The Eighties in America - Salem Press (2009)

sized the healing power of prayer and forms of alter-
native medicine such as naturopaths, homeopathy,
and osteopathy. Oral Roberts University closed the
hospital in 1989 because of funding issues.
In addition, the concept of treating the person in
a holistic manner acknowledged the spiritual and
psychic components of healing. Americans began to
show interest in Eastern medical practices such as
acupuncture.
The rising cost of health care also altered the ways
in which medical practitioners and hospitals offered
services in the 1980’s. The growing concern for pa-
tient rights was best illustrated by the rise in family
medicine as an area of specialization. Central to this
concern was the belief that patients were respon-
sible for their own health care. The new wellness
model was one of a dynamic process in which doctors
and patients were actively engaged in the prevention
of disease through lifestyle change. However, the
majority of conventional physicians maintained that
the alternative-medicine movement was a fad, stat-
ing that wellness educators lacked qualifications and
certification.

Impact Some scholars contend that the alternative-
medicine movement represented a return to tribal-
ism; people wanted to converse with nature and
create harmony in their lives. Traditional Western
medicine was often able to cure disease and prolong
life with technological tools, but it removed both ill-
ness and cure from the emotional and psychological
contexts in which they occurred. This isolation of
disease from the broader context of a patient’s life
prevented Western physicians from treating individ-
uals in a holistic fashion. However, by the end of the
1990’s, unconventional therapies began to receive
acceptance in the medical profession with the im-
provement of certification for those practicing alter-
native medicine. Congress even relented to public
demand, renaming the Office of Alternative Medi-
cine as the National Center for Complementary and

Alternative medicine

Further Reading
Gevitz, Norman, ed.Other Healers: Unorthodox Medi-
cine in America. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins Univer-
sity Press, 1988. Gevitz and eight other writers
provide scholarly analyses of the trends, practices,
and perspectives in alternative medicine from
1800 to 1985.
Grossinger, Richard.Planet Medicine: From Stone-Age

Shamanism to Post-Industrial Healing.Garden City,

N.Y.: Anchor Books, 1980. The author explores

the psychological, spiritual, and cultural origins

of healing and the rise of the alternative medicine

movement in the United States.

Novey, Donald W.Clinician’s Complete Reference Guide

to Complementar y and Alternative Medicine. St.

Louis, Mo.: Mosby, 2000. Provides information,

suggested readings, and Internet resources for

sixty-four forms of alternative treatment; written

by ninety practitioners of those therapies.

Sobel, David S., ed.Ways of Health: Holistic Approaches

to Ancient and Contemporar y Medicine.New York:

Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1979. Twenty essays

advocate a holistic approach to healing, contend-

ing that technical advances in conventional medi-

cine can be successfully integrated with unortho-

dox practices.

Whorton, James C. “The History of Complementary

and Alternative Medicine.” InEssentials of Comple-

mentar y and Alternative Medicine, edited by Wayne

B. Jonas and Jeffrey S. Levin. Baltimore: Lip-

pincott Williams & Wilkins, 1999. Whorton traces

the historical developments and movements in

American complementary medicine from the

eighteenth through the twentieth centuries.

_______.Nature Cures: The Histor y of Alternative Medi-

cine in America. New York: Oxford University

Press, 2002. Traces the history of changing medi-

cal and popular views toward medicine over the

past two centuries.

Gayla Koerting

See also Health care in the United States; Psychol-

ogy; Religion and spirituality in the United States;

Televangelism.

America’s Most Wanted

Identification Nonfiction television series

Date Began airing in 1988

FOX network’s long-running and popular series profiled

missing persons and suspects wanted for committing vio-

lent crimes and asked viewers to provide information lead-

ing to their recover y or capture.

America’s Most Wantedfirst aired on February 7,

1988, on the fledgling FOX network. The show used

reenactments of actual events to dramatize violent

The Eighties in America America’s Most Wanted
53