For all those who distrust their doctor, you fools
Alternative Medicine is a term for all the various types of pseudo-medical treatments which are offered up as somehow more wholesome than what is called mainstream medicine as practised by most qualified medical doctors.
At it's most credible, it can include Traditional Chinese Medicine, Chiropractry, Shiatsu and such things as massage and acupuncture.
At the other end of the scale, it goes onto such things as Homeopathy which is actually poisoning onesself in order to build up a resistance, crystal healing which is the belief that crystals can somehow "correct one's natural energy flows", old-wives' herbalism and at the most ridiculous end of the scale, Bach Flower Remedies.
Now, before anyone gets their knickers in a twist about this apparent disbelief in "Alternative Therapy", it should be remembered that Traditional Chinese Medicine still perscribes arsenic as a remedy for gastric disorders. And TCM is the most highly respected of all the alternatives.
If you get sick, go and see your doctor. The stuff they give you has to prove itself in research. Gotta be better than waving a crystal.