Despite the recent upsurge in interest in alternative medicine and unorthodox healers, "Illness and Healing Alternatives in Western Europe" is the first book to focus closely on the relationship between belief, culture, and healing in the past. In essays on France, the Netherlands, Germany, Spain and England, from the sixteenth century to the present day, the contributors draw on a broad range of material, from studies of demonologists and reports of asylum doctors to church archives and oral evidence.