It looks there is a mystery surrounding unani. Unani medicine is in fact the least known therapeutic system today. The whole worlds-seems to be in the dark on unani. If you ask someone about lesser known alternative treatment like Reki or pranic healing or crystal therapy, the person might be able to give some idea perhaps, but hardly anything on unani an Indian system of medicine recognizes and respected almost or par with Ayurveda and siddha. But whoever dares to peer through, is pretty sure to have a glance at the slowly unfolding world off wonders as dazzling as that of an Arabian tale. Supposed to be an Arab medicine, unani was propagated in India by travelers from central Asia. It was during the 13th and 17th century that unani system thrived in this country, it is believed. A lot of experimentation adding numerous native drugs has been done afterwards to this system to make it as what it looks like today. However, a systematic study and the curriculum on this discipline started only in the later half of 20th century till them the entire practice of unani were in the hands of traditional Hakeem like Ayurveda, unani also makes use of herbs and minerals for the preparation of drugs. Its fundamentals are also close to Ayurvedic medicine. Take for example, the four elemental principle of Tibbi discipline that holds all living and nonliving things are produced from al-nar (fire), al-hawa (air), al-ma (water) and al-ardh (earth). It is similar to panchbhuta principal in Ayurveda. Likewise, one can analogies in theories on causes of disease (doshas) etc. from Ayurveda.
Though both the systems share common platform in terms of certain classical theories, they are different in their theme & content. Humoral theory & temperamental theory are considered the back none of unani system. Humoral theory presupposes the presence of four humours (fluids) viz. Blood, phlegm, yellow bile and black bile in the body. Imbalance of humoral constitution is bound to cause disease. The temperament of the person is also determined by these humours. It is believed like that the unani drugs too have temperaments. They are classified under four categories they are hot moist, cold moist, cold dry and hot dry. Before treatment a person's temperament be considered. A hot drug can adversely affect a person with similar temperament.