Convention is based on familiarity. Individually we decide what is normal to us, and we are suspicious of whatever seems to be out of the ordinary. As a society, we take those practices that seem to be the most widely accepted, and we shape them into a system that we deem “conventional.” This term is important because it implies the public’s trust. If a system is ubiquitous enough to be called conventional, then surely it must be the most effective for the most people.
Assigning such power to one system of medicine diminishes the credibility of other systems, removing the motivation to explore alternative treatments. Within the United States, this power has been granted to allopathy, a model of medicine rooted in a mechanical view of the body. The tools of allopathic medicine are drugs, surgery, and radiation, implemented in response to one’s symptoms.
Image source: Rayman
The mid 1800s to 1900s saw the rise of allopathy as the western world’s principal medical system. Coupled with the discovery of antibiotics and the development of vaccines, allopathic medicine has been successful in treating disease, and it has gathered political superiority within modern western society. Reigning as the United States’ primary health system, allopathy had little competition until the 1990s, when centuries-old therapies like acupuncture, massage, and herbs were reimagined as complementary and alternative medicine.
