Knowra Traditional medicine Traditional medicine Traditional medicine comprises health knowledge, skills, and practices rooted in the theories, beliefs, and experiences of specific cultures, used to maintain health and treat illness.
Medical anthropology : The study of health, illness, and healing as shaped by culture, society, politics, and biology. It examines how cultural beliefs and social settings shape traditional healing.
Traditional Chinese medicine : A Chinese medical system encompassing practices such as acupuncture, herbal medicine, and therapies based on qi and pattern diagnosis. It is a large, historically documented system within traditional medicine.
Biomedicine : A medical approach that explains and treats disease primarily through biological mechanisms and evidence-based clinical methods. Its institutional methods and explanatory models differ from those of many traditional systems.
World Health Organization : A United Nations agency that coordinates international public health and issues health guidance. Its policies shape how governments recognize and regulate traditional medicine.
Randomized controlled trial : A study that randomly assigns participants to interventions to compare their effects. Its methods test defined treatments, but may not capture every feature of a complex healing system.
Ethnomedicine : The study of how different cultures understand and treat illness. It documents the illness categories and healing practices found in specific cultural systems.
Ayurveda : A South Asian medical tradition that uses diet, medicines, and practices guided by theories such as dosha. Its diagnostic and therapeutic practices illustrate a distinct traditional medical system.
Complementary and alternative medicine : A broad category of health practices outside or alongside a society's dominant conventional medicine. Traditional practices may be classified as complementary or alternative depending on their setting.
Intellectual property : Legal rights governing creations, inventions, and other forms of knowledge or expression. Traditional knowledge raises questions about ownership, consent, and benefit sharing.
Traditional knowledge digital library : An Indian database documenting traditional medicinal knowledge to help prevent improper patent claims. It illustrates one response to misappropriation of documented medical knowledge.
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