"This fascinating book does much to explain why so many people seek help from alternative therapies like acupuncture or herbalism, traditional Chinese medicine or other non-Western therapies."--Boston Globe "This book presents a very strong argument that medical clinicians must become more aware of their 'medicocentric' bias and learn to accord patients more authority in decisions affecting their treatment."--Journal of the American Medical Association "Healing Traditions persuasively argues for culture and belief as organizing principles in the choices patients make about whom to see and what to use in seeking relief for suffering…O'Connor offers both a breadth of material and at least the start of an approach worth considering…Healing Traditions has an important message about honoring our patients' worlds."--Annals of Internal Medicine "Well-written, timely, careful. . . . O'Connor's book is excellent reading and provides a thorough discussion of the meaning of the cultural embeddedness of health care beliefs and behaviors using the United States as an exemplar."--Medical Anthropology Quarterly "Although O'Connor's approach is that of ethnographer rather than historian, her densely packed and imaginatively written presentation illuminates an important historical motif, the 'colonialism' (p. 178) of scientific medicine."--Bulletin of the History of Medicine The popularity and practice of alternative medicine continues to expand at astonishing rates. In Healing Traditions, Bonnie Blair O'Connor considers the conflicts that arise between the values and assumptions of Western, scientific medicine and those of unconventional health systems. Providing in-depth examples of the importance and benefits of alternative health practices--including the extraordinarily extensive and sophisticated HIV/AIDS alternative therapies movement--O'Connor identifies ways to integrate alternative strategies with orthodox