Gesundheitswesen. 2000 Feb; 62(2): 53-8.

[Alternative medicine between adaptation and demise: exemplified by homeopathy]

Degele N.

Fachbereich Sozialwissenschaften, Universität Osnabrück.

For the past several years, conventional health care systems--often called "conventional medicine"--have been criticized widely. Reasons mentioned are increasing costs and its ill equipment to handle multifaceted chronic illnesses. Such a decline of legitimacy is paralleled by an increase of alternative and complementary medicine. As the example of homeopathy shall demonstrate, successful strategies of professionalization in orthodox medicine can not simply be applied to its "holistic challengers". Important reasons to be outlined encompass the economic impacts of health care which have reached both orthodox and alternative medicine as well.