Gula's healing power in Mesopotamian ritual practice was inseparable from the ordinary business of medicine as it was actually practiced, since Babylonian and Assyrian healing combined the work of two distinct specialists who both, in different ways, answered to her. The asu treated the body directly, with herbal remedies, bandaging, and what would now be recognized as pharmacology, while the ashipu addressed illness as the work of demons, sin, or divine anger, through incantation, ritual and diagnosis of which god or spirit had caused the affliction, and the two roles worked alongside each other rather than in competition, often on the same patient.
Gula's temples, particularly at Isin, functioned as centers where this combined practice was organized and where the sick could seek treatment, and surviving medical texts invoke her name alongside practical instructions for remedies, treating divine patronage and empirical treatment as parts of a single system rather than alternatives. Her association with dogs extended into this practical sphere as well: the numerous dog burials and figurines found at her sanctuaries are generally interpreted by archaeologists as votive offerings connected to healing requests, though the exact ritual use, whether symbolic guardianship, a stand-in sacrifice, or something else, is not fully settled among specialists working from the excavated evidence alone. Gula thus stood over an entire integrated field of ancient healing practice, physical and spiritual, rather than a single narrow craft.