Alternative medicine

Alternative medicine is medicine that stands in different kinds of polarities to conventional medicine. The following table contains aspects because of which medical systems may be called alternative. Such medicine might be used instead of conventional medicine. If it is thought of something that is not inside conventional medicine but has some right of existence and might form some sort of bigger whole it might be called complementary medicine. If the focus is on dialog between complementary and conventional medicine the term integrative medicine came into use.

Possible reasons for being called alternative

Aspect	conventional medicine	alternative medicine	respective term
Science	scientific	unscientific, not scientific, pseudoscientific	scientific medicine	pseudoscientific medicine
Distribution	mainstream	practiced by minorities	mainstream medicine
Relation to common sense	orthodox	unorthodox	orthodox medicine	unorthodox medicine
	conventional	unconventional	conventional medicine	unconventional medicine
Where is it being tought?	academic (tought on universities)	known by common people or staff without academic education	academic medicine
Practiced by	doctors	Mostly non doctors: healers, common people, naturopaths
Quality, safety, harmfulness		quackery		quackery
Cultural origin	based on western culture	based on different cultures	western medicine	traditional medicine
Paradigmata	Reductionism, materialism	Acceptance of i.e. life forces, spirit or soul