ABSTRACT
This chapter describes historical developments in philosophies of healing. It considers how different societies provide healthcare, noting in particular the dominance of Western biomedicine and concurrent marginalization of complementary and alternative medical systems. Geographers use a variety of social and spatial approaches to analyze healthcare issues. The study of healthcare provision considers where and how healthcare is provided across different communities. Healthcare includes the diagnosis, treatment, and prevention of disease. The very notion of “alternative” medicine reflects the dominance of Western biomedicine, since the term is commonly applied to any healthcare practices that fall outside the biomedical model. In most of the Global North, patients must pay privately for alternative therapies, although some treatments may be offered by some government-sponsored healthcare systems. Healthcare can be viewed as a type of economy with its own supply and demand.
