Biomedicine and Alternative Healing Systems in America

by Hans A. Baer
Biomedicine and Alternative Healing Systems in America
Author: Hans A. Baer
Publisher: Univ of Wisconsin Press
Total Pages: 238
Release: 2001
Genre: Alternative medicine
ISBN: 9780299166946
GET BOOK

Examining medical pluralism in the United States from the Revolutionary War period through the end of the twentieth century, Hans Baer brings together in one convenient reference a vast array of information on healing systems as diverse as Christian Science, osteopathy, acupuncture, Santeria, southern Appalachian herbalism, evangelical faith healing, and Navajo healing. In a country where the dominant paradigm of biomedicine (medical schools, research hospitals, clinics staffed by M.D.s and R.N.s) has been long established and supported by laws and regulations, the continuing appeal of other medical systems and subsystems bears careful consideration. Distinctions of class, Baer emphasizes, as well as differences in race, ethnicity, and gender, are fundamental to the diversity of beliefs, techniques, and social organizations represented in the phenomenon of medical pluralism. Baer traces the simultaneous emergence in the nineteenth century of formalized biomedicine and of homeopathy, botanic medicine, hydropathy, Christian Science, osteopathy, and chiropractic. He examines present-day osteopathic medicine as a system parallel to biomedicine with an emphasis on primary care; chiropractic, naturopathy, and acupuncture as professionalized heterodox medical systems; homeopathy, herbalism, bodywork, and lay midwifery in the context of the holistic health movement; Anglo-American religious healing; and folk medical systems, particularly among racial and ethnic minorities. In closing he focuses on the persistence of folk medical systems among working-class Americans and considers the growing interest of biomedical physicians, pharmaceutical and healthcare corporations, and government in the holistic health movement

Complementary and Alternative Approaches to Biomedicine

by Edwin L. Cooper
Complementary and Alternative Approaches to Biomedicine
Author: Edwin L. Cooper
Publisher: Springer Science & Business Media
Total Pages: 514
Release: 2004-09-23
Genre: Health & Fitness
ISBN: 9780306482885
GET BOOK

This volume is the proceedings of an international symposium that examined the newest parameters in alternative and complementary medicine, thus covering a rapidly growing field of medicine that has strong advocates as well as strong opponents. Topics include both basic research and clinical applications, allowing the text to present high quality, peer reviewed, chapter style contributions that dispel some of the pseudoscience and myth surrounding alternative and complimentary medicine.

The Anthropology of Alternative Medicine

by Anamaria Iosif Ross
The Anthropology of Alternative Medicine
Author: Anamaria Iosif Ross
Publisher: Routledge
Total Pages: 192
Release: 2020-05-27
Genre: Social Science
ISBN: 1000180743
GET BOOK

Alternative medicine is not a fashionable new trend but an established cultural strategy, as well as a dynamic feature of mainstream contemporary medicine, in which elements of folk traditions are often blended with western scientific approaches.The Anthropology of Alternative Medicine is a concise yet wide-ranging exploration of non-biomedical healing. The book addresses a broad range of practices including: substance, energy and information flows (e.g. helminthic therapy); spirit, consciousness and trance (e.g. shamanism); body, movement and the senses (e.g. reiki and aromatherapy); as well as classical medical traditions as complements or alternatives to Western biomedicine (e.g. Ayurveda). Exploring the cultural underpinnings of contemporary healing methods, while assessing current ideas, topics and resources for further study, this book will be invaluable to undergraduate and graduate students in anthropology, sociology, psychology, and health related professions such as nursing, physical and occupational therapy, and biomedicine.

Bounding Biomedicine

by Colleen Derkatch
Bounding Biomedicine
Author: Colleen Derkatch
Publisher: University of Chicago Press
Total Pages: 253
Release: 2016-04-21
Genre: Language Arts & Disciplines
ISBN: 022634584X
GET BOOK

During the 1990s, unprecedented numbers of Americans turned to complementary and alternative medicine (CAM), an umbrella term encompassing health practices such as chiropractic, energy healing, herbal medicine, homeopathy, meditation, naturopathy, and traditional Chinese medicine. By 1997, nearly half the US population was seeking CAM in one form or another, spending at least $27 billion out-of-pocket annually on related products and services. As CAM rose in popularity over the decade, so did mainstream medicine's interest in understanding whether those practices actually worked, and how. Medical researchers devoted considerable effort to testing CAM interventions in clinical trials, and medical educators scrambled to assist physicians in advising patients about CAM. In Bounding Biomedicine, Colleen Derkatch examines how the rhetorical discourse around the published research on this issue allowed the medical profession to maintain its position of privilege and prestige throughout this process, even as its place at the top of the healthcare hierarchy appeared to be weakening. Her research focuses on the ground-breaking and somewhat controversial CAM-themed issues of The Journal of the American Medical Association and its nine specialized Archives journals from 1998, demonstrating how these texts performed rhetorical boundary work for the medical profession. As Derkatch reveals, the question of how to test healthcare practices that don't fit easily (or at all) within mainstream Western medical frameworks sweeps us into the realm of medical knowledge-making--the research teams, clinical trials, and medical journals that determine which treatments are safe and effective--and also out into the world where doctors meet patients, illnesses find treatment, and values, practices, policies, and priorities intersect. Through Bounding Biomedicine, Derkatch shows exactly how narratives of medicine's entanglements with competing models of healthcare shape not only the historical episodes they narrate but also the very fabric of medical knowledge itself and how the medical profession is made and remade through its own discursive activity.

Integrative Approaches for Health

by Bhushan Patwardhan
Integrative Approaches for Health
Author: Bhushan Patwardhan
Publisher: Academic Press
Total Pages: 383
Release: 2015-03-31
Genre: Technology & Engineering
ISBN: 0128014342
GET BOOK

Despite spectacular advances, modern medicine faces formidable global challenges in several key areas—notably the persistence of major killer diseases such as malaria, tuberculosis, leprosy, and newer threats including HIV/AIDS, resistant infections, and Ebola. As such, modern medicine has not led to a significant decrease in chronic diseases like diabetes, obesity, and other degenerative and autoimmune diseases. The authors believe that modern medicine needs to experience a paradigm shift, an integration of traditions—in particular from the ancient systems like Ayurveda and Yoga. Integrative Approaches for Health: Biomedical Research, Ayurveda and Yoga brings together the basic principles of interdisciplinary systems approach for an evolving construct of future medicine. Such an approach is already emerging at the cutting edge of current research in omics, bioinformatics, computational and systems biology. Several leading institutions of medicine have adopted Yoga and complementary medicine to widen their reach, and deepen effectiveness in therapeutic practices. The amalgam of modern medicine, with its strengths in scientific rigor, blended with the basic principles of life drawn from Ayurveda and Yoga might evolve into a medicine of tomorrow. Integrative approaches are no longer alternative, perhaps taking these approaches is the only possible way to heal our sick planet. This book introduces important trends and tools for biomedical researchers and physicians alike, to innovate the practice of medicine for the better. - Contains a harmonious confluence of ancient and modern concepts, historical perspectives, philosophical underpinnings, and a relevant review of literature supported by worldwide case studies. - Provides a critical analysis of ancient wisdom, pointing to potential areas for future research, which provide food for thought for public debate on integrative health care for the twenty-first century. - Explains Ayurveda knowledge, and its relevance to drug discovery, nutrition, genomics, epigenetics, regenerative biology, longevity and personalized medicine. - Shares Yoga knowledge insights, and explains its relevance to body–mind complex relationships, psychology, neurobiology, immunoendocrinology, bioenergetics, consciousness, and cognitive sciences. - Offers illustrations and logic diagrams for enhanced understanding of the concepts presented.

Alternative Medicine

by
Alternative Medicine
Author:
Publisher: Health and Human Services Department
Total Pages: 428
Release: 1995
Genre: Health & Fitness
ISBN:
GET BOOK

Complementary and Alternative Medicine in the United States

by Institute of Medicine
Complementary and Alternative Medicine in the United States
Author: Institute of Medicine
Publisher: National Academies Press
Total Pages: 360
Release: 2005-04-13
Genre: Medical
ISBN: 0309133424
GET BOOK

Integration of complementary and alternative medicine therapies (CAM) with conventional medicine is occurring in hospitals and physicians offices, health maintenance organizations (HMOs) are covering CAM therapies, insurance coverage for CAM is increasing, and integrative medicine centers and clinics are being established, many with close ties to medical schools and teaching hospitals. In determining what care to provide, the goal should be comprehensive care that uses the best scientific evidence available regarding benefits and harm, encourages a focus on healing, recognizes the importance of compassion and caring, emphasizes the centrality of relationship-based care, encourages patients to share in decision making about therapeutic options, and promotes choices in care that can include complementary therapies where appropriate. Numerous approaches to delivering integrative medicine have evolved. Complementary and Alternative Medicine in the United States identifies an urgent need for health systems research that focuses on identifying the elements of these models, the outcomes of care delivered in these models, and whether these models are cost-effective when compared to conventional practice settings. It outlines areas of research in convention and CAM therapies, ways of integrating these therapies, development of curriculum that provides further education to health professionals, and an amendment of the Dietary Supplement Health and Education Act to improve quality, accurate labeling, research into use of supplements, incentives for privately funded research into their efficacy, and consumer protection against all potential hazards.

The Role of Complementary and Alternative Medicine

by Daniel Callahan
The Role of Complementary and Alternative Medicine
Author: Daniel Callahan
Publisher: Georgetown University Press
Total Pages: 225
Release: 2002
Genre: Medical
ISBN: 1589010167
GET BOOK

At the center of the debate over complementary and alternative medicine--from acupuncture and chiropractic treatments to homeopathy and nutritional supplements--is how to scientifically measure the effectiveness of a particular treatment. Fourteen scholars from the fields of medicine, philosophy, sociology, and cultural and folklore studies examine that debate, and the clash between growing public support and the often hostile stance of clinicians and medical researchers. Proponents and critics have different methodologies and standards of evidence--raising the question of how much pluralism is acceptable in a medical context--particularly in light of differing worldviews and the struggle to define medicine in the modern world. The contributors address both the methodological problems of assessment and the conflicting cultural perspectives at work in a patient's choice of treatment. Sympathetic to CAM, the contributors nonetheless offer careful critiques of its claims, and suggest a variety of ways it can be taken seriously, yet subject to careful scrutiny.

Alternative Medicine

by E. Paul Cherniack
Alternative Medicine
Author: E. Paul Cherniack
Publisher: Nova Biomedical Books
Total Pages: 0
Release: 2016
Genre: MEDICAL
ISBN: 9781634848268
GET BOOK

Complementary and Alternative Medicine (CAM) today attracts significant attention through online health and consumer forums, professional CAM-practitioner associations and conferences, the recent growth in integrative biomedicine, and through the influence of advertisements and documentary presentations in mass media. A majority or large minority of consumers in developed countries regularly resort to professional CAM for supportive treatment for sickness in the form of chiropractic, osteopathic, prescribed dietary changes, acupuncture, massage, homeopathy, naturopathy and herbal medicine, and also use numerous associated lifestyle practices such as vegetarianism, nutritional supplementation, yoga and tai chi for self-treatment and to maintain general wellbeing. Many leading health insurance funds now provide generous rebates against out-of-pocket fees paid by consumers for private-sector CAM consultations. Furthermore, populations of developing countries continue to depend heavily on traditional herbal medicine and psycho-spiritual practices for their healing, on account of pharmaceutical treatments being often unaffordable or unavailable to them. Chapters of this book include literature reviews (such as study findings about the benefits of CAM for elderly persons and of laughter therapy, from the USA, and herbal treatments for pain, in Mauritius), and original studies (poor CAM consumers in Australia, the location of naturopaths' practice in Canada, and the use of mindfulness meditation among nursing students in Scotland). Study findings presented here are enjoyable in their diversity, and add to contemporary literature both by presenting common perceptions about CAM, by engaging in discussion of its prevalence and popularity in diverse contexts, and the contentious topic of placebo effect and the questions that arise as to how to prove effectiveness for alternative healing methods, while reviewing some potential clinical benefits.