ABSTRACT
Conventional medicine can be said to have been the dominant medical system in the post-industrial 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, and apothecaries with Galenicists. Traditional and ancient medical concepts such as the four humours, the elements, the vis medicatrix naturae, and crasis/dyscrasis (i.e. that health is based on inner and outer balance) went out of fashion only during the early part of the last century (Rosenberg 1977).
