To more and more individuals with all kinds of maladies, ailments, illness and disease, the idea of a natural "cure" with natural "medicine" sounds like an ideal therapy, or at least a more gentle and harmonious approach. So, what IS all the fuss and furor, the debate, the controversial wrangling -- or sometimes, simply inner turmoil -- often over OTHER PEOPLE'S personal decisions?

Another writer (and evidently keen observer), Dr. Daniel Callahan, introducing his BOOK REVIEW of Joel James Shuman's and Keith G. Meador's "Heal Thyself: Spirituality, Medicine, and the Distortion of Christianity" (Oxford University Press, 2003 ) in the Summer 2004 Johns Hopkins University Press "Bulletin of the History of Medicine" (Volume 78, Number 2, pp. 523-524) expressed it this way: "A few years ago I organized a research project on complementary and alternative medicine (CAM). I was drawn to the topic not as a CAM supporter but because I had been intrigued by the HOSTILITY that many physicians feel toward it".

Sadly, that describes the attitude to a tee in a great many cases. But, why? There are a number of possible reasons (and many more "excuses") for skepticism, objection, even outright opposition; and if we're serious about "natural" healing, we'll most likely have to deal with them sooner or later --- preferably, without becoming antagonistic and "polarized" ourselves. (That would NOT be good "therapy"!)

To encourage insight and understanding instead, let's examine some of the chief objections, misconceptions --- and realities ---

Interestingly, if you mention that you've chosen an entirely NON-MEDICAL approach to any illness, the first response you'll hear from the average individual is ------ "What else IS there?" ------ If any OTHER business, industry, or profession had only HALF so successful a "monopoly" they would be "up to THEIR ears" in ANTI-TRUST litigation, wouldn't they? But NOT THIS "monopoly". THIS "monopoly" "has it's bluff in" on virtually all of "western civilization"; because THIS "monopoly" is not just in "the marketplace". It's even more so in the "mental conditioning" of "the masses", who see it as the only "scientific" option. (We'll get to that fallacy later.) To many --- even though most might deny it --- it is "sacred"; and rejection of it in any way is "sacrilege". (Hence the advice at the beginning of each of these chapters: "Don't make a religion of it.")

The prevailing misconception held by most people --- IF THEY EVEN KNOW ABOUT the other healing professions --- is that a Chiropractor, Homeopath, Naturopath, Acupuncturist, or Herbalist is not a "real doctor". In most states of the U.S. however, many of these professionals must be licensed by a state board and therefore not only be college graduates, but also finish their profession's equivalent of "Med School". Futhermore, many of them reportedly spend more classroom time studying the anatomy and physiology of the human body than most medical students.

What medical students spend more time studying is described as "allopathic medicine" by several regular and medical dictionaries ---- as well as the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC), the American Medical Association (AMA) and the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) ---- in other words: the functions of drugs ---- their actions, reactions, interactions, side-effects, after-effects, etc. ---- That IS primarily what "medicine" is all about, isn't it?

Other terms that have been proposed include: conventional medicine, Western medicine, evidence-based medicine, clinical medicine, scientific medicine, regular medicine, mainstream medicine, standard medicine, orthodox medicine, and (my personal favorite) authoritarian medicine. And while "medicine" is broadly defined in most dictionaries as "the art of preventing or curing disease" or "the science concerned with disease in all its relations" --- which actually defines "pathology" --- Gr. "pathos" = suffering and "ology" or "logia" = study of --- Stedman's Medical Dictionary quite logically, correctly and simply lists the actual current customary use of the word first: "(med-i-sin) A drug".

By that realistic definition, virtually all of the so called "alternative medicine" is actually alternative NON MEDICINE; and the term "allopathy" (al OP u thee --- from Gr. allos, other, and pathos, suffering) seems particularly insightful and foresightful to have been coined in the first half of the nineteenth century, in view of the current mandatory practice in most countries of listing on drug labels and in drug advertising the known side effects and after effects of the drug --- the "other suffering" it causes. Could this be the real reason some in the medical profession despise the term "allopathy" so much --- it's implications of breaking that famous Hippocratic rule of healing: "First do no harm"?