ABSTRACT
Nonconventional medicine is an aggregate term for a variety of ancient or traditional medical systems in their modern forms. Some modalities are complete medical systems with their own diagnostic and therapeutic methods based on a unique, global, and self-consistent theory of health and disease. Others, are subsidiary techniques. There are certain basic features of the practice of alternative medicine that involve a view of health different from that implicit within modern medicine and modern life. Symptoms are a guide in the journey to a cure. They are managed, not suppressed. For example the daily ebb and flow of a symptom such as headache may be used by an acupuncturist or homeopath as a guide to the course of treatment of deeper problems with organ function. Individuals are regarded ‘holistically’ in diagnosis and treatment. There is less a priori division between mind-body-spirit or environment-society-individual.
