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Alternative Medicine
Fringe Medicine, Natural Medicine,
Alternative Medicine, Unconventional Medicine, Holistic
Medicine, Complementary Medicine, Integrative Medicine (some even like the
term Vernacular Medicine) — all these are titles that
have been applied to a body of therapies practiced, for the most part,
outside the boundaries of orthodox medicine, and by practitioners with no
qualifications that conventional doctors and traditional medicine would recognize.
These health and therapeutic
practices are essentially based on untraditional principles, methods, treatments or knowledge,
and are often premised upon metaphysical belief. If the alternative health practice is
offered along with traditional medicine, it is habitually referred to as "complementary
medicine."
Most alternative therapies have a
propensity
to focus in treating the whole patient, making use of preventive
measures, rather than attacking symptoms — and also tend to promote positive
health as opposed to simply eliminating disease. The patient may be advised
to switch to a healthier diet, or to stop smoking, or to learn how to cope
with stress by practicing yoga, meditation, or auto-suggestion. He may also
be encouraged not to assume the traditional passive patient role; instead he
is to regard the preservation of his own health and, to a surprising extent,
the treatment of his disease, as a matter for his own individual efforts.
The most popular alternative therapies
are relaxation techniques, Chiropractic
and massage. Other well-known treatments include
Osteopathy,
Naturopathy,
Acupuncture, Acupressure,
Homeopathy
and
Reflexology.
Hypnosis,
Yoga, meditation, the latest diet
— all these, too, can lie in the borderland between conventional and
alternative medicine.
It is estimated that alternative
medicine is a $25 billion a year business. Most insurance companies, however, do not cover
alternative medicine treatments. The one thing that all of these practices have in
common is that, for orthodoxy, they are unscientific. In other words, they do
not fit within the current medical scientific framework explaining the way in
which the human body works. They also have little or no research behind them to
back up their claims to be legitimate, effective treatment.
Yet, while science awaits for satisfactory
evidence of their claims, the number of satisfied customers of these therapies
continues to
grow. And many of their clientele are people that went to them as a last
resort, when all else, including traditional medicine, had failed. These two
factors have contributed to concurrent public dissatisfaction with orthodox
medical care and skyrocketing conventional health treatment costs. Generosity
with time and personal attention has been another strong suit of alternative
medicine throughout its history, and is often the reason patients select
unconventional doctors rather than impersonal traditional doctors.
In a now famous survey published in 1993, Harvard’s
David Eisenberg reported that one in three Americans had used one or more forms
of unorthodox medicine in 1990, and expressed surprise at the massive presence
of healing alternatives in American society. When Eisenberg and his colleagues
repeated the survey in 1997, furthermore, they found that “alternative medicine
use and expenditures have increased dramatically” since the first study: now 40%
of the population employed such practices.
Recently, the
National Institutes of Health's Office of Alternative Medicine
has supported a number of research studies of unorthodox cures, including the use of shark
cartilage to treat cancer, the effectiveness of bee pollen in treating allergies,
and the use of acupuncture for treating depression and attention-deficit
disorder. Furthermore, mainstream medicine’s historic disdain for alternative
medicine has softened remarkably in the last few years. Conventional physicians
have discovered an unexpected level of professionalism among their alternative
counterparts, as well as evidence of effectiveness for several popular
alternative therapies.
Even in the light of these developments, the past probably will not be left behind
without a struggle. Wounds from historic conflicts between mainstream and
marginal practitioners have yet to fully heal and could easily be reopened.
See Aromatherapy,
Body Cleansing,
Bodywork,
Biofeedback,
Chelation Therapy,
Flower Essence Therapy,
Herbology,
Holistic Medicine,
Iridology,
Macrobiotics,
Massage Therapy,
Naturopathy,
Polarity Therapy,
Reiki and
Rolfing.
Sources: (1) Whorton, James C.,
Nature Cures: The History of Alternative Medicine in America,
Oxford University Press;
(2) Longe, Jacqueline L.,
The Gale Encyclopedia of
Alternative Medicine, Thomson Gale; (3)
Mysteries of Mind,
Space & Time: The Unexplained,
H. S. Stuttman Inc. Publishers.
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