Originally published in 1984, and now reissued with a new Preface, this was the first systematic and evaluative investigation of the holistic health movement - the first to put its contribution and limitations in both historical and current perspectives. The book answers two essential questions: how do alternative medicines challenge the tenets of conventional scientific medicine; and could a synthesis of these alternative medicines and scientific medicine lead to a reformulation of conceptions of healing? A historical survey of medical care up to the use of scientific medicine in the 19th and 20th Centuries is followed by chapters on different traditions of alternative medicine: homeopathy, chiropractic, non-medical and spiritual healing, oriental medicine and self-care. Each considers the historical roots and development of the particular alternative medicine; describes its principles and how they relate to mainstream medicine. The concluding chapter considers social policy implications and political issues.

In this book, the authors, as policy analysts, examine the overall context and dynamics of modern medicine, focusing on the changing conditions of medical practice through the lens of corporatization of medicine, physician unionization, physician strikes, and current health policy directions. Conditions affecting the American medical profession have been dramatically altered by the continuing crises of cost increases, quality concerns, and lack of access facing our population, along with the ongoing corporatization toward bottom-line dictates. Pressures on practitioners have been intensifying with much greater scrutiny over their clinical decision-making. Topics explored among the chapters include: History of the Corporatization of American Medicine: The Market Paradigm Reigns Pharmaceuticals, Hospitals, Nursing Homes, Drug Store Chains, and Pharmacy Benefit Manager/Insurer Integration Medical Practice: From Cottage Industry to Corporate Practice Medical Malpractice Crisis: Oversight of the Practice of Medicine Big Data: Information Technology as Control over the Profession of Medicine Physician Employment Status: Collective Bargaining and Strikes The Corporatization of American Health Care offers different perspectives with the hopes that physicians will unite in a new awareness and common cause to curtail excessive profit-making, renew professional altruism, restore the charitable impulse to health provider institutions, and unite with other professionals to truly raise levels of population health and the quality of health care. It is also a necessary resource for health policy analysts, healthcare administrators, health law attorneys, and other associated health professions.