Alternative Medicine and Its Impact on Today's Medical System

Throughout recorded history, people of various cultures have relied on what Western medical practitioners today call alternative medicine. The term alternative medicine covers a broad range of healing philosophies, approaches, and therapies. It generally describes those treatments and health care practices that are outside mainstream Western health care. People use these treatments and therapies in a variety of ways. Alternative therapies used alone are often referred to as alternative; when used in combination with other alternative therapies, or in addition to conventional therapies they are referred to as complementary. Some therapies are far outside the realm of accepted Western medical theory and practice, but some, like chiropractic treatments, are now established in mainstream medicine.
Worldwide, only an estimated ten to thirty percent of human health care is delivered by conventional, biomedically oriented practitioners. …