The history of medicine in the 19th and 20th century shows that it was not a simple story of inevitable progress. Even while there developed new understandings of disease, patho-physiology, diagnosis, surgey, nurssing and hospitals, alterrnate ways of understanding and treating illness continued.
The following set of readings offers some views of these developments:
Porter:
Ch 2 "Roots of Medicine" 14-43
Ch 4 "Medicine and Faith," 83-105
Ch 6 & 7 "Indian and Chinese Medicine," 135-62
Read for broad historical and world-wide perspective
William Rothstein, "Medical practice among physicians," in American Physicians in the Nineteenth Century, pp 41-62
What were the major illnesses American physicians treated in the first half of the nineteenth century? What therapies did they prescribe and how effective were they?
Gevitz, 124-56; 192-214
What does the history of osteopathic medicine and Christian Science tell us about the limits of allopathic (modern scientific) medicine? How do you explain their success?
Alvin Shapiro, "Alternative medicine: Alternative to what?" Bulletin Allegheny County Medical Society, 1998 (September, 26): 458-459
UNAVAILABLE FOR READING
JAMA editorial, "Alternative Medicine Meets Science,"
280:1618-19 (Nov. 11,
1998)
What are the two kinds of medicine, according to the editorial?
What are the same questions to be asked of all therapies?
What are the categories for rating quality of evidence?
What do the authors say about frequency of use of alternative medicine since1990? How do they show it?
How would you describe the authors' attitude towards "alternative medicine," i.e. it should be dismissed and ignored, exposed as a fraud, learned from?
What findings do they cite?
David Eisenberg, "Advising patients who seek alternative medical therapies." Annals of Internal Medicine, 1997 (127): 61-69
What is Eisenberg's definition of alternative medicine? What advice does he give to practitioners? Why?
You may want to consult Eisenberg's longer study that prompted this article: Eisenberg, David M., et al. "Unconventional Medicine in the United States." The New England Journal of Medicine 328 #4 (Jan. 28, 1993):246-252
James Goodwin, "Battling quackery: Attitudes about micronutrient supplements in American academic medicine." Archives of Internal Medicine, 1998 (158): 2187-2191
Has there been bias against micronutrient supplements, and if so, why? Compare Goodwin's suggestions to those of the JAMA editorial.
"Cultural Diversity, Alternative Medicine, and Folk Medicine," David J. Hufford, Ph.D. New Directions in Folklore 1 (1 July 1997)
How does Hufford explain the continuing attraction of alternative and folk medicine in the U.S.?