Integrating Traditional and Modern Medical Practices: Perspectives from the History of Science and Medicine

As historian of medicine Shigehisa Kuriyama reminds us, we have always lived in a world replete with multiple, independent, and yet effective, medical systems. Not surprisingly, then, there remains even today much to be learned of value to practitioners and their patients from efforts to integrate traditional and modern medical practices and health perspectives. Over the course of centuries, distinct medical systems have come into contact with one another to varying degrees and with different results. The movement of peoples over time and space, such as through trade, have continually shaped and reshaped practices, beliefs, goals, expectations, institutions, and the very roles signified by categories such as “patients” and “practitioners.” Few medical systems are “islands” unto themselves; interaction, change, appropriation, and a host of (positive, negative, or neutral) “symbiotic” relations mark historic and emergent exchanges among the world’s multiple medical systems and traditions, which this chapter discusses.