| During the process of the historical development of Chinas ethnic medicine, literatures, classics, inscriptions, word-of-mouth, person-to-person impartation and other forms have played an important role in the transmission, inheritance and development of ethnic medicine. After hundreds or even thousands of years of transmission, the channels through which the transmission was made have turned into the most precious ancient literatures in the study of the history of ethnic medicine in China. However, due to unfavorable elements like long time-span, numerous generations of inheritance, ineffective protection, natural erosion, damages by worms and moulds, and lack of professional talents, etc., some literatures are neglected for their value because they were lost outside China; some are seriously damaged and cannot be restored after circulation around the public sphere; some are hidden in the cabinets in remote temples, thus unknown to the outside world; some wood and rock inscriptions lost in the mountains might face the disaster of being chopped up; and some secret medicine literatures whose transmission depends on word-of-mouth might face the danger of failure in finding an eligible heir to inherit them. Therefore, it is urgent and necessary for the whole society to gather strength to carry out emergent investigations of various versions of those ancient literatures of ethnic medicine and afterward specialized and scientific protection, arrangement and research work.Take the protective research of the ancient Tibetan medicine literatures for example, with the special attention and financial aids of all different levels of government departments such as the Ministry of Science and Technology, a nationwide project of the survey, collection and arrangement of Ancient Tibetan medicine literatures was carried out for the first time. After more than five years work, a catalogue was published for the first time by the research team as an approach to protect the cultural property right of the ancient Tibetan medicine literatures. It was the first time for the catalogue to be translated into Tibetan, Chinese, English and Latin according to international standards as a research result for promotional purposes. It was also the first time for the ancient Tibetan medicine literatures to be permanently preserved, protected and spread in digital form-by way of building an information platform. Besides, the intellectual property right of ancient Tibetan medicine literatures was also protected through registering patents and copyrights, etc.The work experience and scientific research model that the research team gained laid a solid foundation for the scientific protection, inheritance and development of the ancient literatures of ethnic medicine in China; it also established a mature, scientific orientation for further research. |
