The one effective procedure of the time was amputation and it was widely used. It operates through laboratory testing and large scale study. Its basic model is mechanical. The body is treated largely like a machine that breaks down and needs repair. Community contact is restricted during illness.
Traditional practitioners try to treat what they understand as deep, underlying causes of disease.
These are found in issues that are moral and social as well as what we consider strictly medical. Medicines or surgical procedures may be used to deal with symptoms but they are never sufficient. Sick individual is either immersed in community or given direct means of dealing with the community. Because they operate in different ways and treat different aspects of disease, traditional and modern medicine tend to exist together in most societies. The availability of modern medicine does not force traditional practitioners out of business.