Hailed as "elegant and engaging" and "a fascinating journey from east to west and back again" (Financial Times ), this fascinating volume offers a sweeping comparative account of alternative medicine over four hundred years. Comparing the medical systems of China, India, and the west (both mainstream and alternative), historian Roberta Bivins ranges across the centuries and the continents, mapping the transmission of medical expertise from one culture to another and laying bare the roots of today's distinctions between alternative, complementary, and orthodox medicine. Bivins uses a wealth of illuminating and entertaining historical examples--from horse-racing English earls to desperate missionaries in 17th-century Indonesia, and from hypnotism in the British Raj to homeopathy in the American Wild West--to underscore the vital point that the cross-cultural transmission of medical knowledge and expertise, even alternative medical knowledge and expertise, is not a uniquely contemporary phenomenon, but has a long and fascinating pedigree. Anyone interested in meditation, acupuncture, herbal supplements, T'ai Chi, and so on will find in this volume a wealth of fascinating information on alternative and traditional medicine.


Roberta Bivins is Associate Professor in the Department of History at the University of Warwick.