The Tapestry of Alternative Healing

Abstract

Contrary to some thinking, traditional medicine did not become monolithic in theory and practice until the first half of the twentieth century. Before that its history was one of the alternative systems of causation and treatment following one after the other. In this paper, alternative medicine includes folk medicine, quackery, and "sectarians" such as osteopathy, chiropractic, and naturopathy. These categories of healers have not had discrete existences apart from each other and traditional medicine. Rather they all have edges where they have interacted with each other, at times competitively, at times cooperatively. The best tool society has to evaluate the validity of alternative medicines is science. Science, however, has not been very effective in this regard.