History of Alternative Medicine - A Brief History of Complementary & Alternative Medicine (CAM) in The UK

A Brief History of Complementary & Alternative Medicine (CAM) in The UK

Since before recorded history, what is now the UK has been a destination for invaders, migrants, refugees, scholars and travellers. Part of their legacy is a diversity of medical and health practices that are today referred to as ‘complementary and alternative medicine’ (CAM). The terms ‘alternative’ and ‘complementary’ tend to be used interchangeably to describe a wide diversity of therapies that attempt to use the self-healing powers of the body by amplifying natural recuperative processes to restore health. In ancient Greece the Hippocratic movement, commonly regarded as the fathers of medicine, actually gave rise to modern naturopathy and indeed much of today’s CAM. They placed great emphasis on a good diet and healthy lifestyle to restore equilibrium; drugs were used more to support healing than to cure disease.

Complementary medicines have evolved through history and become formalised from primitive practices; although many were developed during the 19th century as alternatives to the sometimes harmful practices of the time, such as blood-lettings and purgation. In the UK, the medical divide between CAM and conventional medicine has been characterised by conflict, intolerance and prejudice on both sides and during the early 20th century CAM was virtually outlawed in Britain: healers were seen as freaks and hypnotherapists were subject to repeated attempts at legal restriction. The alternative health movement is now accepted as part of modern life, having progressed from a grass-roots revival in the 1960s reacting against environmental degradation, unhealthy diets and rampant consumerism.

Until the arrival of the Romans in AD43, medical practices were limited to a basic use of plant materials, prayers and incantations. Having assimilated the corpus of Hippocrates, the Romans brought with them a vast reparatory of herbal treatments and introduced the concept of the hospital as a centralised treatment centre. In Britain, hydrotherapy (the use of water either internally or externally to maintain health and prevent disease) can be traced back to Roman spas. This was augmented by practices from the Far East and China introduced by traders using the Silk Road.

During the Catholic and Protestant witch-hunts from the 14th to the 17th centuries, the activities of traditional folk-healers were severely curtailed and knowledge was often lost as it existed only as an oral tradition. The widespread emigration from Europe to North America in the 18th and 19th centuries included both the knowledge of herbalism and some of the plants themselves. This was combined with Native American medicine and then re-imported to the UK where it re-integrated with the surviving herbal traditions to evolve as today’s medical herbalism movement.

The natural law of similia similibus curantur, or ‘like is cured by like’, was recognised by Hippocrates but was only developed as a practical healing system in the early 19th century by a German, Dr Samuel Hahnemann. Homeopathy was brought to the UK in the 1830s by a Dr Quinn who introduced it to the British aristocracy, whose patronage continues to this day. Despite arousing controversy in conventional medical circles, homeopathy is available under the National Health Service, and in Scotland approximately 25% of GPs hold qualifications in homeopathy or have undergone some homeopathic training.

Immigration from the Indian sub-continent in the 1850s brought practitioners of Ayurveda (‘Science of Life’). A sophisticated medical system dating back over 2,500 years, its adoption outside the Asian communities was limited by its lack of specific exportable skills and English-language reference books until an adapted and modernised form – New Age Ayurveda – came under the umbrella of CAM in the 1970s. In Britain, practitioners are known as hakims. Having its origins in the Ayurveda, Indian Naturopathy incorporates a variety of holistic practices and natural remedies and became increasingly popular after the arrival of the post-Second World War wave of Indian immigrants. Unani medicine uses similar materials but is based on a philosophy which owes as much to Greek and Arab sources as to Ayurveda. Exiles fleeing the war between Yemen and Aden in the 1960s settled nearby the ports of Cardiff and Liverpool and today practitioners of this Middle Eastern medicine are known as vaids.

Deriving from the tradition of ‘bone-setting’, both osteopathy and chiropractic developed in the USA in the late 19th century. The British School of Osteopathy was established in 1917 but it was the 1960s before the first chiropractic college was established in the UK. While chiropractic theories and methods (which are concerned with subluxations or small displacements of the spine and other joints) do not accord with orthodox medicine’s current knowledge of the biomechanics of the spine, osteopathy has been largely subsumed into conventional medicine in the USA. The passing of the Osteopaths Act (1993) and the Chiropractors Act (1994), however, created for the first time autonomous statutory regulation for two CAM therapies in the UK.

The arrival into Britain of thousands of Chinese in the 1970s introduced Traditional Chinese Medicine – a system dating back to the Bronze Age or earlier that used acupuncture, herbs, diet and exercise. Today there are more than 2,000 registered practitioners in the UK. The impact on CAM of mass immigration into the UK is continuing into the 21st century. Originating in Japan, cryotherapy has been developed by Polish researchers into a system that claims to produce lasting relief from a variety of conditions such as rheumatism, psoriasis and muscle pain. Patients spend a few minutes in a chamber cooled to −110 °C, during which skin temperature drops some 12 °C.

The use of CAM is widespread and increasing across the developed world. The British are presented with a wide choice of treatments from the traditional to the innovative and technological. Section 60 of the Health Act 1999 allows for new health professions to be created by Order rather than primary legislation. This raises issues of public health policy which balance regulation, training, research, evidence-base and funding against freedom of choice in a culturally diverse society