Human beings fall sick; sometimes they recover, but at times they die. Human intervention — whether psychological, surgical, or pharmaceutical — seeks to prevent death and promote recovery. Such intervention is uncertain and sometimes even counterproductive. This reality explains why, in the Western world, the practice of healing (what we term medicine) is so contested and so intolerant. Competing schools claim exclusive effectiveness for their therapeutics, seek to gain a monopoly of healing, and denounce rivals as charlatans and butchers. Dominant schools make training laborious, exclusive, and costly, as are the charges for medical care. Such tactics are self-defeating. Alternative therapeutics flourish because they are less expensive and because, historically, orthodox medicine has so often been crude and ineffective. The very illicitness of alternative medicines and the boldness of their claims make them the more alluring. (Just the other morning I saw in the window of an alternative healing...

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