The Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science September 2002 [antikvár]

Each society has explanations, institutions, healers, and therapies that constitute a system enabling its members to cope with health and illness. Multiple terms are used to describe these medical systems. The term "traditional," widely used in medical anthropological and related literature, refers to the myriad medical systems and practices found in Africa, Asia, and Latin America. Many of these systems, especially in Africa and Latin America, are based on oral knowledge transmitted from one healer to another and more properly fali into the category of folk medicine. It should be noted, however, that in Western societies, various forms of folk medicine, such as home remedies, still play an important role in perceptions of health and illness. In Asia, especially in China and India, the medical systems are part of the classical written heritage of these ancient civilizations. "Indigenous" is another term used to describe local, native medical systems. In somé cases, such as Unani medicine and homeopathy in India, long history and interaction with other medical systems, such as Ayurveda in India, have led to their being considered indigenous Indián medical systems. For societies throughout the world, a variety of medical systems interact with one another. Patients patronize the various systems, practitioners incorporate therapies and diagnoses of other traditions into their own, and definitions of and beliefs about health and illness spill over from one system to another. Therefore, the health care system is a complex one, composed of individual systems quite independent in their makeup yet interdependent because of shared components. The extent of the interpenetration of elements (e.g., therapies) from one system to another varies; whether the various systems acknowledge or accept interaction is another issue. The reality is that all of these systems provide medical care, are patronized, and may share somé if not all elements with the coexisting medical systems. A review of the literature on alternative medicine reveals that since the 1960s-when alternative medicine was the folk or traditional medicine of other societies across the globe or was thajt used with or in place of biomedical traditions in Western societies-studies of the use of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM), especially in American society, have grown in number. Understandably, the concept of alternative (replacing a biomedical treatment) is far more adversarial than that of complementary (used alongside a biomedical treatment). In the biomedical community, predominant concerns about CAM from the 1960s into the 1980s centered on unproven methods of treatment for cancer, arthritis, and other chronic conditions. The stance of the medical profession, professional associations, and disease-specific research and service organizations (such as the American Cancer Society and the American Arthritis Association) was adversarial, identifying alternative medical practitioners as quacks and their lay supporters and users as proponents. Quackery and fraudulent methods were considered potentially life