Mentsikhang, Medical center in Lhasa, China

Mentsikhang is a medical center in Lhasa dedicated to Tibetan healing practices, housing several departments for traditional treatments, herbal medicine preparation, and training. The facility operates as a clinic, pharmacy, and school for aspiring practitioners all under one roof.

Khyenrab Norbu (1883–1962) built the Mentsikhang in 1916 under the 13th Dalai Lama, Thubten Gyatso, and served as its first director. The two-storey, 66-metre-long building housed clinics, research and teaching, with Norbu living at the west end and his deputy Thubten Legdrub at the east. In 1959 it merged with the Chagpori medical college to form the Lhasa Tibetan Medicine Hospital, renamed the Tibet Autonomous Region Tibetan Medicine Hospital in 1980. The original building was listed as a Major Historical and Cultural Site Protected at the National Level on 5 May 2013.

The name Mentsikhang combines men (medicine) and tsik (astrology), because students once learned both: medicinal plants were tied to the seasons and the body to astronomical cycles. Khyenrab Norbu, abbot-trained and sent to Chagpori to study, became its first director and trained over a thousand students from monasteries, the army and farming families.

The original two-storey building stands on Barkhor Street in Chengguan District, opposite the old Lhasa cinema. Its south-facing entrance opens into a hall 66 metres long and 18 metres wide, now reduced to about 60 metres. The upper floor held the directors' rooms at each end, with research and teaching offices between them; the ground floor held teachers' quarters and a wide classroom.

The Tibetan name Mentsikhang combines men (medicine) and tsik (astrology), because students there once studied both: medicinal plants were thought to vary in potency with the seasons. The two-storey building ran 66 metres east-west, with Khyenrab Norbu's rooms at the west end and his deputy Tudan Legdrub's at the east.