Nature Cures: The History of Alternative Medicine in America

385 Pages·2002·1.57 MB·English

by  James C. Whorton

Nature Cures
Also by James C. Whorton
Crusaders for Fitness: A History of American Health Reformers
Inner Hygiene: Constipation and the Pursuit of Health in Modern Society
Nature Cures
The History of Alternative Medicine in America
James C. Whorton
1
2002
1
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Whorton,JamesC.,1942–
Naturecures:thehistoryofalternativemedicine
inAmerica/JamesC.Whorton.
p. cm.Includesbibliographicalreferencesandindex.
ISBN0-19-514071-0
1. Alternativemedicine—UnitedStates—History. 2. Alternative
medicine—UnitedStates—History—20thcentury.
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Contents
Preface ix
Part I The Nineteenth Century: Natural Healing 1
1. The Hippocratic Heresy: Alternative Medicine’s Worldview 3
2. Every Man His Own Physician: Thomsonianism 25
3. Dilutions of Grandeur: Homeopathy 49
4. Physical Puritanism: Hygeiotherapy 77
5. Magnetism and Mind: From Mesmerism to Christian Science 103
Part II The Early Twentieth Century: Drugless Healing 131
6. The Licensing Question: The Campaign for Medical Freedom 133
7. The Rule of the Artery: Osteopathy 141
8. Innate Intelligence: Chiropractic 165
9. Therapeutic Universalism: Naturopathy 191
Part III The Late Twentieth Century: Holistic Healing 219
10. From Medical Cultism to Alternative Medicine 221
11. The Holistic Health Explosion: Acupuncture 245
12. From Alternative Medicine to Complementary Medicine 271
Conclusion The Twenty-first Century: The Age of Curapathy? 297
Abbreviations 308
Notes 311
Index 360
vii

Preface
I
n the autumn of 1994, a New Yorker cartoonist imagined a clinical scene
in which a patient who is literally radiant with health, his body throwing
off a nearly blinding aura of wellness, is nevertheless being sternly ad-
monished by his physician because he has achieved his health the wrong way:
“You’ve been fooling around with alternative medicines, haven’t you?” the
doctor scolds.1
New Yorker cartoons constitute the most sensitive of barometers to shift-
ing currents in America’s cultural atmosphere. And in truth, whatever one
chooses to call it—alternative medicine, unconventional medicine, holistic
medicine, complementary medicine, integrative medicine (some even like the
term vernacular medicine)—a lot of people have been fooling around with
unorthodox forms of therapy in recent years. In a now legendary survey
published in 1993, Harvard’s David Eisenberg reported that one in three
Americans had used one or more forms of alternative medicine in 1990, and
expressedsurprise at the “enormouspresence”ofhealingalternativesinAmer-
ican society. When Eisenberg and colleagues repeated the survey in 1997,
furthermore, they found that “alternative medicine use and expenditures have
increased dramatically” since the first study: now 40 percent of the population
employed such procedures.2
That alternative methods were so widespread in the presumably enlight-
ened 1990s was a startling realization for the medical profession. It shouldn’t
have been, for there’s nothing at all new in the current enthusiasm for un-
conventional therapies. Comparable levels of support have been the norm for
most of the last two centuries: Americans, in short, have been fooling around
with alternative medicine for a long time.
That such activity has been mere foolishness has been the opinion, of
course,oforthodoxpractitioners.Fromthestart,MDshavescornedalternative
ix