Nature Cures The History of Alternative Medicine in America doc

[...]... italicized in the original.)3 Yet in just the few years since the publication of that New Yorker cartoon, mainstream medicine s historic disdain for alternative medicine has softened remarkably The decision by the U.S Congress in 1991 to establish an Of ce of Alternative Medicine at the National Institutes of Health was, to be sure, a political act, and one that enraged many MDs Nevertheless, the founding of. .. that a number of America s orthodox physicians adopted during the first half of the century For reasons beyond present purposes, a minority of doctors, mostly younger members of the profession, came to doubt the efficacy of the traditional depletive therapies “Boast as doctors will of their cures, ” a leader of the American profession wrote in the 1840s, the “vis medicatrix naturae is the chief doctor after... Claiming to side with nature instead was the distinguishing therapeutic philosophy of those first alternative systems of practice that appeared in America in the early 1800s Systems of practice is specified because while there had been a variety of methods available as alternatives to conventional medicine before the nineteenth century, the practitioners of folk medicine, the so-called root-and-herb doctors,... had to be fought by all systems Finally, as with my medical school course on alternative medicine, I intend the book to be neither a recommendation of individual programs of natural healing nor a condemnation of any If I am taking a position, it is simply that of the first director of the Of ce of Alternative Medicine, speaking “not as an advocate of alternative medicine, but as an advocate for its fair... history of unconventional medicine might assist in the process of conciliation is to acquaint mainstream doctors with the culture of natural healing It will not be enough for physicians to learn more about the treatments and theories of alternative practitioners and about what evidence exists for the efficacy of their therapies They must also learn more about the practitioners themselves I am thinking... medical theory, were actually being demonstrated to be effective by clinical experience Even so, doctors often acknowledged the rigorousness of their treatments (which included more than a few other assaults, such as 6 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY: NATURAL HEALING the application of blood-sucking leeches and the raising of blisters on the skin) by referring to them as “heroic therapy.” Therapeutic heroism was the. .. the doctrine of vitalism as opposed to the soulless idea of mechanicobiology.”15 As will be seen, alternative healing systems have carried the battle against the mechanistic, reductionistic orientation of mainstream medicine down to the present Empiricism in Irregular Medicine Irregular practitioners have also divorced themselves from regular medicine in terms of epistemology, the method by which they... wrote in the 1840s, giving them “a magnet of irresistible attraction So infatuated are men in contemplating a power which they fain would believe to exist that whoever raises such a standard is sure of having very many to flock around it.” Often the point has been made more bluntly, as by a doctor of German extraction speaking against the licensing of osteopaths in New York State at the beginning... norm through the first half of the 1800s The practice of that time was heroic; it was murderous,” an aging southern physician recalled of his novice days in the 1830s; “I knew nothing about medicine, but I had sense enough to see that doctors were killing their patients, and that it would be better to trust to Nature than to the hazardous skills of the doctors.”6 Trusting in nature was, in fact, a... healing mechanisms to restore the sick to health But in truth, alternative therapists of every denomination have always claimed to heal by supporting and stimulating nature; they have all been purveyors of nature cures Further, by virtue of subscribing to the principle that whenever recovery takes place, nature rather than the doctor is ultimately responsible, all would gladly accept as their credo “Nature . cartoon, mainstream medicine s historic disdain for alternative medicine has softened remarkably. The decision by the U.S. Congress in 1991 to establish an Of ce of Alternative Medicine at the National. it alternative medicine, unconventional medicine, holistic medicine, complementary medicine, integrative medicine (some even like the term vernacular medicine) —a lot of people have been fooling around. about their use of alternative therapies and that medical schools intro- duce instruction on alternative medicine into their curricula. Since then, more than half the medical schools in the country