Science vs Faith: Why Traditional Medicine Refuses to Disappear

If allopathic medicine is based on science, tested through experiments and clinical trials, and has given us some incredible treatments, then why do people still believe in alternative or traditional medicine? Why do people still go to an Ayurvedic practitioner, use home remedies, or rely on something their grandmother told them about? Is it because people don't trust science? I don't think the answer is that simple. Perhaps we need to go back a little, much further back.

Imagine life without science. Imagine a small human clan living thousands of years ago. There are no hospitals, no doctors, no antibiotics, no thermometers, and certainly no Google to search for symptoms. A young and healthy man in the clan would probably be one of the most valuable members of the group because he could hunt, protect the family and bring food back to the clan. He could face a wild boar, survive a difficult hunting expedition and perhaps even protect the group from predators.

And then, one day, a mosquito bites him.

A few days later, he developed a high fever. He becomes weak and eventually dies. Think about how strange and frightening this must have appeared to early humans. The strongest man in the clan, who could fight a wild animal, could be brought down by something so tiny that they could not even see it.

Today, we know that certain mosquitoes can transmit parasites that cause malaria. We know about parasites, mosquitoes, transmission, infection and treatment. But imagine trying to explain malaria to someone living thousands of years ago. There is no microscope, no microbiology, no germ theory and no understanding of how an infectious disease spreads. There is only a sick person, a frightened family and a community trying to understand what has happened. Science, as a systematic way of studying and understanding nature, was not handed to our ancestors on a platter. They had to develop it slowly, through observation, experience, experimentation and, often, trial and error. So, naturally, when you don't have an explanation, you look for one. Human beings do not like uncertainty. When something happens repeatedly, we naturally try to find a reason behind it. The family might think that some supernatural force was responsible for the illness. Perhaps the gods were angry, perhaps some spirit had caused the disease, or perhaps a particular ritual had to be performed to protect the family. And so, they prayed. 

Before going hunting, they prayed for the safe return of the hunter. When someone fell sick, they prayed for recovery. When a family member died, they tried to find some meaning behind the tragedy. From our present-day perspective, this may appear irrational, but we should remember that they were trying to make sense of a world that they did not understand.

Faith gave them something that was otherwise missing: a sense that they could do something in a situation they could not control. It gave them hope when there was very little else available. Survival was the primary concern, and faith became one of the ways in which humans dealt with fear, uncertainty and death.

Then humans started noticing something interesting!

Humans are surprisingly good observers. Someone probably noticed that eating a particular plant made a stomach problem better. Someone else may have discovered that a certain leaf helped with a wound, while another person noticed that a particular bark reduced fever. They did not know why these things worked, but they remembered the observations.

The knowledge was then passed from one generation to another. "This plant helped your grandfather when he had the same problem." "Don't eat that one; it made your uncle very sick." "Boil these leaves and drink the water." Over hundreds and thousands of years, countless such experiences accumulated and became a vast body of practical knowledge about plants, food, injuries, childbirth and illness. Nobody may have known exactly why something worked, but they knew that it had worked before. 

This is where many traditional systems of medicine came from. It is important to remember that ancient people were not sitting around waiting for modern science to arrive and save them. They were experimenting too. They simply did not have the tools and methods that we have today.

They did not have controlled clinical trials, statistical analysis, molecular biology or sophisticated diagnostic equipment. But they observed, they tried, they remembered and they passed the information forward. In many cases, what survived through generations was probably the result of some useful observation, although the original explanation for why it worked may have been completely different from what we understand today.

But there was a problem!

Sometimes the treatment worked and sometimes it did not. Two people could use the same herb, yet one might recover while the other might die. Two people could perform the same prayer, yet one could get better while the other continued to suffer. So what was actually responsible for the recovery?

Was it the herb? Was it the prayer? Was the illness going to disappear on its own? Was the person given the right dose? Was the treatment even safe?

These questions slowly pushed humans towards something much more powerful: systematic enquiry. Instead of simply saying, "This worked for me," people started asking a much more important question: "Does this actually work?"

That small change in the question is enormously important. Once we start asking why something works, we are no longer satisfied with just an observation. We want to understand the mechanism, identify the conditions under which it works, determine when it fails and find out whether someone else can obtain the same result.

Over time, humans became better at observing and recording things. Illnesses could be classified, symptoms could be compared, different treatments could be tried and dosages could be changed. Successful practices could be retained, while unsuccessful ones could gradually be discarded.

Eventually, we developed what we now call the scientific method. Its biggest strength is not that scientists are always right. Scientists are wrong all the time. The strength of science is that it provides a systematic way of finding out when we are wrong.

If I say, "This medicine cured my fever," that is an observation. Science asks many more questions: Did the medicine actually cause the recovery? Would the person have recovered anyway? Does the medicine work for other people? What is the correct dose? What are its side effects? Can another researcher repeat the experiment and obtain a similar result?

Suddenly, medicine becomes much more than a collection of individual experiences. It becomes a process of verification. We move from "I believe this works" to "Let us find out whether this actually works."

But the journey from faith to scientific enquiry came with a cost!

A modern laboratory needs expensive equipment, trained people, materials and infrastructure. Medical research requires doctors, scientists, technicians, research subjects, data and years of work, and developing a new drug can require enormous financial resources.

Historically, kings and wealthy patrons supported scholars. Later, universities, governments, research institutions and private organisations became important sources of funding. As scientific knowledge expanded, the cost of scientific enquiry also increased. A person could no longer simply observe a plant in the forest and declare that a medicine had been discovered.

Science started producing something very valuable: products. Scientific knowledge could be converted into medicines, machines, ships, agricultural technologies, communication systems and countless other things. Once scientific knowledge started producing economic value, science became deeply connected with the economy.

A simple cycle began to emerge: research leads to discovery, discovery leads to technology, technology leads to products, products generate revenue, and revenue can support further research. This cycle has been enormously successful. It has given us modern medicine, vaccines, imaging systems, antibiotics, sophisticated surgery and countless other technologies.

But there is a catch.

Science may be universal. Access to science is not.

Suppose a scientifically proven treatment costs ₹50,000. For one person, that may be manageable, but for another family it may be equivalent to several months of income. Suppose the best hospital is 200 kilometres away, or the required specialist is available only in a major city. What does a person do when the scientifically proven solution exists but is simply beyond reach?

They may go back to what they know. A home remedy, a local practitioner, an old family practice or something that has been used in their community for generations may become the practical choice. It costs very little, it is immediately available and, most importantly, the person may trust it.

This does not prove that the traditional treatment works. But it does help explain why people continue to use it. We sometimes look at the decision purely from the perspective of scientific validity, while the person making that decision is looking at the problem from the perspective of survival, affordability and accessibility.

We like to think that people make healthcare decisions purely based on scientific evidence, but human decisions are much more complicated. People consider cost, accessibility, trust, previous experience, family traditions and what people around them are saying.

So when someone chooses traditional medicine, it is tempting to say, "Why don't they simply trust science?" But perhaps the better question is, "Does science reach them in a form that they can afford, access and trust?"

These are two very different questions. A treatment can be scientifically superior and still remain practically inaccessible to a large section of society. At the same time, a traditional treatment can be easily accessible and culturally familiar even if there is little scientific evidence supporting it.

So, should we reject traditional medicine?

Not necessarily. And we should not blindly accept it either. There may be traditional practices that are ineffective, there may be practices that are genuinely useful, and there may also be practices whose mechanisms we do not yet fully understand. The sensible approach is neither blind faith nor blind rejection.

It is investigation.

If a traditional herb appears to work, study it. Find out what compounds it contains, determine whether those compounds actually have a therapeutic effect, establish the appropriate dosage, study the side effects and test it properly. If it works, great; we have learnt something useful. If it doesn't work, we should be equally comfortable saying so.

That, after all, is what science is supposed to do.

The journey is not simply from "traditional" to "modern"

Perhaps we have been looking at this whole issue in the wrong way. The story of medicine is not simply "traditional medicine → science → modern medicine." It is a much longer journey in which humans moved from fear and faith towards observation, experimentation and evidence.

Early humans prayed because they did not understand nature. Then they began observing nature. They discovered patterns, experimented, made mistakes and learnt from them. Slowly, they developed better ways of separating what merely appeared to work from what actually worked.

We are still doing the same thing today. The difference is that we now have microscopes, computers, genetic sequencing, artificial intelligence and enormous amounts of data to help us. But the fundamental question remains the same: "How do we know that this actually works?"

And perhaps that is the real beauty of science.

Science does not ask us to believe. It asks us to find out.