Anotated Bibliography (alpha by title)
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| Coulter, Harris L. Divided Legacy: A History of the Schism in Medical Thought.
4 vols. Vol. 1. Washington: Wehawken, 1975. Vol. 2-4. Berkeley: North Atlantic, 1973-94.
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| Divided Legacy is a history of therapeutics
which situates healing approaches in their own times.
Coulter's investigation discloses the existence of two
opposing philosophies in medicine, Rationalism and Empiricism,
tracing the evolution of their therapeutic manifestations
from Hippocratic writings (fifth century B.C.) to medical
practices of the late twentieth-century, with the Rationalist
mindset expressed in modern biomedicine, the Empiricist
in alternative methods like homoeopathy, naturopathy,
chiropractic, and classical osteopathy. Coulter opens
up a Marxist critique of Rationalist methods as e.g.
seen today in Biomedicine?s susceptibility to power
and money. He privileges Empiricist methods, among other
reasons, because of their coherent and scientific therapeutic
philosophies and their resistance to incorporation into
alienating systems of power. |
Vol. 1. The Patterns Emerge: Hippocrates to Paracelsus.
Vol. 2. The Origins of Modern Western Medicine: J. B. Van Helmont to Claude Bernard.
Vol. 3. The Conflict Between Homoeopathy and the American Medical Association.
Vol. 4. Twentieth-Century Medicine: The Bacteriological Era.
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| Grossinger, Richard. Homeopathy: The Great Riddle. Berkeley: North Atlantic Books, 1998. |
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Grossinger attempts solve the riddle of how remedies which contain no medicinal substances can cure deep-seated diseases.
He analyses homeopathy?s principles, its philosophical base in scientific theory, portrays its origins in the empirical medical tradition, the life and work of its founder, Samuel Hahnemann (1753-1843),
and the homeopathic tradition in the U.S.
Grossinger demonstrates how homeopathic theory is in itself a critique of biomedicine.
In the appendix, he compares homeopathy to other major alternative healing approaches.
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| Peters, David. "Participate, Collaborate, Integrate." Re-vision. 23.4 (2001): 31-37. |
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Peters, Director of Complementary Therapies at Marylebone Health Center, London,
advocates for a postmodernization of modern medicine, i.e. biomedicine,
to remedy current problems like alienation, iatrogenic illnesses and cost explosion.
Whereas biomedicine still largely views complementary and alternative medicines (CAM)
"as throwbacks to a time before it was possible to categorize diseases according to their cellular pathology
- before they were named, their courses predicted, and specific drugs designed to treat them,"
Peters argues for an eclectic medicine in which biomedical and vitalist views complement each other, acknowledging the existence of multiple truths regarding healing.
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| Porter, Roy. The Greatest Benefits to Mankind: A Medical History of Humanity. New York: Norton, 1997. |
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In this medical history from antiquity to the present, Porter, professor of the social history of medicine, foregrounds ideas and actions of healers, the cultural and scientific scope of their philosophies and therapies including costs and benefits to mankind.
The book features chapters on Indian and Chinese medicine and introduces western alternative-healing approaches within their historical contexts,
but it concentrates mainly on biomedicine, which is today the dominant form throughout the world.
Porter acknowledges a crisis in the biomedically dominated field, manifest in overmedicalization, drug resistance, and cost explosion;
however, he does not view alternative medicines as possible remedies for these problems.
The book contains an excellent and extensive bibliography for further reading.
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