The adoption of modern concepts and techniques seem ubiquitous in the theory and practice of contemporary Unani medicine, from Unani textbooks in Urdu including biomedical terminology to the use of modern diagnostic techniques by hakims. BUMS graduates are trained to read examination reports and to understand the names of the most common allopathic drugs prescribed to patients, they are further familiarized with diseases as described both in Unani as well as in biomedical textbooks. Even the most seemingly conservative hakims argued that the use of modern diagnostic methods per se did not present a threat to Unani as a system of medicine, as long as they were used as diagnostic aids and physicians did not rely solely on them.

As argued in the previous chapter, Unani medicine should not be understood simply as a ‘humoural medicine,’ because its fundamental concepts are based on complex understandings of causation of health and disease among which the humours constitute only one—albeit important—part. Building on this argument, this chapter analyses the integration of modern concepts and technologies in the private practice of hakims, proposing that the ideas of conflicting epistemologies and biomedicalization of traditional medicine necessitate a revision if they are to be applied to the case of Unani.

A Case of Biomedicalization?

The Unani fraternity generally accepts the integration of modern science into Unani as a positive and natural development. In contrast, social science and humanities scholars studying traditional forms of medicine have been far less enthusiastic about the phenomenon. Criticism of the integration of modern advances into traditional medical practices has addressed several aspects, focusing on the gaps between humoral-based pathology and biomedicine, and the attempts to bridge them (Bode 2008: 145ff.). The adoption of modern concepts by practitioners of traditional medicine has been considered a capitulation to biomedicine which, at best, simplifies the complexity of traditional forms of medicine by neglecting their fundamental principles, and at worst separates them completely from their epistemologies. This process, critics argued, may lead to the rationalization of traditional forms of medicine to the extent that they may no longer provide the added value that currently makes them so important and even necessary (Janes 1999).