Yao is a nation with a long history and splendid traditional culture. Pavlov pointed out: "With human beings, there will be medical activities". Understanding of medicine is the process of people's understanding of diseases and treatments. It comes from the production, labor and life practice of human society, and forms with the formation and development of human society. Yao's understanding of medicine, like other ethnic minorities, is a development process from superstition to the combination of medical ghosts and gods and witch doctors, and then to the dominant position of medicine. It is a gradual development process from the formation of embryonic belief therapy, the combination of medicine and witchcraft to the formation of systematic empirical medicine and experimental medicine.

For thousands of years, the evolution and development of Yao medicine has also followed this law. Just because of various historical reasons in the past, Yao ancestors lived in extremely difficult living conditions for a long time. For the survival and reproduction of this nation, "the fear of entering the mountains is not high, and the fear of entering the forest is not close", forming a closed and self-sufficient economic group. Due to backward production technology, poor economic conditions, inconvenient transportation and less cultural exchanges with other ethnic groups, the development speed of the whole Yao society is slower than that of Han areas. Until the early liberation, it still had the color of primitive social culture in social life. Yao people do not have their own writing, so they can't truthfully record the development of their civilization, let alone medical care. On the other hand, human survival is inevitably sick. For the survival and reproduction of our nation, we have to do everything possible to find natural drugs that can prevent and treat diseases and explore ways to treat injuries. In the long-term practice of fighting diseases, Yao ancestors gradually summarized and accumulated rich experience. These people who have mastered the methods and experience of treating diseases are called Yao medicine, and the drugs they use are called Yao medicine. They are passed down from generation to generation in the oral way of master and apprentice, father and son, mother and daughter, and at the same time, they constantly absorb the experience of other nationalities to improve their medical skills, and gradually form a set of medical theories with their own national characteristics, which have made contributions to the health of their own nation.