A Taxonomy of Global Healing Systems: Biomedicine, Vitalistic Medicine and Spiritual Healing as a Framework for Integrative Healthcare

Contemporary healthcare discourse continues to rely on classificatory labels such as “Conventional Medicine,” “Traditional Medicine,” and “Complementary and Alternative Medicine,” which inadequately capture the philosophical and epistemological diversity of global healing traditions. Such categories often obscure foundational differences in how disease causation, healing, and therapeutic action are understood, thereby limiting meaningful comparative analysis, integrative healthcare planning, research methodology, and culturally competent clinical practice. [1-4] This Perspective proposes a principled taxonomy of global healing systems based on their underlying epistemological premises, ontological assumptions, aetiological models, and therapeutic logic. Drawing on comparative conceptual analysis of historically evolved medical traditions, the paper differentiates medical systems from discrete medical practices and argues for a threefold classification: Biomedicine, Vitalistic Medicine, and Spiritual Healing. Biomedicine is characterised by mechanistic causation and materialist ontology, excelling in diagnostics, emergency care, and pharmacological or surgical interventions. Vitalistic medical systems-including Ayurveda, Traditional Chinese Medicine, Unani, Siddha, and Homeopathy-are grounded in the regulation of a life-force and emphasise individualised, holistic restoration through inductive clinical reasoning. Spiritual healing traditions operate within a mind body-spirit unity, addressing illness through consciousness, belief, moral coherence, and inner transformation. Rather than competing hierarchically, these paradigms represent distinct yet complementary epistemologies, each contributing uniquely across different domains of healthcare. The proposed taxonomy offers a conceptual framework for respectful medical pluralism and provides clarity for research design, regulation,