>It doesn’t help the underlying problems
If the complication was a subdural hematoma then similar procedures are still the standard of care today, and certainly we wouldn't be drilling to people's skulls as treatment if our ancestors never did anything similar.
>The discovery was the scientific method.
The "scientific method" is for use in objective science like measuring the speed of light. Until the patient dies, medical care is subjective. Its like with this recent election, telling a bunch of people that the "economy is good" doesn't matter if they themselves don't feel that way. In just the same way, 60 or 70 years ago someone from a developed country could've come into the undeveloped world and removed cancerous tumors by using surgical procedures that left someone with permanent disabilities, but maybe their witch doctor would've used some strange treatment that looked crazy and stupid but actually triggered a global immune response that not only removed the cancer but left the patient with a better outcome since they suffered no permanent side effects from the treatment, one which would be considered "more advanced" by today's standards, but wasn't even considered by the developed world back then. That one might claim something is "objectively" fact is only possible subjectively, and the hubris of believing that your subjective stance, even when accompanied by evidence, is absolutely true, will lead you to discount almost anything that stands outside of it as "unscientific." But you yourself cannot possibly die in your own experience, even though death is the condition of possibility for true objectivity, so until you reach that moment which never comes, you are constantly grappling with this dialectical approach to the world that constantly reshapes and reformulates itself in relation to all the experiences, feelings, and memories that you have.
>The answer to why people keep doing it is desperation and the immune system works, which means most illnesses work themselves out, including after the ineffective intervention.
It's true, but as I said most medical practices today are still derived from pre-modern medicine, even if they have been improved upon. One could make the same argument for much of what we do, since measuring outcomes won't always be able to differentiate between patients who get better on their own and those who improve with the treatment, since most treatments besides pills are impossible to test in a double blind study (you don't see double-blind studies for heart surgery techniques, for instance). Doctors do a lot based on their feelings about whats up and what they think works, far more than you are probably comfortable with, simply because there is no alternative besides constant self-criticism and research. That's why case studies are so important in the medical field, since they offer a subjective approach to the objective circumstance using objective tools that are determined subjectively.