| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 108.4

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| Book Review | The American Historical Review, 108.4 | The History Cooperative

Book Review

Canada and the United States

James C. Whorton. Nature Cures: The History of Alternative Medicine in America. New York: Oxford University Press. 2002. Pp. xv, 368. $30.00.

Before there was holistic medicine, therapeutic touch, patient empowerment, and "integrative medicine," there was hygeiotherapy, mesmerism, sexual hygiene, and the "laughing exercise." Mark Twain's adage that history doesn't repeat itself but rhymes aptly describes the development of alternative medicine in America. And medical historian James C. Whorton can name that rhyme in two words that serve as the title of his book. The word "cures," in its dual function as both noun and verb, frames his central point that the essential connection between alternative medical offerings in America, whether old or new, has been the cures wrought by nature itself: the vis medicatrix naturae, or the healing power of nature. Whorton argues that even though the myriad alternative systems have proffered distinctive therapies and theories, they all share the same core values encompassed in the current buzzword "holistic." He deftly illustrates the Preacher's wisdom that "what has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun" (Ecc. 1: 9).

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