ABSTRACT
Conventional medicine can be said to have been the dominant medical system in the postindustrial world for not much more than 150 years. Prior to that, although differential diagnosis was the main diagnostic method used, physicians had to compete with traditional practitioners and bonesetters. Traditional and ancient medical concepts such as the four humours, the elements, the vix medicatrix naturae, and crasis/dyscrasis (ie, that health is based on inner and outer balance) only went out of fashion during the early part of the last century (Rosenberg, 1977). In its short history, modern medicine has proven to be so apparently effective, and so well adapted to the industrial worldview that it gave the impression that indigenous, ancient, or traditional medicine had no validity, and was nearly extinct. In fact, this was not so. It clearly existed in the East and the Third World, and was in hiding in Western culture, where it took a defensive cultic posture in the face of modern medicine’s self-confidence.
