Alternative Medicine's Emphasis on Empiricism.

Alternative practitioners have never relied on purely theoretical determinants of practice, maintaining their methods have been derived largely from empirical bases. With the exception of Mesmerism, alternative medical systems originated from the founder's therapeutic experiences, initially untainted by the influence of speculative hypothesis. Hahnemann claimed for his materia medica that it was “free from all conjecture, fiction, or gratuitous assertion—it shall contain nothing but the pure language of nature, the results of a careful and faithful research” .

Likewise, Thomson “had nothing to guide him but his own experience .... His mind was unshackled by the visionary theories ... of others; his whole studies have been in the great book of nature” . The power of musculoskeletal manipulation was discovered by Still through practical trials on his neighbors and by Palmer during an experiment on his janitor. Alternative systems have consistently started through what today would be described as observational, or outcome, studies.

Once a therapeutic method was determined to have positive outcomes, however, the temptation to explain it was almost never resisted, and theoretical rationalizations were soon forthcoming. Eclecticism alone was able to stand firm with an “it works, who cares how” attitude; all other systems quickly surrendered to the lure of conjecture and visionary theories. Hahnemann conjectured his infinitesimals operated through dynamic—i.e., spiritual—action.

Thomson theorized his empirically demonstrated herbs worked by promoting the distribution of life-sustaining heat through the system. Still hypothesized a “rule of the artery” that restored the body to health as soon as skeletal pressures on blood vessels were relieved by manipulation. Palmer imagined that vertebral subluxations constricted nerves and impeded the flow of Innate Intelligence, a divine life force, through the body. Alternative practitioners, in other words, generally reversed the process attributed to allopathic physicians. Instead of formulating a theory, then deducing therapy from it—the allopathic model—they discovered a therapy, then deduced a theory. And invariably, the theoretical principle that followed was that the therapy in question worked by eliminating some obstacle to the free functioning of the body's innate healing power.

Ultimately, it was nature that did the curing, not the manipulation or the infinitesimal similar or the cayenne in the enema. Those original theoretical formulations would eventually be recognized by adherents as unfounded and confining, and during the twentieth century they have been steadily abandoned for more sophisticated and demonstrable arguments (although nature remains the fundamental healing power). But the initial dedication of many alternative systems to a simple, all-inclusive theory gave alternative medicine the appearance of sectarian fanaticism in allopaths' eyes.