Overview

Walk into the local health food shop or pick up today's paper and the chances are that you'll see adverts for acupuncture and herbal medicine, hypnotists and homeopaths. Some doctors and scientists mourn the lost lustre of mainstream medicine and complain about a new breed of 'irrational' consumer. But what exactly is 'alternative' medicine? Is the astonishing popularity of alternative and multicultural medicine really such a recent development? And, given the success story of modern biomedical science, why are alternative and traditional treatments now so fashionable? Has the impersonal chill of high-tech medicine driven consumers into the arms of charismatic quacks? Or is it the cost of western medicine that makes its competitors look so attractive? Do patients seek hope, holism, or just the thrill of rebellion? This book seeks answers to all these questions and more. Comparing the medical systems of China, India, and the west - both mainstream and alternative - Roberta Bivins shows how medical expertise has migrated from one culture to another. From acupuncture in Regency England to homeopathy in the 'Wild West', Bivins unearths the roots of today's distinctions between alternative, complementary, and orthodox medicine, and shows how popular interest in medical alternatives - often of exotic origin - is a phenomenon with a long and fascinating pedigree.

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9780199543762

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Reviews

Scholarly yet readable history...Bivins places this fraught and polarised debate into a fascinating historical context. P D Smith, The Guardian

Scholarly yet readable history...Bivins places this fraught and polarised debate into a fascinating historical context. * P D Smith, The Guardian *

`Review from previous edition A brilliant foil to the privileging of Western medicine, this is cross-cultural history at its best - lively, acute, richly informative, and wonderfully revealing. ' Roger Cooter, Wellcome Trust Centre for the History of Medicine, University College London `Extremely engaging... an imaginative, elegantly written and well constructed account, combining accessibility with good scholarship in the best possible way' Carsten Timmermann, University of Manchester `Ground breaking... Roberta Bivins demonstrates the complex routes that medical knowledge and practice travelled, east to west, north to south, and back again... and disrupts our contemporary notions of alternative medicine. ' Allan M. Brandt, author of The Cigarette Century: The Rise, Fall, and Deadly Persistence of the Product that Defined America `I recommend this book to anyone with more than a passing interest in 'alternative' medicine. ' Edzard Ernst, author of The Desktop Guide to Complementary and Alternative Medicine `Roberta Bivins does a much-needed service to history and medicine by demonstrating that 'alternative medicine' is nothing new, but is as old as the first globalizing exchanges between Europe and Asia in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. Medicine has seldom been so powerfully presented in its diverse cultural and changing historical contexts. A fascinating and richly illuminating book.' David Arnold, University of Warwick `It is well written, concise, yet wide-ranging.' British Journal for the History of Science `This well-written and painstakingly researched book would enhance any history of medicine collection.' Doody's Notes `[an] elegant and engaging book...Bivins takes us on a fascinating journey from east to west and back again' Financial Times `This compact, densely written history effectively demonstrates how alternative medicine has survived and prospered in the 21st century.' The Independent `A fascinating read... illuminating book' Nayanah Siva, New Scientist

Author Information

Roberta Bivins is Associate Professor in the Department of History at the University of Warwick. Her work focuses on the transmission of medical expertise between cultures, as exemplified by the transmission of acupuncture to the west, and by the medical experiences of non-western immigrants in multicultural Britain and America.

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