The anthropology of alternative medicine /

In this book comprising a mix of topics, anthropologist Ross (Utica College) begins with alternative medicine, defined as an assortment of healing practices and practitioners that exist outside the dominant health care system of a specific society at a specific time. What is deemed alternative at one time and place may become a mainstream practice at another. The use of leeches by physicians in the 18th and 19th centuries was a mainstream practice, was disparaged a century later, and is currently part of innovative medical science. Ross views the extreme dominance of Western biomedicine during the 20th century as historically atypical. Three biomedical achievements early in that century--the control of infectious disease, the discovery of antibiotics, and the creation of vaccines--heralded the century-long era of dominance. A chapter discusses the "manual medicine" of osteopathy and chiropractic. Another explores how natural ebbs and flows shape the environment and affect health and illness. A chapter looks at the roles of spirit and trance in mental and physical healing. The author notes that the number of published studies of alternative and complementary medicine has skyrocketed during the past decade. Each chapter ends with questions for discussion, possible essay topics, and recommended readings and films. Summing Up: Recommended. Upper-division undergraduates and above. E. Wellin emeritus, University of Wisconsin--Milwaukee