ABSTRACT
Alternative medicine is ideally suited to anthropological examination, being commonly represented as the elusive and challenging other of modern capitalist biomedical systems. The extreme dominance of Western medicine during the twentieth century is an atypical historical event. The use of probiotic supplements and homeopathic medicines by mainstream health providers is becoming increasingly common and accepted in Europe but remains questioned or marginalized within the United States medical world as something yet insufficiently proven. Western scientific medicine is currently quite the alternative other in most remote and impoverished areas of the world, where it is regarded as a last resort, due to lack of accessibility and great cost relative to local resources. The heterogeneity of alternative medicine makes it difficult and potentially misleading to study as one distinct entity, as the many eclectic practices and traditions that come under the valid designation have emerged from and represent diverse cultural histories and worldviews.
