Alternative Medicine?: A History
Tuesday, September 7th, 2010 at
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Alternative Medicine? A history, by Roberta Bivins, Oxford University Press, 2007, 258 ff.
The origins of some alternative therapies
By Howard A. Jones
The author of this book, on cultural cross-fertilization of medical knowledge over past centuries, particularly between East and West, is a lecturer in the History of Medicine at Cardiff University. Her primary focus here is on how medical investigative techniques practiced in the East came to be used in western medicine. The quite long Introduction (one-fifth of the book) discusses attitudes in the West to medical treatments of both East and West from medieval times on. The concept of a `vital force’ found in techniques from ayurveda to homeopathy is explored.
The first chapter proper focuses on the use of moxabustion in the treatment of gout and then goes on to cover the use of meridians of “chi” in acupuncture. Chapter 2 is about mesmerism and homeopathy, both of nineteenth century European origin. Chapter 3 looks at the scientific study of acupuncture in Europe and homeopathy and compares the attitudes of eastern and western cultures to these techniques. Chapter 4 reverses the process and looks at how eastern countries viewed some western techniques, particularly homeopathy and mesmerism, at a time when western medicine was becoming increasingly materialistic and these techniques were far from being widely accepted even in Britain. Until the discovery of anaesthetics for surgery and Pasteur’s discovery of germ theory to provide more effective treatment of infections, allopathy was far from being either widely respected or effective in the west.
The final Conclusion section considers the range of treatments we have available in the West today – techniques from around the world – and whether our choices of treatment are any more soundly based than those of our predecessors in the past century or two.
With the depth of detail in this illustrated book I couldn’t help feeling that it was more suited to a specialist investigating these specific topics rather than a general reader. There are extensive Notes and an Index at the end.
Dr Howard A. Jones is the author of The Thoughtful Guide to God (2006) and The Tao of Holism (2008), both published by O Books of Winchester, UK.
The Desktop Guide to Complementary and Alternative Medicine: An Evidence-Based Approach
Rating: 3 / 5