Essentials of. Complementary and. Alternative. Medicine eBook-een

By depicting the allopathic physician as 

 

 

seemingly “holding his patient down,” depicting calomel as a club, and having the patient call for the 

parson, the Thomsonian cartoonist is suggesting that allopathy attacks disease so brashly as to 

indiscriminately overwhelm the patient, too; its therap ies are, in the language of a later day, invasive. 

However, Thomsonian remedies are indicated to be gentle and natural, and to support and enhance the 

body's own innate recuperative powers:  “I will help you out,” the Thomsonian doctor tells the patient, “with 

the blessing of God.” He might as well say, “with the blessing of nature” because, in nineteenth century 

thought, God and nature were implicitly one. Thomsonians often stated the matter explicitly though, 

Thomson himself declaring that nature “ought to be aided in its cause, and treated as a friend; and not as 

an enemy, as is the practice of the physicians.” His approach had “always been… to learn the course 

pointed out by nature,” then to adminis ter “those things best calculated to aid her in restoring health” (22). 

He hardly stood alone. Most alternative practitioners, in his day and the present, professed to consult and 

cooperate with the vis medicatrix naturae , the healing power of nature first described and praised by 

Hippocrates: 

“All healing power is inherent in the living system.” (Russell Trall, hydropath, 1864) (23) 

“Naturopathy, with all its various methods of treatments, has always one end in view and one only: 

to increase the vital force.” (Benedict Lust, naturopath, 1903) (24) 

Osteopathic manipulation removes obstacles to “the free flow of the blood… and with the lifting of 

FIGURE 1.1. The Contrast; or an illustration of the difference between the regular and Thomsonian systems of practice 

in restoring the sick to health. 

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this embargo nature itself does the necessary work to restore the body to its normal state and even 

beyond it…. Osteopathy fights on the side of nature.” (M. A. Lane, osteopath, 1925) (25) 

In Figure 1.1, the diploma hanging from the physician's  coat pocket is as prominent as his calomel club. 

Emblazoned with the MD, the diploma is emblematic to Thomsonians of the abstruse theoretical training 

the allopath has 

 

 

received and that dictates his practice. As the person in the middle of the figure observes, the allopathic 

physician is “scientific with a vengeance,” hellbent on doing what theory tells him ought to work, oblivious 

to the common sense that would show him he is poisoning his patient. But the error of his allopathic way is 

not just that he makes the sick even sicker with misguided therapies; his devotion to theory, the cartoonist 

suggests, prevents him from even attempting a fair evaluation of alternate remedies, remedies that cannot 

be rationalized by, or that seem to conflict with, his science. 

Hence, from the onset, homeopathic drugs were laughed at by allopaths because of what seemed the 

theoretical simple-mindedness of the “like cures like” principle and the impossibility of infinitesimals 

exerting any material action. Still's musculoskeletal manipulations were dismissed because of the 

perceived naivete of his “rule of the artery” theory; Palmer's chiropractic adjustments were dismissed 

because of the apparent silliness of the vertebral subluxation model; and acupuncture in the early 1970s 

was dismissed because of the alien concepts of qi and energy meridians. The recent response of a 

university medical scientist to reports of clinical trials showing that patients who are prayed for recover 

better than those who do not receive prayers is a wonderfully direct summary of this historical attitude: 

“That's the kind of crap I wouldn't believe,” this scientist is reported to have said, “even if it were true.” (L. 

Dossey, unpublished). Complementary physicians contend that the scientific medical establishment has 

always had a negative attitude about complementary methods—most allopaths refuse to believe them even 

if they are true because they make no sense in terms of conventional science. Like the doctor in the 

cartoon, MDs as a group are seen by alternative practitioners to be scientific with a vengeance. 

Alternative Medicine's Emphasis on Empiricism 

Alternative practitioners have never relied on purely theoretical determinants of practice, maintaining their 

methods have been derived largely from empirical bases. With the exception of Mesmerism, alternative 

medical systems originated from the founder's therapeutic experiences, initially untainted by the influence 

of speculative hypothesis. Hahnemann claimed for his  materia medica  that it was “free from all conjecture, 

fiction, or gratuitous assertion—it shall contain nothi ng but the pure language of nature, the results of a 

careful and faithful research” (26). Likewise, Thomson “had nothing to guide him but his own experience…. 

His mind was unshackled by the visionary theories… of others; his whole studies have been in the great 

book of nature” (27). The power of musculoskeletal  manipulation was discovered by Still through practical 

trials on his neighbors and by Palmer during an experiment on his janitor. Alternative systems have 

consistently started through what today would be described as observational, or outcome, studies. 

Once a therapeutic method was determined to have positive outcomes, however, the temptation to explain 

it was almost never resisted, and theoretical rationalizat ions were soon forthcoming. Eclecticism alone was 

able to stand firm with an “it works, who cares how” attitude; all other systems quickly surrendered to the 

lure of conjecture and visionary theories. Hahnemann  conjectured his infinitesimals operated through 

dynamic—i.e., spiritual—action. Thomson theorized his empirically demonstrated herbs worked by 

promoting the distribution of life-sustaining heat through the system. Still hypothesized a “rule of the 

artery” that restored the body to health as soon as skeletal pressures on blood vessels were relieved by 

manipulation. Palmer imagined that vertebral subluxations constricted nerves and impeded the flow of 

Innate Intelligence, a divine life force, through the body. Alternative practitioners, in other words, generally 

reversed the process attributed to allopathic physicians. Instead of formulating a theory, then deducing 

therapy from it—the allopathic model—they discovered a therapy, then deduced a theory. And invariably, 

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