The history of Alternative Medicine in the Pacific Northwest
There is something about alternative medical history that is not well represented in the medical history books.
Why are alternative medical practices formed?
What is it about allopathy that convert people to these new fields of health care practice?
The answers to these two questions are made apparent by reviewing the history of the birth and rejuvenation of the various forms of alternative medicine practices in the Pacific Northwest. The location of these places of birth in the new thinking of medicine from the 1870s to the present also provides us with important insights into the social and political/legal reasons why these alternatives exist the way that they do, and why they are reborn again and brought further along their socio-political routes due to epidemics and the attached failures of regular medicine.
As a part of this review I researched the history of the local, licensed and accredited medical school teaching naturopathy, the history of eclectic medicine and the birth of “New Eclectic medicine” in the Pacific Northwest during the 1880s and 1890s, and the various discoveries made in Pacific Northwest history and ecology that help promote many of these alternative medical practies, even though the regular MDs were not in favor of such a social and professional movement.
Brian Altonen, MPH, MS 