Alternative Forms of Health Care
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When people think of health care in the United States, they often think of the traditional practices of the American Medical Association (AMA). Since its inception in the mid-nineteenth century, the AMA has been known for the use of hospitals, doctors, prescription drugs and surgery in the treatment of illnesses. However, in recent years, there have been increasing numbers of people turning to the use of alternative treatments, such as acupuncture, chiropractic, homeopathy, herbalism and mental healing. According to Altman (1990), since the 1970s, the United States has seen a "a ground swell of interest in alternative forms of health care" (p. 1). A study by the Harvard Medical School found that Americans made 425 millions visits to alternative practitioners in 1990, as opposed to only 388 million trips to traditional medical doctors (Randall, 1994, p. 14). One reason for this increased interest in alternative medicine is that traditional doctors fail to "listen or take complaints seriously;" furthermore, although traditional doctors are good at treating life-threatening illnesses and handling emergency situations, they are not as good as alternative practitioners at treating chronic diseases such as "allergies, pain and insomnia" (Randall, 1994, p. 14). Most alternative methods are based on the concept of holistic medicine, which seeks to treat the person as a whole rather than focusing on certain parts of the body. Holistic medicine considers the person to be an int
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edicine (Altman, 1990, p. 1). Homeopathy is another extremely popular form of alternative medicine which has its origins in the West. The system was developed in the early nineteenth century by the German doctor Samuel Hahnemann. An important idea in homeopathy is that of the "Vital Principle." According to this idea, a Vital Force (or electromagnetic energy) runs through the body; whenever this Vital Force becomes unbalanced, the result is illness (Lockie & Geddes, 1994, p. 17). Thus, illness is always caused by forces on the inside of the body, and all outer symptoms are "considered the result of disease rather than its cause" (Weiner & Gross, 1989, p. 30). Another important principle in homeopathy is known as the "Law of Similars." This principle encompasses the belief that "like cures like." As such, it contrasts the view of conventional, or allopathic medicine, which seeks to treat illnesses by creating symptoms which are the opposite of those that the patient is suffering from. Hahnemann discovered the principle of similarity while experimenting with cinchona bark, a natural source of quinine and a known cure for intermittent fever. Hahnemann found that ingesting the cinchona bark caused him to experience the symp
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Approximate Word count = 2554
Approximate Pages = 10 (250 words per page)
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