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Some "quack" medicines are proven over time...but usually not for the reason the quack thinks it is. Usually it turns out to be a fungus or some other creature's chemical reaction with the human or virus system that causes a cure to some ailment. These can be pulled out by science and when they are, the quacks give way to real medicine.
The problem with the quacks in those cases (or shamen/old ritual healing methods) is that they didn't understand what the cure was, just that there was a cause and effect one or more times when they did something. Sometimes they didn't really know what thing is was that was the cure, so instead of filtering out parts of a ritual, they would just keep the whole ritual...just to be safe. Sometimes the ritual was kept, but the vital part was missing, because they didn't know that the first use of this was from a plant that has a specific mold on it, and just assumed it was the plant itself.
Usually there is a reason for old timey medical practices to have worked and why shaman would be considered healers, but they either keep secrets (to hold their authority) or don't actually know the real reason whatever they do works...just that it does sometimes. Science is catching up with all sorts of things, but there are literally thousands of things we have yet to discover in the realm or the very small and the use of things we would normally kill (molds) or places we wouldn't normally look, but a wondering tribesmen would have looked.
New-age crap, no...but after it has been processed through science...sure.
Or course, a science cure for one person won't always work on another. We may be the same species, but we are all different in some ways. (Take Penicilian (from a mold) for example. The wonder drug of the 1940s and 1950s. Some Baby Boomers were overdosed on this as kids because people like Army doctors handed it out for everything and are now allergic to it.)
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