Other Healers: Unorthodox Medicine in America

Abstract

This book is a useful addition to the growing literature on unorthodox medical care in the United States. Of its ten chapters, eight deal with specific alternatives. These are various botanical practices; health reform movements, such as vegetarianism and Grahamism, that stressed diet, exercise, and clean living; hydrotherapy; homeopathic osteopathic chiropractic; Christian Science; and divine or faith healing, usually associated with revivalist sects but sometimes with more traditional churches or denominations. The remaining two chapters—the first and last—are different and more problematic. In the first, the editor considers possible approaches to the study of unorthodox healing. And in the last, there is a rather vague discussion of contemporary medicine; the only specific alternative discussed is the Pennsylvania powwow, a faith-healing ritual of German folk origin. Each of the eight substantive chapters gives us a quite detailed and sound account of its topic. Each covers a particular movement's