ABSTRACT
As we saw in the introduction to this handbook, the first hurdle with the topic of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM) is terminology. Stone reiterated this in her chapter:
Attempting even to describe CAM as a single entity is problematic, save to the extent that professions which fall outside mainstream medicine have been lumped together, invariably in opposition to allopathic medicine (hence a politicised and contested nomenclature including ‘alternative’, ‘non-traditional’ and ‘unconventional’). […] CAM is defined more easily by what it is not than what it might be.
(Stone, at page 255)