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:

"Aren't non-medical therapies awfully risky, even dangerous?"

"It isn't proven, scientific or "evidence-based" healing."

"Is it moral, ethical, legal?"

Interestingly, the first response from the average individual if you state that you've chosen an entirely NON-MEDICAL approach to a certain ailment is: "What else IS there?" If any OTHER business, industry, or profession had HALF so successful a "monopoly" THEY would be "up to THEIR ears" in anti-trust litigation, wouldn't they?

The prevailing misconception held by most people -- IF they even know about the other healing professions -- is that a Chiropractor, Homeopath, Naturopath, Osteopath, 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 the latter spend most of their time studying is described 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) as "allopathic medicine".

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 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, nearly 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 particurlarly insightful and foresightful to have been coined in the first half of the nineteenth century; especially in view of the current mandatory practice some countries of listing on drug labels and in drug advertising the known side effects of the drug -- the "other suffering" it causes. Could this be the real reason some in the medical profession dislike the term "allopathy" so much -- it's implications of breaking that famous Hippocratic rule of healing: "First do no harm"?