1. There is a section in Ziauddin Sardar's "Balti Britain" (a crap book, by an excellent writer) where we talks about the transfer of power between hakims/vaids to European trained doctors in the context of the 1857 Uprising.

People forget how new "modern medicine" is.

2. In the 19th Century it was still largely guesswork.

You know why doctors wear white coats? They copied lab technicians who had more credibility than them.

Today it is different, modern medicine has made lots of progress, and proved itself in many ways to be effective.

3. In the 19th Century it had not.

European trained doctors wanted to be the edge, but the East India Company largely refused.

The hakims/vaids had greater credibility, and if the EIC pushed the doctors - who had LOWER rates of success - they would lose credibility.

4. It was this same credibility and local prestige that meant that hakims/vaids were sometimes in the frontlines of the 1857 Uprising.

European trained doctors, writes Sardar, used this opportunity to completely replace and destroy these competing institutions.

5. This shouldn't be read as a promotion of ayurveda/unani medicine (though specific well-tested, replicable, and successful cures should not be rejected) but to highlight that credibility comes out of observable success.

And also that power and politics is in everything.

-end-

PS My grandfather, very much a product of early 20th century European medical training, hated even the mention of homoeopathy.

He also had one hell of a temper (having served through WWII from 1940-45 on the Burma front probably didn't help.)