Beyond Evidence

Abstract

Abstract The therapeutic success of Asian medicine has been discussed mostly in relation to efficacy, effectiveness, and evidence thereof. By taking Unani medicine as an example, this article calls for the reconsideration of the dominance of biomedical frameworks in the anthropological study of Asian medicine by paying closer attention to emic dimensions of successful treatment and their relation to eminence. On the basis of ethnographic fieldwork among practitioners of Unani (Greco-Islamic) medicine in India and following a practice ontology approach, the author examines how private-practicing hakims (Unani physicians) enact successful treatment in their everyday practice. For them, therapeutic success is closely connected to professional authority, a legacy of the Greco-Islamic tradition, in which therapeutic success is also enacted through eminence. Approaching therapeutic success beyond the therapeutic outcome draws attention to further dimensions at stake, revealing that scientific evidence is not necessarily the dominant enactment of successful treatment in Asian medicine.