ABSTRACT
The legitimacy of alternative medicine is an issue of vital public concern and the growing body of social science research on alternative healing should surely illuminate the political problems involved. I shall begin by reviewing some of the results of this research, and then outline some findings from my own investigations. These suggest that the use of alternative (or complementary) medicine is associated with many other changes in health care practice on the part of individuals and families. Alternative practitioners may be marginal (in a political sense) to the orthodox medical establishment, but the issues which are raised by the use of alternative medicine are central if we are concerned with what patients demand of the health services and how they conceive of health and well-being.
