Ethnomedicine, a subdiscipline of medical anthropology, was first driven by interest in the history of medicine, ethnobotany, folk medicine, comparative medical systems, and approaches to healing that anthropologists in the early to mid-1900s viewed as a transformation from mystical to rational approaches to medical problem solving. Critics challenged how such binary contrasts neglect complex interrelations between explanatory models and treatment modalities and can fuel forms of cultural reasoning that rationalize structural inequalities. Scholars later expanded the scope of ethnomedicine to include biomedicine, examine global influences, analyze performative and embodied dimensions of healing, and assess sources of effectiveness beyond narrow perspectives on bounded treatment modalities.