From the standpoint of modern science, the healing material in the Atharvaveda stands at an early, largely pre-scientific stage of medical thought. Its dominant framework is magico‑religious: disease is frequently linked to demons, curses, or displeased powers, and the proposed remedies often take the form of spells, charms, amulets, and ritual acts. Such practices do not rest on controlled observation, testable hypotheses, or demonstrable physiological mechanisms. At best, they may offer psychological comfort, a sense of meaning, and communal support, which can influence how suffering is experienced, but they do not reliably address infections, organ failure, or structural disease in the way modern medicine demands.

Alongside these ritual elements, the text does preserve a stratum of more practical knowledge. It refers to herbs and plants that later appear in the more systematic medical literature of Āyurveda, and some of these plants are now known to contain pharmacologically active substances. There are also traces of observational awareness of symptoms and disease patterns, and simple household or folk remedies for common ailments. Yet even here, identifications of the plants are often uncertain, and the text does not provide the kind of precise dosage, preparation, or indication that would allow safe and reliable clinical use. Whatever scientific value these elements possess must therefore be established independently, through rigorous pharmacological and clinical investigation.

Viewed through this lens, the Atharvaveda may be approached less as a handbook for treatment and more as a window into the spiritual and cultural imagination of early healers. It reveals a world in which the boundaries between prayer, ritual, and medicine are porous, and where the attempt to heal the body is inseparable from the attempt to restore harmony with unseen forces. Its prescriptions, taken as a whole, do not meet the standards of reliability expected in evidence‑based medicine, yet they testify to a sincere and often poignant human effort to grapple with illness, fear, and mortality. For a spiritual seeker, its value lies not in replacing modern therapies, but in illuminating how the quest for healing has always woven together the physical, the psychological, and the sacred.