correspondence. During that time, I began to write a book on the philosophy of Tibetan medicine.”

This inclination occupied him for the next 25 years. In the meanwhile he had become a monk in the monastery of Maria Laach. After the outbreak of the Second World War, he narrowly escaped the concentration camp and death through execution. In 1941, he received an Italian pass through negotiations of his order. Until the end of the War he lived in the Vatican, where he systematically prepared his book. He had informed the authorities about it. They supported his plan.

After the Second World War, he returned to Maria Laach, studied anthropology with a student of Frobenius and received his doctorate degree. In 1953, he published his Philosophy of Tibetan Medicine:  Man as Microcosm. [39] The book comprises the only systematic analysis of the way of thinking that had been developed by Tibetan medical physicians between the 8th and 17th centuries. In the book, Father Cyrill explains the philosophical principles of Tibetan medicine - the Tibetan view of the unity between man and cosmos, the teaching of the three principles and the nine-fold cosmology.

Since Brother Cyrill was not a physician, but a doctor of anthropology and a philosopher, his work does not reveal any diagnostic or therapeutic methods as practised by the Lama physicians. But he informs the reader in detail about their education and about their continuous training in observation and concentration that distinguishes a good Emchi or physician when he opens his own clinic after a training period of 15 to 18 years.

After the meeting with Korvin-Krasinski, Badmaev’s life continued to be successful. Among his clients were two Polish presidents of State; it is not known for what and how he treated them. During the Second World War, he continued to live in the same district of Warsaw and worked in his clinic and laboratory, until, in 1944, on the day of the Warsaw uprising, his residence, library, pharmacy and his precious art collection fell prey to a blaze. He was taken prisoner by the Gestapo and should have been executed. But at the last moment, an officer appeared and moved him from the queue of death candidates to the one of children and women, and thus saved his life.

Afterwards he escaped with his family to Krakow. Now 60 years old, he opened a new clinic. He received such an influx of patients that he could not close this clinic after the War had ended and Warsaw was again inhabitable. He solved the problem by flying between Warsaw and Krakow, attending both clinics. But this kind of exertion was too much for him. Still, the year-long suffering that preceded his death did not draw him away from service to his patients.

The academic physicians of Poland were not always tolerant of Badmaev, but during his 38 years of medical practice in Poland, nobody was able to publicly accuse or condemn him for medical malpractice.

Only once in his life did he attempt to explain to his patients the principles of his therapies. This he did in the form of a brochure, which was printed in Poland in 1929, and also published in German four years later. [40] In this brochure he tried to clarify the aims of his healing art to his patients. These were not only understood as manual therapies and drugs, but focused on a sort of pact or understanding between the physician and his patient. The patient should be told his illness by his doctor as well as the mistakes that led to the disease.

Badmaev’s view was that the Western world has a tendency to turn people into weaklings. The Western world continuously offers new technical support and drugs, which do not cure human weakness but increase them. The patient should resist this temptation and follow the doctor’s advice. This part of his book shows similarities with the ‘Balint-teachings’, which found numerous followers among the physicians in Germany after 1945. (“Not what we prescribe but how we prescribe is decisive for the patient’s cure.”) Guidance by the physician and compliance of the patients are said to be the basic rules of a successful treatment.

 In the last part of the brochure, the subject of ‘dry surgery’ is discussed. Badmaev explains this as “a scientific system of mechanical vibration to vitalise the physiological and ethico-psychological factors...” He clearly explained the main objectives of the ‘manu therapy’, which he had also used with Korvin-Krasinski, “... as to stimulate the digestive organs. Once this stimulation has taken place, which, according to the individual constitution, may take a longer or shorter time, the tissues can regenerate. During this treatment we can, therefore, distinguish between a functional and a regenerative phase...”

Later he described the ‘manu therapy’ as “an extremely difficult East Asian healing technique” and as “truly secret knowledge.” The main point of focus, according to Badmaev, is “the feeling of special points in the vegetative nervous system and the increase of the blood circulation in the tissues through finger pressure.” He vehemently objected to calling this a typical massage.

About the medico-philosophical prerequisites for his therapies, he said,  “The structure and architecture of the universe, the entire nature surrounding us, on one hand, and the inner and outer structure of the human organism on the other hand, are reflections of the same cosmic laws: macrocosm and microcosm. The human organism reveals in its structure and functions miracles which are not lesser than those to be found in the universe...”

This philosophy was not developed by him. He only transmitted it from a history of several thousand years. One can summarise this philosophy in three key sentences:
 

1. Everything that exists, material, spiritual, visible or non-visible, within me or in immeasurable distance from me or the earth, is governed by three principles, which are to be in balance, otherwise disturbances occur.
2. Cosmos (world) and microcosm (man) form a unity. Each disturbance in the cosmos has a result on man and each disturbance in man has an effect on the cosmos.
3. Macrocosm and microcosm, universe and man, can be depicted in nine ‘stages of being’, which include all imaginable phenomena.

All this sounds very theoretical. What happened in the daily practice of Badmaev was described by a man who worked with him for three years in clinic and laboratory. He experienced how Badmaev treated each patient and set up his prescriptions. He also noticed the characteristic difference between Eastern and Western medicine. This person was the Polish physician Konstanty Kowalewski, who today is professor for experimental surgery at the Medical Research Institute of Alberta University in Edmonton, Canada. In 1973, Kowalewski wrote in a review on his time with Badmaev, “In the West, the active ingredient of a plant has to be isolated first. Its active ingredients are each pharmacologically tested for their effectiveness. In comparison, an Eastern physician will use the entire plant, because it contains a number of active ingredients, some of which show a similar pharmacological effectiveness. While this results in a synergistic effect, other plants have the opposite. A third group causes the chemical or physical decomposition or the metabolism of the active principle.” [41]

In fact, a mono-active substance as used in Western pharmacology works in an uncontrolled manner in the weakened body of the patient, but one expects from it a focused effect on a certain disease. This may work, and even does work, often with large groups of patients. But there is always the danger that the weakened person does not tolerate the mono-active substance and may react with allergies or an anaphylactic shock - or with addiction. In contrast, by using the entire plant, controlling and metabolising powers arise. Moreover, the synergism of numerous mono-active substances used simultaneously allows the doctor to select the dosage much more carefully.

Badmaev also used alkaloids, such as ephedrine, strychnine and aconite, but in his herbal mixtures they never had a violent effect. The purpose of therapy was to produce a balancing effect on the patient. Another difference between East and West is described by Kowalewski:
“In his clinic, Badmaev studied the psychological state of the patient. He did not spare spending time to detect the psychological as well as the physiological symptoms of his patient. Before prescribing anything, he wanted to make sure that the client understood his Eastern diagnostic and therapeutic methods. Therefore, for him psychotherapy was placed at the beginning of each healing. He talked to the patient while giving him a gentle ‘Tibetan massage’ of his belly or of the muscles along side the spine. He explained precisely the effect of certain drugs, which came mainly in the form of tablets, that were soaked cold or prepared as tea. He practised healing of body and soul at the same time.”

About the origin of the herbs, Kowalewski writes, “Most of the plants he directly received from India. His combination of psychotherapy, massage and herbal medicines showed remarkable results. They were especially effective in chronic metabolic ailments, with some strong infections and with diseases of the gastro-intestinal tract. Those patients who felt improvement or healing became followers of his philosophy, his disciples. They treated Badmaev as the ‘wise physician from Tibet’, who reunited their souls and bodies with a healthy nature.”

The Buryat had rich and poor patients in his new homeland. Still it would be very difficult to collect new material for a detailed bibliography, 25 years after his death. With whomever one may speak, all saw in him only the doctor in his clinic and plant laboratory. When he would find time to enjoy his artefacts and his library, whether he ever listened to music or visited a theatre, preferred tea or coffee, slept at night on his left or right side, all these important details, to which professional biographists dedicate so many working hours, seem to have been secondary for his friends, apart from this one quality:

He was a good physician.

Dr. Vladimir N. Badmaev in Warsaw
during the 1940s - 1950s.

For details see:
 

COMMENTS on Richard Kaufmann’s  ‘The Mongolian Miracle’

by Natalia Bolsokhoeva, Vladimir Badmaev Jr. and Tatiana I. Grekova

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