Asia · India / Pakistan Biomedical Students 5 September 2026

Unani medicine takes its name from the Arabic word for Ionian, or Greek. It descends from the Hippocratic and Galenic humoral tradition, transmitted and substantially developed through the Islamic world, and carried into South Asia from roughly the twelfth century. Its theoretical core is the four humours: dam (blood), balgham (phlegm), safra (yellow bile) and sauda (black bile). Health is a balanced state particular to each individual's temperament, and disease reflects disturbance of that balance. Diagnosis relies heavily on pulse examination, alongside inspection of urine and stool and detailed history. Treatment proceeds through regimen and diet before pharmacotherapy, with surgery as a last resort. The pharmacopoeia is extensive and includes compound formulations refined over centuries. Unani is officially recognised in India under the Ministry of Ayush, with government colleges, degree programmes, hospitals and pharmacopoeial standards. This institutional status has enabled systematic research, though critics argue humoral theory sits awkwardly with modern physiology. For students, Unani is instructive as a case of a coherent theoretical system that produced a genuinely useful materia medica. Many of its plants are pharmacologically active; the humoral framework that organised them is best understood historically rather than literally.

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