The Dominance of Biomedicine and Challenges to its Discourse Essay

Contemporary approaches in discernment health, illness and its treatment largely differ from the traditional way of treating tribes health conditions. For instance, before the Age of Reason beliefs about revengeful spirits, evil and divine intervention, and practices of sorcery and witchcraft were widely held (Porter 1997 as cited in Williams, 2003). Another example is the practice of Greek medicine a more than naturalistic approach used by the practitioner to tune the trunk through humoral theories of balance and lifestyle modification. Similarly, during this age, the combination of physical, emotional, and spiritual factors contributed to the discipline of the sick man (Williams, 2003). These medical teachings were authoritative until the eighteenth century. However, towards the nineteenth century, legion(predicate) discoveries such as Vesalius anatomical atlas and Harveys process of line of credit circulation challenged mainstream medicine, which paved the way for the rise of a newer and more systematic dramatis personae of medicine (Williams, 2003, p. 11), marking the growth and supremacy of scientific medicine. The evolution of scientific medicine is well documented in several literature (Gabe, Keheller, & Williams, 1994 Longino, 1998 Marcum, 2008 Morris, 2000 Quirke & Gaudilliere, 2008 Williams, 2003). A progressive shift from preference of either licensed or unlicensed healers to the legitimization of the medical profession and medicalisation of natural life experiences had occurred (Gabe, et al., 1994). With this, scientific medicine, commonly cognise as biomedicine, continued to dominate the discourse of health and illness from the completion of the 18th century up to the present (Williams, 2003). Despite this perceived supremacy, scientific medicine... ...s of thi sTrial Apply? The Lancet, 365(9453), 82-93. inside 10.1016/S0140-6736(04)17670-8Thorpe, R. D. (2008). Integrating biomedical and CAM approaches The experiences of people living w ith human immunodeficiency virus/AIDS. Health Sociology Review, 17(4), 410-418. Tonelli, M. R., & Callahan, T. C. (2001). Why Alternative Medicine Cannot be Evidenced-Based. Academic Medicine, 76(12), 1213-1220. Torgerson, D. J. (2003). Avoiding parti pris in Randomised Controlled Trials in educational Research. British Journal of Educational Studies, 51(1), 36-45. Williams, S. J. (2003). Medicine and the body. London SAGE publications Ltd.Xue, C. C. L., Zhang, A. L., Lin, V., Costa, C. D., & Story, D. F. (2007). Complementary and Alternative Medicine design in Australia A National Population-Based Survey. The Journal of Alternative and Complementary Medicine, 13(6), 643-650. doi 10.1089/acm.2006.6355.