Since the 1950s, rehabilitation and legitimacy of an ever-evolving and multi-faceted scholarly medical tradition tend to be gained through the use of modern science explanatory model. Interfaces of knowledge and practice are approached through experiment in biomedicine and in traditional (empirical) medicine revealing a process of ‘biomedicalisation' of the latter over time through an on-going tentative process of modernisation, standardisation and means of legitimacy along the lines of biomedicalsciences criteria even though their rationales are radically diverging. Using tools of social anthropology, the methodology is based on the collection of qualitative data, documentary and archival research, and qualitative research analysis. Still in an exploratory phase, this research is part of a social sciences programme on AIDS jointly run by IRD and PUMC/CAMS.