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Index
Copyright
Contents
Authors’ Note
Acknowledgements
Chapter I
Healing and Healers
The Way it is Now
Some Important Definitions
Chapter II
The Origins of Healing
The Prehistory of Medicine
Very Early Days
Early Magic, Early Medicine
Continuity between man and nature
Vitalist theories
The doctrine of similarities
Theory of contagion
Hippocrates, Aristotle and Humoralism
Galen
Descartes
Treatment That Didn’t Work
Treatment That Worked
The Rise of Scientific Medicine,The Fall of the Patient
Conclusion: The Schism
Chapter III
Encounters of a Healing Kind
The Spectrum
The Patient Goes to the Healer
The Diagnosis
A complementary system of diagnosis: iridology
The Treatment
The Stage After Treatment
The Outcome
The Start of the Relationship
Chapter IV
A Taxonomy of Healing
Treatment
Ingestive
Invasive
External
Remote
Mental
Conclusion: The Same But Different?
Chapter V
Philosophical Attractions
The Concept of Health
Energies and Forces
Self-Healing
Holistic
Unifying Hypothesis of Disease
Natural
Traditional
Exotic
Significance
David and Goliath
Justice
Chapter VI
Practical Plusses and Minuses
Plusses of Complementary Medicine
Hope
Support
Control
Non-toxic
Belief in treatment
Local reputation
Minuses of Conventional Medicine
Poor “people-doctoring”
The illusion of cure (a pill for every ill)
Losing touch
Chapter VII
Alternative Explanations of the Inexplicable
Natural History of the Disease
Self-limiting disease
Fluctuations in disease
Premature follow-up
Spontaneous regressions
Misinterpretation
Misinterpretation of Information
Wrong information
Selective recall
Simultaneous Conventional Treatment
Conclusion: The Value of Optimism
Chapter VIII
Getting Better or Feeling Better
Feeling Better
The Placebo Effect
Placebo effects on symptoms
A possible mechanism of action
Placebo effect as miracle cure
Placebo effect on lymphoma
Factors that affect the placebo response
The effect of the healer
The placebo effect in active treatments
The Gold Standard
It can’t be right, it looks wrong
The coming of age of a science
Refutability: the benchmark of believable truth
The infallible Freireich Experimental Plan
Clinical Trials
A crash course in statistics
Is conventional medicine a science?
Is complementary medicine a science?
Controlled trials in complementary medicine
The vexed issue of homeopathy
Another vexed issue: The Bristol Cancer Help Centre
If It Makes Me Feel Better, is it Therapy?
Mind Over Matter
Yet another vexed issue: mind over cancer
Conclusion: Healer as Drug
Chapter IX
Synthesis: Magic and Medicine
Why All of This Matters So Much
In Defence of Truth
The Need for Some Magic With the Medicine
Some Practical Recommendations
1. Areas in which conventional doctors can improve
2. Areas in which complementary practitioners might improve
3. Ways in which patients might get the best of both worlds
Who should pay
Who should be responsible?
An Unanswered Question
But Surely it Can’t Do Any Harm?
Acts of commission
Hope as enemy
Acts of omission
Conclusion: A Credo
What we all need when we’re ill
Notes
Chapter 2: The Origins of Healing
Chapter 3: Encounters of a Healing Kind
Chapter 4: A Taxonomy of Healing
Chapter 5: Philosophical Attractions
Chapter 7: Alternative Explanations of the Inexplicable
Chapter 8: Getting Better or Feeling Better
Chapter 9: Synthesis: Magic and Medicine
Index
About the Authors
Back Cover
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