Alternative Therapy Dating From The 1920s In Japan

[Landerico Benson]

Reikiis a form of complementary therapy that was developed in Japan in the 1920s. The word itself is Japanese and means 'universal life force energy'. People with multiple sclerosis may decide to use this energy healing therapy alongside more conventional treatments. Several MS Therapy Centres offer reiki sessions.

The principle of treatment with reiki is that a trained practitioner can alter the energy flows through the body by placing his/her hands in a series of positions, on or over the body. Each position may be held for several minutes and the process can last up to an hour and a half. The whole body is treated rather than a specific symptom. This concept of energy flowing through the body is also the basis for other therapies such as acupuncture and Tai Chi.

Although there is no research evidence supporting the use of reiki in multiple sclerosis, it is used by people with MS to help improve various MS related symptoms. In cancer, patient surveys suggest that for some people it can improve anxiety, mood, sleep, fatigue and pain.

Recent studies have examined the impact of reiki on a range of symptoms including pain, stress, anxiety, depression and fatigue with mixed results. In cancer patients, research suggests that reiki is particularly effective at reducing pain and decreasing levels of anxiety and fatigue. It has also been found to improve wellbeing and mood during chemotherapy treatment. However, research has shown that results can vary considerably between people, with little more than half of the cancer patients who took part in one study finding any benefit from reiki treatment.

Other research has found that reiki combined with massage reduced levels of stress by 33% and anxiety by 21%. Another study which looked at the impact of reiki on depression concluded that symptoms decreased but were not alleviated completely, leaving participants with a milder form of depression.

The history of alternative medicine covers the history of a group of diverse medical practices that were collectively promoted as "alternative medicine" beginning in the 1970s, to the collection of individual histories of members of that group, or to the history of western medical practices that were labeled "irregular practices" by the western medical establishment.[1][2][3][4] It includes the histories of complementary medicine and of integrative medicine. "Alternative medicine" is a loosely defined and very diverse set of products, practices, and theories that are perceived by its users to have the healing effects of medicine, but do not originate from evidence gathered using the scientific method,[5][6][7] are not part of biomedicine,[8][9][10][11] or are contradicted by scientific evidence or established science.[4][12][13] "Biomedicine" is that part of medical science that applies principles of anatomy, physics, chemistry, biology, physiology, and other natural sciences to clinical practice, using scientific methods to establish the effectiveness of that practice.

Much of what is now categorized as alternative medicine was developed as independent, complete medical systems, was developed long before biomedicine and use of scientific methods, and was developed in relatively isolated regions of the world where there was little or no medical contact with pre-scientific western medicine, or with each other's systems. Examples are traditional Chinese medicine, European humoral theory and the Ayurvedic medicine of India. Other alternative medicine practices, such as homeopathy, were developed in western Europe and in opposition to western medicine, at a time when western medicine was based on unscientific theories that were dogmatically imposed by western religious authorities. Homeopathy was developed prior to discovery of the basic principles of chemistry, which proved homeopathic remedies contained nothing but water. But homeopathy, with its remedies made of water, was harmless compared to the unscientific and dangerous orthodox western medicine practiced at that time, which included use of toxins and draining of blood, often resulting in permanent disfigurement or death.[1] Other alternative practices such as chiropractic and osteopathy, were developed in the United States at a time that western medicine was beginning to incorporate scientific methods and theories, but the biomedical model was not yet fully established. Practices such as chiropractic and osteopathy, each considered to be irregular by the medical establishment, also opposed each other, both rhetorically and politically with licensing legislation. Osteopathic practitioners added the courses and training of biomedicine to their licensing, and licensed Doctor of Osteopathic Medicine holders began diminishing use of the unscientific origins of the field, and without the original practices and theories, osteopathic medicine in the United States is now considered the same as biomedicine.

Until the 1970s, western practitioners that were not part of the medical establishment were referred to "irregular practitioners", and were dismissed by the medical establishment as unscientific or quackery.[1] Irregular practice became increasingly marginalized as quackery and fraud, as western medicine increasingly incorporated scientific methods and discoveries, and had a corresponding increase in success of its treatments. In the 1970s, irregular practices were grouped with traditional practices of nonwestern cultures and with other unproven or disproven practices that were not part of biomedicine, with the group promoted as being "alternative medicine". Following the counterculture movement of the 1960s, misleading marketing campaigns promoting "alternative medicine" as being an effective "alternative" to biomedicine, and with changing social attitudes about not using chemicals, challenging the establishment and authority of any kind, sensitivity to giving equal measure to values and beliefs of other cultures and their practices through cultural relativism, adding postmodernism and deconstructivism to ways of thinking about science and its deficiencies, and with growing frustration and desperation by patients about limitations and side effects of evidence-based medicine, use of alternative medicine in the west began to rise, then had explosive growth beginning in the 1990s, when senior level political figures began promoting alternative medicine, and began diverting government medical research funds into research of alternative, complementary, and integrative medicine.[1][2][3][4][14][15][16]

The concept of alternative medicine is problematic as it cannot exist autonomously as an object of study in its own right but must always be defined in relation to a non-static and transient medical orthodoxy.[17] It also divides medicine into two realms, a medical mainstream and fringe, which, in privileging orthodoxy, presents difficulties in constructing an historical analysis independent of the often biased and polemical views of regular medical practitioners.[18] The description of non-conventional medicine as alternative reinforces both its marginality and the centrality of official medicine.[19] Although more neutral than either pejorative or promotional designations such as "quackery" or "natural medicine", cognate terms like "unconventional", "heterodox", "unofficial", "irregular", "folk", "popular", "marginal", "complementary", "integrative" or "unorthodox" define their object against the standard of conventional biomedicine,[20] entail particular perspectives and judgements, often carry moral overtones, and can be inaccurate.[21] Conventional medical practitioners in the West have, since the nineteenth century, used some of these and similar terms as a means of defining the boundary of "legitimate" medicine, marking the division between that which is scientific and that which is not.[22] The definition of mainstream medicine, generally understood to refer to a system of licensed medicine which enjoys state and legal protection in a jurisdiction,[n 1] is also highly specific to time and place. In countries such as India and China traditional systems of medicine, in conjunction with Western biomedical science, may be considered conventional and mainstream.[21] The shifting nature of these terms is underlined by recent efforts to demarcate between alternative treatments on the basis of efficacy and safety and to amalgamate those therapies with scientifically adjudged value into complementary medicine as a pluralistic adjunct to conventional practice.[n 2] This would introduce a new line of division based upon medical validity.[25]

Prior to the nineteenth century European medical training and practice was ostensibly self-regulated through a variety of antique corporations, guilds or colleges.[26] Among regular practitioners, university trained physicians formed a medical elite while provincial surgeons and apothecaries, who learnt their art through apprenticeship, made up the lesser ranks.[27] In Old Regime France, licenses for medical practitioners were granted by the medical faculties of the major universities, such as the Paris Faculty of Medicine. Access was restricted and successful candidates, amongst other requirements, had to pass examinations and pay regular fees.[27] In the Austrian Empire medical licences were granted by the Universities of Prague and Vienna.[28] Amongst the German states the top physicians were academically qualified and typically attached to medical colleges associated with the royal court.[28] The theories and practices included the science of anatomy and that the blood circulated by a pumping heart, and contained some empirically gained information on progression of disease and about surgery, but were otherwise unscientific, and were almost entirely ineffective and dangerous.

Outside of these formal medical structures there were myriad other medical practitioners, often termed irregulars, plying a range of services and goods.[29] The eighteenth-century medical marketplace, a period often referred to as the "Golden Age of quackery",[30][n 3] was a highly pluralistic one that lacked a well-defined and policed division between "conventional" and "unconventional" medical practitioners.[32] In much of continental Europe legal remedies served to control at least the most egregious forms of "irregular" medical practice but the medical market in both Britain and American was less restrained through regulation.[33] Quackery in the period prior to modern medical professionalisation should not be considered equivalent to alternative medicine as those commonly deemed quacks were not peripheral figures by default nor did they necessarily promote oppositional and alternative medical systems. Indeed, the charge of 'quackery', which might allege medical incompetence, avarice or fraud, was levelled quite indiscriminately across the varied classes of medical practitioners be they regular medics, such as the hierarchical, corporate classes of physicians, surgeons and apothecaries in England, or irregulars such as nostrum mongers, bonesetters and local wise-women.[34] Commonly, however, quackery was associated with a growing medical entrepreneurship amongst both regular and irregular practitioners in the provision of goods and services along with associated techniques of advertisement and self-promotion in the medical marketplace.[35] The constituent features of the medical marketplace during the eighteenth century were the development of medical consumerism and a high degree of patient power and choice in the selection of treatments, the limited efficacy of available medical therapies,[36] and the absence of both medical professionalisation and enforced regulation of the market.[35]

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