| Summary: |
consider for a moment these varying scenes: a graduate of Barbara
Ann Brennan’s School of Healing draws upon the forces in the universe
to balance the multilayered fields of aura emanating from a
patient; a homeopath, after a lengthy consultation, treats the symptoms
of alopecia with sulfur serially diluted and succussed to 30°C to release its
dynamized energies; a nurse creates an energy exchange using therapeutic
touch to restore a patient’s self-healing abilities; and, finally, a chiropractor
applies spinal manipulative therapy to treat a child with attention deficit
hyperactive disorder. Each of these modalities is representative of unconventional
healing practices common across the United States. Whereas
reductionist biomedicine draws its authority from the randomized clinical
trial (RCT) and laws embedded in the natural sciences, these and
other unconventional therapies rely on a philosophy of organism known
as “vitalism,†which explains life not by the laws of physics and chemistry,
but by a principle, force, or spiritlike power that comes from beyond the
material world to animate organic matter
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