Unani

Unani is an alternative medicine that is practiced mainly over in Asia, and has limited use in the western world.  It is the belief that the human body has four humors; blood, phlegm, yellow bile and black bile.  If an imbalance occurs than it will cause some sort of disease.  Some of the treatments include those out of medieval times.  Bloodletting and leeching are very common practices to purify the blood and let the toxins drain out.  They also use cauterization for internal and external purposes, they burn the tissue or skin that has the disease.  Derivation is a herbal paste applied to the skin to draw up the excess blood and toxins, it creates blisters and rashes on the surface to remove harmful toxins.  Unani also has 5 different massages that are said to be quite painful that are suppose to correct problems from depression to injury.  A unani hospital in India looks like one from the 16th century.  Modern science and western doctors tend to refute the claims of unani believers.  Unani is cultural infused in these countries and the lack of education on modern science and medicine has helped it grow.

The growth in this type of treatment is alarming due to many scientific breakthroughs that discredit these types of practices.  While looking the countries the countries that use this alternative medicine we see a trend of being less educated and having less disposable income to spend on western type treatment.  We also see that this has been around for centuries and is deeply embedded into their culture.  The people that use this treatment are looking for a way to get better and have hope that ancient treatments can help them.  Many doctors and scholars in medicine believe the best way to correct this is to try to educate people in these regions about modern medicine. Some patients have used modern science like chemotherapy, but when that failed they turned to unani.  We can see that people will turn to whatever they can to try and correct or rid them self of a disease or ailment.

http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/1899343/Unani-medicine
http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Unani#Pharmacotherapy