 Alternative medicine in the United StatesWalter I. Wardwell Social Science & Medicine, 1994, vol. 38, issue 8, 1061-1068 Abstract: Since the term 'alternative medicine' is defined residually as anything not regular medicine, it is not a useful category. It needs further specification in order to facilitate empirical investigation of the many varied types of health practices it denotes: namely, primitive medicine, folk medicine, herbal medicine, homeopathy, chiropractic, naturopathy, faith healing, New Age Healing, etc. The author's earlier classification of health professions into ancillary, limited, marginal, and quasi practitioners offers a fruitful set of categories for investigating relationships between these groups and organized medicine, and the movement of these groups from one status to another. Examples are the evolution of osteopathy from marginal to full acceptance as orthodox, and chiropractic's putative evolution from marginal to a limited medical profession. Within the quasi professional group, further subclassification distinguishes between folk and primitive healers, faith healers, and quacks; also betweenthose who heal using natural forces and those who frankly invoke supernatural forces or entities. Keywords: alternative; medicine; health; professions; osteopathy; chiropractic; faith; healing; New; Age; healing (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:socmed:v:38:y:1994:i:8:p:1061-1068 Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from Access Statistics for this article Social Science & Medicine is currently edited by Ichiro (I.) Kawachi and S.V. (S.V.) Subramanian More articles in Social Science & Medicine from Elsevier |
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